[Milsurplus] tank radio skip?

[Bob Camp]

Hi

Boy this REALY kicked up a couple strange threads on the list. Here's 
the basis:

1) There is repeated reference to the German efforts at intercept in 
North Africa. Basically the British caught on to it once they captured 
one of the intercept vans. They then tightened up radio security (which 
was lax up to that point) and targeted the vans for capture or 
destruction. Once they did that the Germans were not as effective There 
are both German and British sources to back this up. It'll take me a 
while to dig them up but I probably can.

2) The information on Enigma is only coming out now. Certainly there 
are references to German supplies to North Africa being intercepted 
based on Enigma. There are also references to "carefully directed" air 
surveillance to try to cover these intercepts. All I have seen past 
that is "other programs were run as well".

3) One version of the story has a connection between the Connecticut 
State Police VHF radio experiments tying into the intercept plan. 
Another version has a couple of hams picking up the signals. In each 
case fairly simple gear was being used. Sitting up the shed I have a 
genuine "Connecticut State Police" Super Pro. It's a fine radio, but 
not quite up to modern standards for low noise at VHF ... In both cases 
it's not very clear exactly how they stumbled on to the German 
activity. Ham radio was shut down and I suspect the same may have 
applied to the State Police experiments.

4) Like it or not propagation is affected by sun spots. If you check 
out the period in question it was not anything like a sunspot maximum. 
That does not say that the contacts were impossible, only that they 
were a lot less likely.

5) Unlike our new friends the Germans didn't seem to think that a 
couple of KW of RF was needed for tank to tank communications. What 
ever they were doing, it was with low power sets.

Anyway that's the "rest of the story" as I see it.

On Jan 29, 2005, at 9:13 AM, Bill Strangfeld wrote: