[Milsurplus] HFDF against U Boats

[boeing377 at aol.com]

My late father in law ran a Navy DF station in Brazil during WW 2. He 
told me that they were responsible for locating several  U boats that 
were sunk using info they provided. Their sole mission was to take 
bearings on suspected enemy radio transmissions. He said that signals 
were generally weak, nulls were broad, but when cross plotted with 
bearings from other DF stations you could often narrow the location 
down to a searchable area.

<<Ten years ago, Kathleen Williams wrote a book: "Secret Weapon: U.S.
High-Frequency Direction Finding in the Battle of the Atlantic" which 
addresses
the use of "Huff Duff" against the U-Boats during the Atlantic 
Campaign.  I have
finally gotten around to reading it, and it has raised some questions.  
She
apparently relied almost exclusively on Navy, British, German and IT&T 
sources,
and missed AAF, Sperry and Bendix.  The book starts with a brief 
discussion of
land based HFDF, the British contributions, and then describes the 
development
of shipboard HFDF, which, apparently German Admiral Karl Dönitz and his 
staff
thought to not be possible with contemporary technology.  She dismisses 
high
frequency direction finding from aircraft as being impractical in WW2.

I wonder what Bendix thinks about that?  I suspect this immediately 
becomes a
matter of semantics, navigation DF vs. SIGINT DF.  But, it raises the
interesting (to me, at least) question of whether the (A)DF steerable 
loop
system could be effective at all against the high speed CW of the 
U-Boats.  And
whether any effort was made to adapt the ADF to such a search?  I know 
that the
Bendix and AN/xxx systems were used in the bombers for navigation, but 
has
anyone ever heard of using one to track submarines?

One other aspect of this book is worth noting.  She describes the 
almost
immovable Navy bureaucracy against adopting anything modern or 
technical.  It
took a while for the actuality of worldwide war to sink in.  Sort of 
makes one
wonder whose side those desk bound admirals were on.

73,
George
W5VPQ>>