[Milsurplus] GO RAX more...

[Mike Hanz]

This whole speculation thread is beginning to disturb me.  Time lines of 
available equipment (and by inference, equipment platforms, be they 
fixed ground or aircraft) are bandied about as if they were all infinite 
assets available at the very *beginning* of the war to be drawn upon 
whenever needed!  The British contribution to the discovery and 
classification of German threats seems to be conveniently ignored.  The 
Brits had both ground based *and* airborne Hallicrafters S-27s by the 
hundreds, and I have no doubt it was they who understood the German tank 
comms environment long before we got into the mix, and their input 
provided important data points for the creation of our ART-6 through 
ART-11 jammers.  I know it's tempting to throw around all these 
*potential* capabilities, but RATs and Admiralty converted BC-455s?  
Gimmee a break!

Okay, I'm calm now.  A glass of Barboursville Octagon is a wonderful 
perspective adjuster. :-)   It just seems to me that all sorts of 
unusual ideas are being proposed without considering the surveillance 
environment, which was a rapidly moving target that, at least in Europe, 
had significant Allied involvement.  After spending a fair amount of 
time in the documents of the era, I gotta say that IMO nothing is as 
clear as it might seem just looking at bare equipment specs for 
capabilities.  There are some great references that discuss this in 
detail, like the NDRC Division 15 report after the war, and several of 
Alfred Price's books.  Some time spent in them reveals a very contorted 
picture by month and year of the war.  You have to look at the 
environment as a whole, not just the U.S. side of it.

No flames meant - it just seemed like something that needed saying...

  - Mike


>> When the German paratroopers showed up on the front they were found to
>> be using 28-30 Mc. There was a scramble to obtain receivers that could
>> tune that range.
> That's above the tuning range of the RAT(-1), RAV and RAX but within the
> range of the Admiralty converted BC-455s.  Hmmm ... Okay, I'm not going to
> start speculizing.  :-)