[Milsurplus] GORAX more...

[Mike Hanz]

On 6/11/2011 11:14 PM, Hue Miller wrote:
> Dispassionately, with no bias for or against the HF jamming gear, what is
> your idea of the utility of airborne tank-jamming equipment?
> Seems to me you have to have aircraft linger circling for longer than is
> healthy.

My assessment is of little import, Hue.  What was important was the 
assessment of the commanders in the field at the time.  Price has a 
couple of examples of orbiting jammers in his book *The History of 
Electronic Warfare - Vol I* that were followed up after the war by 
interviews with German officers and documents.  Both were considered 
effective.  The first was early in Overlord, when a number of 
countermeasures aircraft were employed to create a "ghost fleet" 
approaching Calais.  The orbits used a combination of chaff dropping a 
jamming to fool the German radar operators into thinking an enormous 
fleet was approaching in the darkness.  The second example was during 
the Battle of the Bulge, when a number of B-24s were sent up with 1kW 
Jackals (ART-3) to orbit and jam German tank radio traffic for long 
periods.  Obviously you have to have a measure of air superiority, but 
at the time, with slow aircraft, it seemed to make enough sense to 
create a real demand for the ART-3s in-theater.  There are some other 
examples in the book of uses that may seem bizarre to us now but worked 
for them during at least one point in time (as well as examples of 
equipment which didn't pan out.)  My ART-6 through -11 series jammers 
have signs of operational use, so there must have been some sort of 
rationale for firing them up.  I don't have any additional info on them, 
however.

73,
Mike