The
3250th Signal Service Company
And Patton's V Corps
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They also failed to notify Major General
Gerow's V Corps that the veteran 352nd Infantry Division
(the 352. Infanterie-Division, a formation of
the German Army) was also rapidly moving into the area. The
net result was that the 3250th Signal Service Company, along
with everybody else along their stretch of the beach, were
getting pounded. So bad was the fire they took that General
Omar Bradley, at this time Commander of the First U.S. Army,
seriously considered pulling the V Corps out of the
beachhead on D-Day, in view of German strength in the area.
As for Detachment B of the 3250th, they
finally landed at Omaha Beach on 8 June, the third day after
D-Day. Even then however enemy fire was so withering that
the unit lost most of its equipment. Knowing that it was
better to move on than stay and subject oneself to
continuing fire, its commander, Army Signal OCS Class 43-18
graduate Lieutenant Raymond Mondor, moved the company to St.
Laurent sur Mere on 9 June. Only about one half mile from
the Germans, while the location needed defense, it
nevertheless provided an ideal place from which to intercept
German radio traffic. Simultaneously then, as the Detachment
went about setting up its perimeter defense, it also set up
an intercept center, traffic analysis section and message
center… and before night had fallen was busy providing
SIGINT support even while under fire.
Finally, on the 11th of June, both
Detachments A and B got a break, as they broke camp and moved
out, away from the coast, with the V Corps.
- - -
From June until
September 1944, the 3250th travelled with and supported the
V Corps, as it fought its way through Germany.[1]
Records show that during this entire period the unit was out
of action for only three days.
Tactically, the V Corps was
conducting an encircling movement in the area known as the
Falaise Gap (aka Falaise Pocket), and the SIGINT the 3250th provided proved invaluable
to that effort. As many of our readers will recall, the
issue of the Falaise Gap sat heavy on the American
commanders, as they thought that Montgomery had failed to
properly assess the German’s withdrawal from the coast
toward the Rhine, such that he allowed tens-of-thousands of
German troops to make it back to safety, when they could
easily have been captured.
Arguments continue even today as to what
was in Montgomery’s head when he let this situation develop.
After the war was over, General Bradley considered the
failure to close the gap a mistake, and he placed the
responsibility squarely on Montgomery’s shoulders. He
recalled that he and Patton had doubted "Monty's ability to
close the gap at Argentan" from the north, and they had
"waited impatiently" for word from Montgomery to authorize
continuation of the XV Corps advance. While waiting,
according to Bradley, he and Patton had seen the Germans
reinforce the shoulders of the Argentan-Falaise gap and
watched the enemy pour troops and materiel eastward, to
escape the unsealed pocket.
It seemed to him and Patton, Bradley
remembered, that Dempsey's British Second Army, driving from
the northwest, accelerated German movement eastward and
facilitated German escape by pushing the Germans out of the
open end of the pocket, squeezing them into Germany
like a tube of toothpaste. "If Monty's tactics mystified
me," Bradley later wrote, "they dismayed Eisenhower even
more. And ... a shocked Third Army looked on helplessly as
its quarry fled [while] Patton raged at Montgomery's
blunder."[2]
Through all of this, the 3250th
persevered, moving in lock-step with Patton’s army to chase
down the Germans and try to close the Falaise Gap.
More
generally, the company, led by our two erstwhile Army Signal
OCS graduates Lieutenants Snowdon and Mondor, participated
in the hard fighting in June and July in western France, and
was also part of the breakout and drive west with Patton.
From early August until 6 September, the company moved ten
times, covering 261 miles. During those moves it laid 143
miles of wire, sent 2,924 messages, intercepted 2,687 enemy
messages and copied an average of 28 nets a day. The traffic
analysts in the unit took 93 DF bearings, while the unit's
trucks moved 11,694 miles and used 2,950 gallons of
gasoline.
Clearly, the 3250th earned
its
stripes. About
the only negative thing that could be said about them during
this period was that two men from Detachment A went AWOL.
However, one might forgive this transgression considering
that it happened after the unit participated in the
re-taking of Paris!
Parisian girls… ooh lah lah! C’est la
vie.
While initially the Germans
in France found themselves on their heels, in November and
December they regained some strength and opened up a
fifty-mile offensive from Monschau to Echternach, in the
Ardennes. From that day, 16 December, until Christmas Day,
the 3250th Signal Service Company suffered nearly 20 percent
casualties, including four killed in action.
During that
time the Direction Finding Team was completely knocked out
of action. A critical part of SIGINT, the team normally
operated 12 receivers which covered the frequency spectrum
between 100 and 3500 kHz. This they did all day, every day,
as they moved with Patton’s men in an attempt to stay within
ten miles of the Front.
This ten mile limit was a distance
Lieutenant Snowdon set, in order to assure that the unit’s
radio receivers were within enemy transmission range. The
net result was that Lt. Snowdon’s men were constantly on the
move, setting a record for some of the most mobile
operations ever conducted by the U.S. Army. And lest the
reader think this is no big thing, consider that to stay
within a maximum distance of no more than 10 miles of the
enemy, as part of a constantly moving, ever advancing
Armored Tank Corps, meant that the 3250th Signal Service
Company had to be out in front of the ever advancing V Corps
itself. That is, as the tank corps moved forward,
the men had to pack up shop and move out, in front of it, in
order to be able to pick up the enemy’s messages before the
enemy—sensing the advancing Americans coming toward
them—packed up and moved out on their own… thus putting
themselves beyond the radio reception range of the 3250th
traffic analysts. And during all of this time on the move
the traffic analysis section had to continue to decoded
enemy traffic as it was intercepted, associate each message
with a DF location, evaluate its importance, and report its
significance directly to G-2, V Corps.
One can see the amount of work involved
in SIGINT by looking at the following charts. These charts
are actual reproductions of reports written by the 3250th
Signal Service Company during its campaign in France. The
data is taken from the 3250th's company journal, where a
clerk wrote down each day's totals. There was no indication
of the type of traffic, enemy units copied, or importance of
the intercept as it related to V Corps maneuvers.
The first chart,
at right, shows the level of success in intercepting enemy
communications in early July, 1944, when the unit first came
into contact with the Germans. At that time the Germans used
landlines as their primary form of communication, as they
were dug in and waiting to face the advancing Americans.
This static condition of the Germans along a line of defense
meant that they used very little in the way of radio
communication to support their defensive activities. This,
plus the fact that the 3250th was low on wire when it first
came into the theatre made it unable to
adequately connect its DF outstations to its own HQ, causing the number of RDF Bearings
during the period to be
extremely low.
Later in the month though, as more wire
became available and what was called Operation COBRA kicked
in, the 3250th was able to tie in its outlying DF stations.
At this point one can see a jump in the number DF bearings
that were able to be made (blue line in chart above).
With the
beginning of Operation COBRA the Allies made a uniform
effort to breakout of the Normandy coast. This forward
movement was noticed by the Germans, who in rapid fashion
began a withdrawal of their own. Such actions forced them to
abandon their wireline communication infrastructure and move to wireless
radio. This further drove up the number of DF bearings that
the 3250th was able to record.
However, as the German
withdrawal got into high gear, their eastward retreat moved
at a faster pace than the Allies eastward assault. The
result was that during August the 3250th, while able to
intercept more radio traffic, was unable to get solid fixes
on German radio transmission locations, because regardless
of how fast the 3250th moved it wasn’t fast enough to stay
within 10 miles of the ever moving German radio transmission
positions. This one can see on Chart 2, at right.
Essentially, the fact that the Germans were dislodged from
their fixed positions and forced to use the radio to control
their forces meant good news for the 3250th in terms of
intercepting their communication, but bad news in terms of
figuring out where it came from.
Later in January, as the
Allies caught up with the Germans, and the Germans
themselves began to realize that they had to form a line of
defense and not only hold it but go on the offensive, radio
intercept and traffic analysis took a new turn… this time
for the benefit of the 3250th.
At this stage the Germans had
mounted an offensive that became known as the Battle of the
Bulge. In effect, the Battle of the Bulge was the last major
German offensive campaign of World War II. It was therefore
imperative that the Germans go all out to win it. During
this battle the Germans launched, through the densely
forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France, and
Luxembourg, a surprise attack that caught the Allied
forces completely off guard. American forces bore the
brunt of the attack and incurred their highest casualties of
any operation during the war. The battle also severely
depleted Germany's armored forces on the Western Front, and
they were largely unable to replace them. German personnel
and later, Luftwaffe aircraft
(in the
concluding stages of the engagement), also sustained
heavy losses.
The German offensive was intended to stop
Allied use of the Belgian port of Antwerp and to split the
Allied lines, allowing the Germans to encircle and
destroy four Allied armies and force the Western Allies to
negotiate a peace treaty in the Axis powers' favor. It
didn’t work.
However, one can see how SIGINT worked in a
static battle such as this by looking at the third chart at
right. In it the reader can actually see the results of the
V Corps’ attempt to capture signals intelligence as the
battle progressed throughout the month of January, 1945.
The
first thing one notices is that because the Germans were on
the offensive they had to rely on radio communication to
control their forces. Additionally, in their positions
behind the “West Wall” they used landlines again, as the
main means of communication. As a result, the radio traffic
intercepted was high, the RDF bearings grew steadily and
strongly as the battle progressed, while the number of nets
intercepted remained fairly constant throughout the month.
One can see from all of this how difficult the process of
conducting SIGINT was, even when things were running in the
3250th favor.
In part this was because during WWII technology was at its
weakest, in terms of the availability of effective RDF and
other equipment. For example, collecting radio bearings was
at the mercy of the equipment able to be used. In terms of
what kind of equipment was available to be used, essentially
there were two types of DF antennas in use by the Signal
Corps, the Loop and the Adcock antenna systems.
Loop
equipment was used for short range work. It weighed less and
was used in small, bulk applications. However, for a loop
system to operate satisfactory it needed to be, as we have
said, within a
distance of 10 miles or less of the transmitter being
tracked. If not, it was usually unable to receive the
majority of the ground wave that was needed for a useable
signal.
During WWII there were three loop DF antenna systems
in use. They were the:
SCR-206-(): A simple loop employing
aural null indicating the bearing. These were its stats:
(1)
Frequency range: 0.2mc to 18.0 mc.
(2) Weight: approx 300
pounds of all equipment (includes power source).
(3)
Consisted of a 15 inch loop with an azimuth scale mounted on
top of the receiver.
SCR-503-(): a crossed loop employing
crossed-pointer meter indication of bearing (see picture at
right).
(1) Frequency
Range: 0.1mc to 3.0mc
(2) Weight: 300 pounds for each; 600
pounds total for system.
(3) Consisted of two separate
units, each one a complete DF system. One unit covered the
range of 0.1mc to 1.0mc, the other covered the range of 1.0 to
3.0mc. Each unit had two 8 inch loops crossed at a 90 degree
angle, with an azimuth scale mounted on twin channel
receivers. Outputs of each channel fed to one movement of a
dual movement meter. The loops were rotated until the two
movements aligned on a center line, thus indicating the
bearing.
SCR-504-(): Hand portable DF/homing set
(1)
Frequency range: - -
(2) Weight of DF equip - 26 pounds; weight
of entire package - 80 pounds.
(3) Consisted of a radio
receiver and small single loop antenna housed in a suitcase.
It was designed to mask the true nature of the equipment. It did
not have an azimuth indicator since the equipment was used more as
a homing device. The operator then rotated the set by hand
until a "null" was heard.
The Adcock direction finding units on
the other hand, while more sensitive and effective,
consisted of
an extremely bulky antenna system. Though not susceptible to
large polarization errors like the Loop systems, they were
difficult to set up and maintain. If a Signal Service
Company like the 3250th expected to stay in camp for any
period of time, they would roll out an Adcock array. If not,
they would depend on the Loop system. Thus, when chasing the
enemy, Loop systems prevailed; when encamped, Adcock systems
were usually relied upon if for no other reason than that
the Adcock systems could obtain signals where loop systems
would not work. In cases where the distance between the unit
and the enemy was great, this became very important.
The
following are Adcock antenna DF systems:
SCR-255-(): a
rotatable H-Adcock DF
SCR-551-(): a rotatable elevated
H-Adcock DF. It provided left and right cathode ray
indication of bearing.
SCR-555-() and
SCR-556-(): "twin
systems"
SCR-291-(): crossed U-Adcock antennas that provided
instantaneous bearing. It was used primarily for aircraft
navigation.
SCR-502-(): crossed U Adcock; it also provided instantaneous
bearing on a cathode ray tube.
Finally, we finish our review
of what SIGINT in WWII was really
like with a tribute to the
men of Detachment A that we have been following. These men
constituted a small yet unique and important assemblage of
the many SIGINT experts that helped America win this war. In
the case of these men, General Patton and the V Corps were
certainly the better for their efforts.
Men of Detachment A, 3250th Signal
Service Company:
2LT Edward W. Snowdon
Army Signal OCS Class 43-20
SGT James W. Boeldt
CPL Kent E. Jimmerson
PFC Ernest S. Lent
T4 Arnold H. Weiss
PFC Bernard Marrow
T5 Frederick A. Kennedy
PFC Robert F. Griffin
T5 Russell Ultman
PFC Walter R. Larson
T5 John G. Guzzell
PFC Gaylord W. Hymen
PFC George M. Kreamer
PFC Malcolm E. Spangler
PFC Harold E. Fassberg
2LT Raymond J. Mondor
Army Signal OCS Class 43-18
This Army Signal Corps historical report brought to you
by the:
Footnotes:
[1] General Patton's Third Army became
operational on the first day of August.
To return to your place in the text,
clickhere.
[2] Royce L. Thompson, A Statistical
Study of Artillery Battalions at the Argentan-Falaise
Pocket, MS, OCMH files; Bradley, A Soldier's Story.
To return to your place in the text,
click here.
4. Reading the Enemy’s Mail: Origins
and Development of U.S. Army Tactical Radio Intelligence in
World War II, European Theater of Operations; by Jeffrey S.
Harley, Major, USA.
5. Signal Corps Technical Information
Letter no. 37, December 1944.
6. Army Security Agency, "Examples of
Intelligence Obtained from Cryptanalsis, 1 August 1946"
(File SRH-66, Records of the National Security Agency,
National Archives Control Number NN3-457-81-3.
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