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:

 



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