Luftwaffe data from ULTRA

[RodM]

Thank you SES, Junker and Nick for your replies.


Firstly, SES, the reports that I have so far looked at in detail for night-to-night information on Nachtjagd operations don't really give any information on the ground control structure in use. Mention is made of beacons used and the number and type of transmissions jammed. The rest of the information concerns the movement in the air of night fighters and how the controllers reacted to the raids (ref: Air Ministry W/T Intelligence Service Daily Summaries (AIR 22/503) / Bomber Command: Signals Intelligence & RCM Reports (AIR 40/2370) / Bomber Command Interception Tactics Reports (AIR 14/3745)).

I do have an Operational Research Section Report - "Benito" and "Egon" German route tracking and R.C.M (AIR 20/1654) - it reports on German efforts to gain better tactical information from signals intelligence and efforts at jamming Oboe. Having seen your site, I don't believe the report has anything to add as, it should be remembered, the Air Ministry intelligence service was really making educated "guesses", sometimes with limited information. For example, one theory in the report concerns Luftwaffe efforts to deduce the path of the bomber stream by analysing the patterns of the high and low Mosquito intruders. I will provide some specific detail from the report in a further post below...

There are other potentially interesting reports at the PRO but I haven't got around to ordering them yet.

Junker and Nick, thank you for your explanations.

One reason why the "ARC" abbreviation stood out was because, in the 25 Nachtjagd messages extracted from the six-day period concerned, it was the only abbreviation NOT given in the phonetic alphabet.

I must say that the ULTRA material is a perfect example of a "follow the bread crumbs" senario, especially with one signal leading to reference to another signal - I can see the "hunt" becoming very addictive (and expensive!)...

Cheers

Rod