The HF / DF (High-frequency direction finding, or Huff-Duff) system, mentioned in the previous part of the cycle, installed on escort ships since 1942, helped to sink 24% of all sunk submarines in Germany. Similar equipment was installed on American ships, only using French technology. Huff-Duff made it possible to do the main thing - it deprived the "wolf pack" of the ability to coordinate their actions using radio communications, which was the key to success at sea.
In the fight against enemy surface ships, German submariners used centimeter-range radars in poor visibility conditions. At the same time, at the beginning of 1944, the submarines received a FuMB 26 Tunis radio receiver, which was a combined system that included a 9-cm FuMB 24 Fliege and a 3-cm FuMB 25 Mücke, to detect enemy radio emission.
Radio receiver FuMB 26 Tunis
Its effectiveness was quite high - Tunis "saw" the enemy's radar at a distance of 50 km, especially the 3-cm English radar ASV Mk. VII. "Tunis" appeared as a result of a thorough examination by the Germans of the wreckage of a British aircraft shot down over Berlin, equipped with a 3-centimeter radar. Amusing stories happened to American radio reconnaissance planes that roamed the Atlantic in search of radio waves for the Kriegsmarine locators. By the end of the war, they almost stopped recording radiation - it turned out that the Germans were so frightened by the enemy's retaliatory actions that they simply stopped using radars.
One of the copies of the British aviation radar in the museum
Among the retaliatory tricks of the German navy were surface target simulators dubbed Aphrodite and Tetis. Aphrodite (according to other sources, Bold) was mentioned in the first part of the cycle and consisted of hydrogen-filled balls with aluminum reflectors attached to a massive float. The Tetis was even simpler - a rubber balloon supporting the aluminum foil-covered reflectors. And this primitive technique turned out to be quite effective. American planes with British planes detected them at the same distance as real targets, and the signature of the traps did not give itself away. Even the most experienced radar operators could not confidently distinguish the Aphrodite and Tetis from the German ships.
Battleship Gneisenau
Battleship Scharnhorst
Heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen in American hands
Despite some backwardness in matters of electronic warfare, the Germans still had something to be proud of. On the night of February 12, 1942, active jamming was placed on British radars on the south coast of England, thanks to which the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, along with the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, managed to slip the English Channel almost unnoticed. The ships themselves were supposed to break out of French Brest at maximum speed, while all the radar devices on them were turned off. All the work to jam the British was done by the Breslau II - coastal transmitters on the French coast and three He 111Hs. The latter were equipped with Garmisch-Partenkirchen transmitters of imitation jamming, which created phantoms of the approaching large bombardment units on the British radars. In addition, a special squadron was formed, which deliberately cruised around the British Isles, further distracting attention. And such a well-coordinated complex work of the Germans was crowned with success - later English newspapers wrote with bitterness that "since the 17th century, the royal fleet has not experienced anything more shameful in its waters."The most interesting thing is that the British were unable to identify the electronic attack on their locators. Until the very last moment, they believed that they were faced with malfunctions. On the side of the Germans there was a dark night and thick fog, but nevertheless they were discovered, however, not by radars, but by patrol planes. Prinz Eugen, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau even managed to come under fire from the British coastal battery, which was working on ships in full steam from a range of 26 km. The battle for the breakthrough ships was fought both in the air and the gunners of the coastal batteries on both sides of the English Channel. Scharnhorst, barely managing to fend off the pesky torpedo boats, ran into a mine and stood up, risking becoming a simple target for British bombers. The British threw 240 bombers into the attack, which, in a desperate attempt, tried to sink the fugitives. But the Scharnhorst sailors promptly repaired the damage, and under the cover of the Luftwaffe, the battleship continued to move. Gneisenau a little later also distinguished itself by encountering a mine, which, however, did not bring anything significant, and the ship continued to move.
Herschel Hs 293A
Herschel Hs 293A and its carrier
Planning UAB Fritz X
The Allies had to fight another unexpected misfortune from the German side - guided weapons. In the middle of the war, the fascists had Herschel Hs 293A guided bombs and Fritz X-type gliding bombs. The principle of operation of the new products was quite simple by modern standards - the Kehl radio transmitter on the plane and the Strassburg receiver on the ammunition were the core of this system. The radio command system operated in the meter range, and the operator could choose between 18 operating frequencies. The first attempt to "jam" such a weapon was the XCJ-1 jammer, which appeared on the American destroyers involved in escort escorts in early 1944. Not everything went smoothly with the XCJ-1 with the suppression of massive attacks of guided bombs, since the operator had to tune in to a strictly defined frequency of one bomb. At this time, the rest of the Herschel Hs 293A and Fritz X, operating at different frequencies, successfully hit the ship. I had to turn to the British, who at that time were the undisputed favorites in the electronic warfare. An English jammer of type 650 worked directly with the Strassburg receiver, blocking its communication at an activation frequency of 3 MHz, which made it impossible for the German operator to choose the radio control channel. The Americans, following the British, improved their transmitters to the XCJ-2 and XCJ-3 versions, and the Canadians got a similar Naval Jammer. As usual, such a breakthrough was not accidental - in Corsica, the German Heinkel He 177, on board of which there was a system for controlling new bombs, previously fell. A thorough study of the equipment and gave the allies all the trump cards.
An example of a successful hit of a guided bomb on an allied ship
AN / ARQ-8 Dinamate from the United States generally allowed intercepting control of German bombs and deflecting them from escorts. All these measures forced the Germans to abandon the use of radio-controlled bombs by the summer of 1944. Hope was given by the transition to control by wire from the Fritz X, but in these cases it was necessary to get too close to the target, which negated all the advantages of gliding bombs.
The confrontation in the Atlantic was important, but by no means the only example of successful use or failed neglect of electronic warfare capabilities. The Germans, in particular, had to frantically resist the armada of the Allied Air Force bombers, which at the end of the war razed the country to the ground. And the struggle on the radio front was not of the last importance here.
