BLUFF THAT WORKED

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 30 November 1945, Page 5

BLUFF THAT WORKED

LUFTWAFFE BADLY CONFUSED BRITISH COUNTER-RADIO MEASURES London, Nov. 29. A partnership between science and the services whereby enemy wireless was jammed and spoofed was described by the Director of Telecommunications, Air Commodore Dalton Morris. The British picked up enemy signals to their planes and retransmitted them so that they sounded like the enemy’s own signals. The Luftwaffe was so confused that their airmen did not know whether they were listening to their own signals or ours. “When a Luftwaffe pilot asked his station to give him a bearing we gave him one. I heard German aeroplanes over London being told they were over Peterborough. That was the state we got them into. It was like a game of chess.”

Air Commodore Morris said that in the early days of the war these coun-ter-measures against the enemy did an enormous job in preventing Britain being smashed by the Huns. He told how we anticipated the Germans using a girl announcer to give Luftwaffe prr/s bearings by having ready an English girl who had spent most of her life in Hamburg. The Germans sure enough eventually used a woman announcer.

‘A German male announcer, on a later occasion after we had got things nicely scrambled, used terrible langu age. Our girl radio director told me that if a German girl announcer used similar language she could answer her in the same terms ”

A ghost fleet, with R.A F. bombers circling over them, steamed towards Le Havre and Boulogne on D-Day fool, ing the German radar warning svs tern into reporting that the Allies were landing many miles from the Nor mandy beaches, says the Daily Mail.’

Thirty-four of the Royal Navy’s small ships made five feints towards the enemy coast. Eighteen small ships steamed towards Cap d'Antifer and Group Captain Cheshire. V.C., led a squadron of Lancasters in box formation. Flying circles round the shins, they dropped 12 bundles of anti-radar metal every minute. The ships towed balloons, which looked like battleships on the enemy radar screens. Lancasters also patrolled the Channel for more than four hours to lure out enemy nightfighters and. to complete the hoax, dummy paratroops were dropped near Fecamp and Cherbourg.