The primary responsibility for monitoring for foreign intelligence
purposes during WW II, of course belonged to the military (as indeed
it does today - NSA, the US cryptologic authority, from which I am a
retiree, is still part of the Department of Defense). During WW II and
before, the predecessors of NSA also had a number of monitoring
stations around the world and the the US Coastal areas and even on the
roof of the Navy Department in the "Temporary" WW I buildings on the
Mall. [Temporary indeed, they weren't torn down until the US
Bicentennial in 1976. They were located just about where the Vietnam
Memorial is today in Washington although they extended for blocks up
Constitution Avenue.] The first of these intercept operators called
themselves "The On the Roof Gang" and that actually became the name of
their alumni association when they had post war reunions. Many of my
first supervisors in my early days at NSA were part of this group.
They were doing intercept primarily for collecting enciphered messages
for codebreaking and during the war that was an Army and Navy
responsibility. That history is pretty well documented by the History
Department at NSA and the National Cryptologic Museum at Ft. Meade, MD
(Open to the public BTW) and by numerous historians. The literature
about the Purple Code,the codebreaking which permitted victory at
Midway, The Ultra Secret and the like can fill whole bookshelves. The
story of some of these less well known contributors really does have
to be told. As a retired cryptologist, I am intimately familiar with
the military contributions and those of the Brits and even the Poles
in Exile (Polish mathmeticians were the first to get into the German
ENIGMA systems and they managed to get to Britain before they could be
captured by the Germans). This FCC Radio Intelligence Division story
is certain less well known (read: I hadn't heard about it before) and
deserves to be known. Some of their lifesaving missions, for example
are the sort of thing the military intelligence types didn't do except
by serendipity, nor would they have monitored domestic broadcasting by
the enemy. The military ops also would not have done any law
enforcement or domestic mission.[The Posse Comitatus Act from the
Indian Fighting days on the 1870's and still in force today prohibits
the military (as opposed to the National Guard who technically fall
under the command of state governors) from law enforcement and
domestic intelligence missions.

I do remember Alegan, Michigan (and also Grand Island, NE) facilities
because I got a violation notice in 1956, my first year as a ham (for
the same incident) from each of these two stations for 2nd Harmonics
from my 80 meter Novice band transmissions. I can't begin to tell you
how scared I was as a 13 year old to have a "Federal Case" against me.
35 years later, I had a "big government meeting" with the Chief of
Staff of the FCC at FCC HQ in Washington. By then, I was a DOD/NSA
executive and he was the highest ranking careerist at the Commission
and I told him just how scared I was of the FCC back then. He
commented that he wished all their violators took the Commission that
seriously. Considering the matter at hand at that meeting (a Defense
Department/FCC policy issue) he said that now maybe it was his turn to
be afraid of me. :-)

Keep these stories coming. I also think that the historians at the
National Cryptologic Museum would be interested in your stories. You
can write me back channel on that.

Jon W3JT



On Sat, 24 Sep 2005 19:22:05 -0400, Walter Maxwell
wrote:

I'm aware that this post is off-topic, except that it is the basis for my
two previous posts that were on topic to antennas. I believe it is time to
reexamine the contributions hams and commercial radio ops made to the WW2 effort
as they were the operating personnel of the FCC's Radio Intelligence Division.
This is their story.
With the War already raging in Europe in 1939, people at the State
Department knew they were missing vital war intelligence being exchanged by
radio, especially that going between Germany and South America. They queried the
FCC Field Division in early 1940 about monitoring to intercept the information.
The Field Division operated the original primary monitoring stations, performing
regulatory and enforcement duties. However, at that time the Field Division
personnel had their hands full just monitoring domestic operations, and had no
time for intelligence monitoring.
Congress was alerted to the need for additional personnel and equipment for
the FCC to monitor intelligence, and it approved funds for establishing a new
section, the National Defense Operating section, NDO. The NDO began operations
September 3, 1940, and was later upgraded to a division, becoming the Radio
Intelligence Division, RID. To head the NDO, the late George E. Sterling
(W1AE/W3DF) was elevated from Ass't Chief Engineer, FCC, to Chief, NDO Section,
and later to Chief, RID. To obtain personnel for the new section he instructed
one of his assistants, the late Harriette Koster, to search through the file
cards containing the information on licensed amateur and commercial operators.
She selected more than 500 operators from the file cards, and over T.J. Slowie's
signature, she sent telegrams to those selected, offering them positions of
Radio Operator, Ass't Monitoring Officer, and Monitoring Officer. The entire
personnel for the new NDO Section, including myself, were obtained from response
to those telegrams. (Harrriette later became my wife, and mother of my four
children, W2WM, WB4GNR, K4JRM, and KC4UBZ (Sue's license now expired). The
Congressional funding also supported building many new secondary monitoring
stations throughout the country, each equipped with Hallicrafters SX-28 and S-27
receivers, and Adcock (sky-wave) direction finders. In addition, Hudson
automobiles equipped with the receivers and a loop direction finder were a part
of each secondary station, used for mobile close-in surveillance.
Immediately following Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the FCC RID mobilized
a group from both primary and secondary monitoring stations to go to the
Hawaiian Islands to set up eight new secondary stations, one each on Oahu,
Molokai, Kauai, Maui, and Lanai, and three on the big island of Hawaii. NDO
Chief Sterling accompanied the group, of which I was a member from the primary
station at Allegan, Michigan.
Extensive 24/7 mobile monitoring around the shoreline of all the islands
was pursued, with the intention of finding clandestine radio operation between
local Japanese loyal to Japan and Jap submarines cruising off shore. No such
operations were found to occur, and no Hawaiians of Japanese descent were found
to be disloyal to the U.S. During my stay on the Islands I worked at stations on
Oahu, Kauai, Molokai and Hawaii.
With Adcock direction finders at all eight secondary stations, plus the one
at the primary station in Honolulu, the FCC saved the lives of thousands of
military personnel and more than 600 military aircraft flying the Pacific
between the Mainland and the Islands during WW2, after becoming lost due to
errors in navigation with limited fuel supply. Details on how this task was
performed, and how the Beverage antenna was used to receive broadcasts from JOAK
Tokyo, were the subjects of my two previous posts.
Within the next few months I'll be relating some of the 'real intelligence'
work involving RID operations that had a significant effect on shortening WW2.

Walter Maxwell, W2DU