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Oslo Report
The Oslo Report was one of the most spectacular leaks in the history of military intelligence. Written by German mathematician and physicist Hans Ferdinand Mayer on 1 and 2 November 1939 during a business trip to Oslo, Norway, it described several German weapons, some in service and others being developed. Mayer mailed the report anonymously in the form of two letters to the British Embassy in Oslo, where they were passed on to MI6 in London for further analysis, providing an invaluable resource to the British in developing counter-measures, especially to navigational and targeting radars and contributed to the British winning the Battle of Britain. Background Hans Ferdinand Mayer received his doctorate in physics from the University of Heidelberg in 1920. After spending two years as a research associate there in his doctoral supervisor's (Philipp Lenard) laboratory, he joined Siemens AG in 1922. He became interested in telecommunications and joined Siemens' communication research l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans Ferdinand Mayer
Hans Ferdinand Mayer (born 23 October 1895 in Pforzheim, Germany; died 18 October 1980 in Munich, West Germany) was a German mathematician and physicist. He was the author of the "Oslo Report", a major military intelligence leak which revealed German technological secrets to the British Government shortly after the start of World War II. Biography Hailing from a modest background, Mayer volunteered for service in WWI where he was severely wounded on his 19th birthday. He subsequently studied mathematics, physics and astronomy at the University of Karlsruhe and the University of Heidelberg. In 1920, he attained a doctorate "on the behaviour of molecules in relation to free slow electrons". His professor was Nobel Prize winner Philipp Lenard. In 1922 he joined the Berlin laboratory of Siemens & Halske AG. From 1926 he co-operated with Karl Küpfmüller. Both scientists concerned themselves with interference-free information transfer in long distance circuits, important in develo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Invasion Of Denmark (1940)
The German invasion of Denmark (german: Operation Weserübung – Süd), was the German attack on Denmark on 9 April 1940, during the Second World War. The attack was a prelude to the invasion of Norway (german: Weserübung Nord, 9 April – 10 June 1940). Denmark's strategic importance for Germany was limited. The invasion's primary purpose was to use Denmark as a staging ground for operations against Norway, and to secure supply lines to the forces about to be deployed there. An extensive network of radar systems was built in Denmark to detect British bombers bound for Germany. The attack on Denmark was a breach of the non-aggression pact Denmark had signed with Germany less than a year earlier. The initial plan was to push Denmark to accept that German land, naval and air forces could use Danish bases, but Adolf Hitler subsequently demanded that both Norway and Denmark be invaded. Denmark's military forces were inferior in numbers and equipment, and after a short battle we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abwehr
The ''Abwehr'' (German for ''resistance'' or ''defence'', but the word usually means ''counterintelligence'' in a military context; ) was the German military-intelligence service for the ''Reichswehr'' and the ''Wehrmacht'' from 1920 to 1944. Although the 1919 Treaty of Versailles prohibited the Weimar Republic from establishing an intelligence organization of their own, they formed an espionage group in 1920 within the Ministry of Defence, calling it the ''Abwehr''. The initial purpose of the ''Abwehr'' was defence against foreign espionage: an organizational role which later evolved considerably. Under General Kurt von Schleicher (prominent in running the ''Reichswehr'' from 1926 onwards) the individual military services' intelligence units were combined and, in 1929, centralized under Schleicher's ''Ministeramt'' within the Ministry of Defence, forming the foundation for the more commonly understood manifestation of the ''Abwehr''. Each ''Abwehr'' station throughout German ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Admiralty (United Kingdom)
The Admiralty was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for the command of the Royal Navy until 1964, historically under its titular head, the Lord High Admiral – one of the Great Officers of State. For much of its history, from the early 18th century until its abolition, the role of the Lord High Admiral was almost invariably put "in commission" and exercised by the Lords Commissioner of the Admiralty, who sat on the governing Board of Admiralty, rather than by a single person. The Admiralty was replaced by the Admiralty Board in 1964, as part of the reforms that created the Ministry of Defence and its Navy Department (later Navy Command). Before the Acts of Union 1707, the Office of the Admiralty and Marine Affairs administered the Royal Navy of the Kingdom of England, which merged with the Royal Scots Navy and the absorbed the responsibilities of the Lord High Admiral of the Kingdom of Scotland with the unification of the Kingdom of Great B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Resistance During World War II
Resistance movements during World War II occurred in every occupied country by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation to propaganda, hiding crashed pilots and even to outright warfare and the recapturing of towns. In many countries, resistance movements were sometimes also referred to as The Underground. The resistance movements in World War II can be broken down into two primary politically polarized camps: the internationalist and usually Communist Party-led anti-fascist resistance that existed in nearly every country in the world; and the various fascist/anti-communist nationalist resistance groups in Nazi- or Soviet-occupied countries that opposed the foreign fascists and the communists, often switching sides depending on the vicissitudes of the war and which side of the ever-moving military front lines they found themselves on. Among the most notable resistance movements were the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish Resistance (including the Polish ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aerial Reconnaissance
Aerial reconnaissance is reconnaissance for a military or strategic purpose that is conducted using reconnaissance aircraft. The role of reconnaissance can fulfil a variety of requirements including artillery spotting, the collection of imagery intelligence, and the observation of enemy maneuvers. History Early developments After the French Revolution, the new rulers became interested in using the balloon to observe enemy manoeuvres and appointed scientist Charles Coutelle to conduct studies using the balloon ''L'Entreprenant'', the first military reconnaissance aircraft. The balloon found its first use in the 1794 conflict with Austria, where in the Battle of Fleurus they gathered information. Moreover, the presence of the balloon had a demoralizing effect on the Austrian troops, which improved the likelihood of victory for the French troops. To operate such balloons, a new unit of the French military, the French Aerostatic Corps, was established; this organisatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cryptanalysis Of The Enigma
Cryptanalysis of the Enigma ciphering system enabled the western Allies in World War II to read substantial amounts of Morse-coded radio communications of the Axis powers that had been enciphered using Enigma machines. This yielded military intelligence which, along with that from other decrypted Axis radio and teleprinter transmissions, was given the codename '' Ultra''. The Enigma machines were a family of portable cipher machines with rotor scramblers. Good operating procedures, properly enforced, would have made the plugboard Enigma machine unbreakable. However, most of the German military forces, secret services, and civilian agencies that used Enigma employed poor operating procedures, and it was these poor procedures that allowed the Enigma machines to be reverse-engineered and the ciphers to be read. The German plugboard-equipped Enigma became Nazi Germany's principal crypto-system. In December 1932 it was "broken" by mathematician Marian Rejewski at the Polish G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Knickebein
The Battle of the Beams was a period early in the Second World War when bombers of the German Air Force (''Luftwaffe'') used a number of increasingly accurate systems of radio navigation for night bombing in the United Kingdom. British scientific intelligence at the Air Ministry fought back with a variety of their own increasingly effective means, involving jamming and deception signals. The period ended when the Wehrmacht moved their forces to the East in May 1941, in preparation for the attack on the Soviet Union. The idea of "beam" based navigation was developed during the 1930s, initially as a blind landing aid. The basic concept is to produce two directional radio signals that are aimed slightly to the left and right of a runway's midline. Radio operators in the aircraft listen for these signals and determine which of the two beams they are flying in. This is normally accomplished by sending Morse code signals into the two beams, to identify right and left. For bombing, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radio Direction Finding
Direction finding (DF), or radio direction finding (RDF), isin accordance with International Telecommunication Union (ITU)defined as radio location that uses the reception of radio waves to determine the direction in which a radio station or an object is located. This can refer to radio or other forms of wireless communication, including radar signals detection and monitoring (ELINT/ESM). By combining the direction information from two or more suitably spaced receivers (or a single mobile receiver), the source of a transmission may be located via triangulation. Radio direction finding is used in the navigation of ships and aircraft, to locate emergency transmitters for search and rescue, for tracking wildlife, and to locate illegal or interfering transmitters. RDF was important in combating German threats during both the World War II Battle of Britain and the long running Battle of the Atlantic. In the former, the Air Ministry also used RDF to locate its own fighter group ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reginald Victor Jones
Reginald Victor Jones , FRSE, LLD (29 September 1911 – 17 December 1997) was a British physicist and scientific military intelligence expert who played an important role in the defence of Britain in by solving scientific and technical problems, and by the extensive use of deception throughout the war to confuse the Germans. Early life Reginald Jones was born in Herne Hill, south London, on 29 September 1911. He was educated at Alleyn's School, Dulwich, and Wadham College, Oxford, where he studied Natural Sciences. In 1932 he graduated with First Class honours in physics and then, working in the Clarendon Laboratory, completed his DPhil in 1934. Subsequently, he took up a Skynner Senior Studentship in Astronomy at Balliol College, Oxford. Assistant Director of Intelligence (Science) In 1936 Jones took up the post at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, a part of the Air Ministry. Here he worked on the problems associated with defending Britain from an air attac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vacuum Tube
A vacuum tube, electron tube, valve (British usage), or tube (North America), is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric voltage, potential difference has been applied. The type known as a thermionic tube or thermionic valve utilizes thermionic emission of electrons from a hot cathode for fundamental electronic functions such as signal amplifier, amplification and current rectifier, rectification. Non-thermionic types such as a vacuum phototube, however, achieve electron emission through the photoelectric effect, and are used for such purposes as the detection of light intensities. In both types, the electrons are accelerated from the cathode to the anode by the electric field in the tube. The simplest vacuum tube, the diode (i.e. Fleming valve), invented in 1904 by John Ambrose Fleming, contains only a heated electron-emitting cathode and an anode. Electrons can only flow in one direction through the device—fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hector Boyes
Rear Admiral Hector George Boyes, (20 February 1881 – 23 October 1960) was an officer of the Royal Navy. Background, early career, and World War I Boyes was born in 1881 at Plymouth, the son of a naval officer, Sir George Boyes; he entered the service shortly before his fourteenth birthday. He saw action in the Boxer Rebellion in 1901 as a midshipman, and the following year was an acting sub-lieutenant when he was posted to the battleship HMS ''Majestic'', flagship of the Commander-in-Chief of the Channel Squadron. He was promoted to lieutenant on 15 September 1902, while serving on the ''Majestic''. By the outbreak of World War I, he was thirty-three years old, and the Flag Lieutenant to the Commander-in-Chief of the China Station. In 1915, Lieutenant-Commander Boyes was assigned to command the gunboat in the East Africa Campaign. In the subsequent fighting, he was mentioned in dispatches seven times, and earned the Order of St Michael and St George and the Portuguese O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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