Thread: Metox
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Old 04-24-24, 04:11 AM   #23
Hooston
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Default Cold war stories

i used to work as an aircraft electromagnetic compatibility engineer about 15 years ago. Post war military comms gear has some antenna terminal tests to pass to make sure they do not leak any compromising (or more usually irritating) signals. TV sets in the UK used to deliberately leak the local oscillator so that "detector vans" could find people watching TV without a licence, although I believe more usually it was done by peeking through the curtains!

As you might expect from a quick lash up, Metox leaked its local oscillator signal. As some posters have said the Germans got in a panic about it thanks to some genius PoW shooting a line, but the Allies never made use of the signals. Thanks to wolfpack tactics and Doenitz's control freak command style Uboats made regular reports over HF which gave away their position even when the signal could not be decripted.
According to Prof R V Jones' book the Germans also fell for the "Crosse and Blackwell" super bomber thanks to another PoW.
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