Arctic Operations, Part VII; Early Cold War Secret Military Arctic Operations

GENERAL ALASKA RADIO INTELLIGENCE
Radio esoterica relating to the Territory of Alaska prior to and during WWII must include the secret arena of radio intelligence – the application of receivers to monitor the broad radio frequency spectrum, recording all foreign military and civilian encoded and plain text traffic. It included determining the physical locations of naval vessels and aircraft operating in the Pacific from the 1920s throughout WWII and the Cold War. The navy established HF (High Frequency) and HFDF (High Frequency Direction Finder) sites throughout the Pacific to monitor, then forward their “take” to navy Station Hypo or Station H, the major Pacific reception center at Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. All encrypted traffic was then delivered to the codebreakers.

A little known radio-intelligence anecdote includes the secret 11th Weather Squadron (based at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, in early WWII), decoding Russian broadcast weather reports, and translating them into English using new tape-fax equipment. They were then transmitted via short wave radio to an unidentified San Francisco facility that retransmitted the take still encoded over radio teletype equipment to the Pentagon.(1) And yes, somehow this secret activity aroused the high interest of NKVD agents imbedded within the Russian AL-SIB contingent practically running Ladd Field.

In the early 1900s during early military radio operations
reception of Pacific and northern hemisphere radio traffic (irrespective of frustrating irregular solar storms blanking out radio communications). Two navy HFDF stations were established in Alaska – one at Sitka (1938), code name “Station AE,” and the totally out of place house constructed at Dutch Harbor, code named Station King. They provided valuable radio intelligence and bearings on Japanese aircraft and vessels during WWII.(2) Other stations in Alaska were Unmak Island (1941-45), Amchitka Island as code name MS-6 (1943-1944) and Fairbanks as MS-7, (1942-1944).(3)

The Army lacked Alaska based radio intelligence units so Lt. Colonel Castner, Assistant Chief of Staff G-2 for Alaska Command, requested the Radio Intelligence Division (RID) of the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), to establish an Adcock direction finder station in Fairbanks – possibly identified as MS-7. A secondary unit was established near Anchorage (code name unknown).(4) A five man monitoring and direction finder station with Signal Corps assistance was also established just four miles outside Nome proper in 1942. It augmented the navy’s HFDF stations and monitored all Japanese radio traffic, thus providing bearings of their aircraft and ship movements including the Kiska and Attu garrisons.(5) The FCC RID unit included sending a maritime monitoring unit with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on sea patrols in Alaska waters.(6)

ALASKA AERIAL RADIO INTELLIGENCE
Alaska retains the nearly forgotten distinction of becoming the initial arena where the USAAF birthed its airborne radio intelligence activity. Among the Japanese garrison’s equipment on Kiska Island were two unidentified military units situated in close proximity on elevated ground. Eleventh AF photo . . .