In a combat situation, radio resistance was first used in the Russo-Japanese War. So, in accordance with the order No. 27 of Vice Admiral S. O. Makarov to all forces fleet it was prescribed to observe strict radio discipline and use all the capabilities to detect radio broadcasts of the enemy. The Japanese worked in a similar way, carrying out direction finding of ship radio stations with determining the distance to the source. In addition, the practice began to include interception of enemy messages, however, he did not receive much distribution - there was an acute shortage of translators.
Vice Admiral Stepan Osipovich Makarov
Radio wrestling in the full sense of the word was first implemented 2 April 1904, when the Japanese once again began to fire at Port Arthur from heavy guns. The cruisers Kasuga and Nissin worked with their 254-mm and 203-mm calibers from a decent distance, hiding behind Cape Liaoteshan. Correction of fire from such a range was problematic, so the Japanese equipped a pair of armored cruisers for visual control of the shelling. The observers were located at a comfortable distance from the coast and were inaccessible to the Russian artillery. Naturally, all adjustments for the main calibers "Kasuga" and "Nissin" were transmitted via radio. The command of the Russian fleet in this situation equipped the squadron battleship Victory and a radio station on Golden Mount, which jointly interrupted the working frequencies of the Japanese. The tactic was so successful that not a single projectile from Kasuga and Nissin did any damage to Port Arthur. And the Japanese have released them more than two hundred!
Squadron battleship "Victory" in Port Arthur. 1904
In 1999, the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation announced 15 on April (2 of April on old style) as the Day of Electronic Warfare Specialist, which is still an official holiday. The advantage of the Russians in that episode was not only successful tactics of application, but technical superiority over the Japanese. Thus, the Japanese fleet used quite primitive radio stations that could not change the frequency of work, which greatly simplified their suppression. But in Russia, they could boast of high-class domestic radio stations from the Kronstadt workshop of making wireless telegraph apparatuses, as well as Russian-French ones from Popov-Dyukrete-Tissot. There were also German “Telefunken” with English “Marconi”. This technique was powerful (more than 2 kW), it allowed changing the operating frequencies and even changing the power to reduce the probability of detection. The top-level equipment of the Russians has become a particularly powerful radio station, Telefunken, which allows keeping communication at distances exceeding 1100 kilometers. It was installed on the basis of the Ural cruiser, which is part of 2 of the Pacific squadron of Vice Admiral Zinovy Petrovich Rozhestvensky. The station of similar capacity №2 was installed in the Vladivostok fortress. Naturally, the 4,5-kilowatt Telefunken was a dual-use product — it was planned to be used to silence Japanese radio communications on the principle of a “big spark” due to a much higher radio signal power. However, there was a serious danger of reciprocal counteraction by the Japanese fleet, which could capture such a “super station” and opened artillery fire at the source.
Auxiliary cruiser Ural. Tsushima Strait, 1905
Obviously, ZP Rozhestvensky thought about this when he banned the captain of the “Ural” from jamming the Japanese at the approach to the Tsushima Strait of 14 in May of 1905. During the battle itself, the Russian ships partially used their capabilities in suppressing enemy radio communications, and after the battle, the remnants of the squadron during the retreat were looking for Japanese ships to avoid unwanted contacts.
Gradually, the skills of radio suppression and direction finding became mandatory in the fleets of all major powers. Back in 1902-1904, the British and US naval forces tried out new tactics during the exercise. And the British in 1904, intercepted the Russian radiograms and read their contents without difficulty. Fortunately, there were enough translators in the Admiralty.
Alexey Alekseevich Petrovsky
The second major battlefield where EW was used was, of course, the First World War. Before the start of the conflict in Russia, Aleksei Alekseevich Petrovsky created a theoretical basis for substantiating the methods of creating radio interference, and, not least, he described methods for protecting radio communications from unauthorized interception. Petrovsky worked at the Naval Academy and was the head of the laboratory of the Marine Telegraph Wireless Telegraph Depot. The theoretical calculations of the Russian engineer were practically tested on the Black Sea Fleet just before the start of the WWI. According to their results, ship radio telegraphists were taught to get rid of enemy interference during radio communication sessions. But not only in Russia developed a similar branch of military affairs. In Austria-Hungary and France, special forces began to operate from the 1908 on intercepting the enemy’s military and government communications. Such radio interception tools were used during the Bosnian crisis of the 1908 of the year, as well as in the Italian-Turkish war of the 1911 of the year. And in the latter case, the work of the Austrian intelligence services made it possible to make strategic decisions relating to countering possible Italian intervention. At the forefront of the EW in those days was Britain, which, throughout the First World War, read the German cipher messages, filling her hand in front of the famous “Ultra” operation during the Second World War.
British Pride - Grand Fleet
In August 1914, the Admiralty, organized a special “40 Room”, whose employees were engaged in radio interception on “Marconi” equipment designed specifically for this structure. And in 1915, the British launched a wide network of interception stations at the “Y stations” engaged in listening to German ships. And it was quite successful - on the basis of the interception data at the end of May 1916, the English naval armada was sent to meet the German forces, which resulted in the famous Jutland battle.
German radio intelligence was not so successful, but coped well with the interception of the Russian negotiations, the lion's share of which went on the air in clear text. The story of this will be in the second part of the cycle.
To be continued ....
Based on:
N. A. Kolesov, I. G. Nosenkov. Electronic warfare. From past experiments to the decisive front of the future. M .: Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, 2015.