Facing an Atomic Attack

Page6 is a description of what to do. And pages 5 and 6 mention CONELRAD – Control of Electronic Radiation. Few today remember the little two triangle-shaped marks that were printed on every radio dial in those days. At that time, there were few FM receivers. The marks were at 640 and 1240 kc or kilocycles. Note this document is not the more recent unit, KHZ. If an attack came we were to tune the radio to one of these points on the dial for emergency information.

During WWII the bombers on both sides used standard broadcast and short wave stations to find their targets. It was simple. Every plane had a radio with a directional antenna, like the TV antennas that must be turned to get the best signal. If the town they were attacking had a radio station, they would be given its frequency. The bombers were given lists of German radio stations, their locations and frequencies. They would use these as a point to keep them on track.

If the angle to two stations were measured and plotted on a map you can determine your location. Because the route they flew was not straight it was not that simple, but the existence of the station and its location was still a help. The Germans countered by shutting down stations if they thought the raid was headed toward them.

But as you can see, the station need not be in the city being bombed to be useful. If two stations of known location were available, triangulation to them would accurately fix the plane’s location.

CONELRAD was built on that premise. An attacking bomber fleet must be denied this resource. The answer was simple. The emergency programming was sent by land line to many transmitters, generally regular commercial stations that were able to move frequency and drop power. The reduced power made the signal more difficult to use for triangulation.

It is easy to DF a strong signal and get an accurate fix. Make the signal weaker and the fix is more fuzzy. Then to make it more difficult all stations were on one of two frequencies and broadcasting the same program you couldn’t identify the station by either its frequency or its program. And the stations switched off and on. For the American citizen listening for information, this only meant the signal got weaker and stronger. To the bomber navigator, this meant the fixes were worthless.

Page7 and Page8 are only more information on how to do it.

But what about today? If an atomic attack comes now it will not be by missile but by some covert means. The Axis of Evil, North Korea, Iran, etc. have no missile delivery systems at this time. Even Communist China would not be able to launch a massive attack in this manner. But the terrorists, because of our open borders and our porous trade intake could get a weapon, or maybe even ten or twenty in place and detonate them. But even that picture is changing. With the sale of missile guidance technology to the Communist Chinese by Al Gore in the late 1990’s this is a short lived respite. There is technology leakage from Communist China to states friendly to it, or better, states unfriendly to the US. Among these are Iran and North Korea.

Semper Fi is the Marine core motto. It may be well for it to be the motto for the American People.