20th+

The Battle of the Beams was a period early in WW2 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 distortion of the radio waves. The period ended when the Wehrmacht moved their forces to the East in May 1941, in preparation for the attack on the Soviet Union.

Prior to the war, Lufthansa and the German aircraft industry invested heavily in the development of commercial aviation, and systems and methods that would improve safety and reliability. Considerable effort went into blind landing aids which allowed aircraft to approach an airport at night or in bad weather. The primary system developed for this role was the Lorenz system, developed by Johannes Plendl, which was in the process of being widely deployed on large civilian and military aircraft.

In WW2, the Lorenz beam principle was used by the German Luftwaffe as the basis of a number of blind bombing aids, notably Knickebein ('crooked leg') and the X-Gerät ('X-Apparatus'), in their bombing offensive against English cities during the winter of 1940/41. Knickebein was very similar to LFF, modifying it only slightly to be more highly directional and work over much longer distance. Using the same frequencies allowed their bombers to use the already-installed LFF receivers, although a second receiver was needed in order to pinpoint a single location.

The X-Gerät involved cross-beams of the same characteristics but on different frequencies, which would both enable the pilot to calculate his speed (from the elapsed time between crossing the Fore Cross Signal and crossing the Main Cross Signal), and indicate when he should drop his payload. The calculation was performed by a mechanical computer. Lorenz modified this system to create the Viktoria/Hawaii lateral guidance system for the V-2 rocket.

When the British discovered the existence of the 'Knickebein' system, they rapidly jammed it, however, the 'X-Gerät' was not successfully jammed until later. A later innovation by the Germans was the 'Baedeker' or 'Taub' modification, which used supersonic modulation. This was so quickly jammed that the Germans practically gave up on the use of beam-bombing systems, with the exception of the 'FuGe 25A', which operated for a short time towards the end of Operation Steinbock, known as the "Baby Blitz".

A further operational drawback of the system was that bombers had to follow a fixed course between the beam transmitter station and the target; once the beam had been detected, defensive measures were made more effective by knowledge of the course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_beam .

Black Chamber - Cipher Bureau - MI-8

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American Black Chamber (1931) ..

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The Black Chamber (1919–1929), also known as the Cipher Bureau, was the United States' first peacetime cryptanalytic organization, and a forerunner of the National Security Agency. The only prior codes and cypher organizations maintained by the US government had been some intermittent, and always abandoned, attempts by Armed Forces branches prior to WW1.

Herbert Osborn Yardley (April 13, 1889 – August 7, 1958) was an American cryptologist. He founded and led the cryptographic organization the Black Chamber. Under Yardley, the cryptanalysts of The American Black Chamber broke Japanese diplomatic codes and were able to furnish American negotiators with significant information during the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-1922. Recipient of the Distinguished Service Medal. He wrote The American Black Chamber (1931) about his experiences there. He later helped the Nationalists in China (1938–1940) to break Japanese codes. Following his work in China, Yardley worked briefly for the Canadian government, helping it set up a cryptological section (Examination Unit) of the National Research Council of Canada from June to December 1941. Yardley was reportedly let go due to pressure either from the Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson or from the British.

In June 1917, Yardley became a 2nd lieutenant in the Signal Corps and head of the newly created eighth section of military intelligence, MI-8. One early case was the cryptogram discovered in the clothing of German spy Lothar Witzke after he was arrested at the Mexican border in 1918. The evidence linked Witzke to significant sabotage activity in the U.S.

Yardley proved to be a very good administrator and during the war the people of MI-8 performed well even if they did not have any spectacular successes. After the war, the American Army and the State department decided to jointly fund MI-8 and Yardley continued as head of the "Cipher Bureau". They located their operations in New York City for legal reasons.

Cracking Japanese codes was a priority. David Kahn states:

The most important target was Japan. Its belligerence toward China jeopardized America's Open Door policy. Its emigrants exacerbated American racism. Its naval growth menaced American power in the western Pacific. Its commercial expansion threatened American dominance of Far Eastern markets.

After almost a year, Yardley and his staff finally managed to break the Japanese codes and were still reading Japanese diplomatic traffic when Washington hosted the Washington Naval Conference in 1921. The information the Cipher Bureau provided the American delegation regarding the Japanese government's absolute minimum acceptable battleship requirements was instrumental in getting the Japanese side to agree to a 5:3 ratio instead of the 10:7 ratio the Japanese Navy really wanted. This allowed Japan only 18 battleships to 30 for the U.S. and 30 for Great Britain instead of the 21 battleships Japan desired. This was the height of Yardley's cryptanalytic career.

In February 1941, a group of Americans arrived at Bletchley Park, in what marked the beginnings of an extraordinary UK-USA intelligence alliance that continues to this day (video series commemorates the 80th anniversary of this alliance). Bletchley Park’s Research Historian, Dr David Kenyon and the National Security Agency’s senior historian, David Hatch, explore the tentative first steps taken by the UK and USA in February 1941 to begin sharing their codebreaking secrets. Kenyon and Hatch explore how this relationship developed during 1941 in the months before America formally entered World War Two.

Cryppies, Day Ladies, and Whiffling: The Just-Declassified Lingo of the NSA: A newly public document provides a fascinating peek into the lives and gibes of the National Security Agency's cryptographers.

21-11-18 UK and US join forces to strike back in cyber-space:

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Battle of the Beams

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