The History of Traffic Analysis – WWI – Vietnam Part 3 of 8

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."Concerning Japanese forces in China, I can document a specific example of the value of T/A as follows: By early 1945 the Japanese army’s ‘Ichi Go’ offensive in China had succeeded in occupying the most forward bases (including Liuchow and Kweilin) of the U.S. Army 14th Air Force, which included some of the former members of the famous Flying Tigers unit. At that time the U.S. Army G-2 in New Delhi informed Col. Bickwit that he was receiving valuable signals intelligence on these Japanese forces in China and wished to know more about how it was produced. The source was T/A, so Col. Bickwit took me to brief the G-2 on how, through T/A on Japanese army communications, it was possible to continue to identify the Japanese army units involved and their changing locations. The elements addressed in the briefing included: analyzing the radio callsigns and address systems, the communications relationships, radio network structure and message flows, and also included radio direction finding. Despite this evidence of intelligence value, circumstances were such that there was no resultant change on the battlefield in this area of China. The intelligence was provided to U.S. Army 14th Air Force and to U.S. Army advisory group personnel attached to the Chinese Nationalist army, which contributed mostly defensive resistance to the Japanese. The Japanese were not defeated in China, but their forces there did surrender at war’s end."...

Thanks for sharing

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel enlightening. Thanks for the post.