Intell
Roman Empire – intelligence services
The Roman Empire was encircled on all sides by enemies, who might come by sea as well as land, and needed to be defended by elaborate fixed fortifications as well as mobile armies. At the height of their power, Rome’s rulers preferred active to passive defence and maintained strong striking forces at strategic points generally behind rather than on the…
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The Bomber Gap and the Missile Gap
A Soviet Myasischev 3M (NATO reporting name “Bison-B”) photographed from an intercepting U.S. Navy aircraft from the aircraft carrier USS Bon Homme Richard (CVA-31) during that carrier’s deployment to the Western Pacific and the Vietnam War from 27 January to 10 October 1968. At the end of World War II,…
Defeating the V-2 Missiles
The story of the struggle against the threat of the German V-2, the first-ever ballistic missile, and to a lesser degree against the V-1, the first cruise missile, is the story of a chance discovery of unexplained German activity, the attempts to understand what the air photos signified, and the…
‘WAR OF THE RADAR SETS’
There is no doubt that the crisis that was increasingly facing the German fighter force was made critically sharper by the `war of the radar sets’, and by the dropping of WINDOW strips in particular. As General Josef Kammhuber, German night fighter CO, said after the war, the time chosen…
NKVD in WWII
From left to right: military counterintelligence chief (SMERSH) Viktor Abakumov, NKGB Commissar Vsevolod Merkulov, and NKVD Commissar Lavrenty Beria. During WWII the NKVD continued propaganda and coercion, which as before, went hand in hand. This leopard did not change its spots; terror did not abate during the war. Those who…
Intell War in the Wings
Italy entered the war on June 10, 1940, not to hasten, but to benefit from France’s collapse. Mussolini came in with Hitler’s reluctant permission. The Fuehrer was confident that, whatever mischief Il Duce could perpetrate, it would not materially affect the outcome. He recalled an impudent quip of World War…
Intelligence Post WWII Part I
Argentinian Invasion of the Falklands Military operations have changed greatly since the end of the Second World War, most of all because the development of nuclear weapons has effectively prevented the major states from fighting the sort of full-scale struggles for decision which are the subject of this book. Big…