World War II
A true world war, SIGINT still tended to be separate in the various theaters. Communications security, on the part of the Allies, was more centralized. Given that there were three major Axis powers, each primarily operating in a subset of the theaters, it is convenient to look at SIGINT from a primarily theater standpoint. From the Allied perspective, the critical theater-level perspectives were the Ultra SIGINT against the Germans in the European theater (including the Battle of the Atlantic, the Mediterranean Theater of Operations, and MAGIC against the Japanese in the Pacific Theater and the China-Burma-India theater. Germany enjoyed some SIGINT success against the Allies, especially with the Merchant Code and, early in the war, reading American attaché traffic. Japan was the least effective of the major powers in SIGINT. In addition to the official Allies and Axis battle of signals, there was a growing interest in Soviet espionage communications, which continued after the war.
British strategic stations were located at places including Darwin, Australia, and a Russian site. Major postwar stations include RAF Menwith Hill and Cyprus.
Read more about this topic: Signals Intelligence In Modern History
Famous quotes containing the words world war, world and/or war:
“Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.”
—Anonymous. Popular saying.
Dating from World War I—when it was used by U.S. soldiers—or before, the saying was associated with nightclub hostess Texas Quinan in the 1920s. It was the title of a song recorded by Sophie Tucker in 1927, and of a Cole Porter musical in 1929.
“It is a secret from nobody that the famous random event is most likely to arise from those parts of the world where the old adage “There is no alternative to victory” retains a high degree of plausibility.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“[Veterans] feel disappointed, not about the 1914-1918 war but about this war. They liked that war, it was a nice war, a real war a regular war, a commenced war and an ended war. It was a war, and veterans like a war to be a war. They do.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)