9/3/42 Washington

The President’s U-boat commission made their second report, they had studied the German U-boat bases and determined that there was no reliable way to cover the bases and pass back the information. They explored the concept of the Australian coast watchers that were still located in the islands of the South Pacific, repeated overflights, submarine surveillance and a host of others. All carried the risk of detection. The commission finally found two situations that could possibly be exploited.

There was one weakness in the German Navy, the high command demanded constant feedback from the ships at sea by radio making detection possible. Unfortunately, the German Navy used a too many frequencies and on such a random time schedule that it was difficult to catch a transmission and even more difficult to get an accurate fix. The current equipment was not accurate enough to give a fix that was good enough to send out an attack. It seemed impossible to catch enough of the transmissions to make driving a U-boat a dangerous occupation. In addition, two stations must hear the same transmission and both must get a fix on the target. It seemed impossible but the President decided to pursue the concept by building more accurate equipment. It was actually an easy decision, there were no good alternatives. The problem was referred to a Halicrafters Radio to design a system that would make this monitoring possible within six months.

A second weakness of the U-boats was one of geography. The main U-boat bases were located so that the boats leaving these bases had to transit the North Sea or the English Channel to get to their stations. During the study, someone jokingly suggested they place a fence across these two outlets. Everyone in the room laughed. Over a period of several days this metamorphosed to a chain of listening points to watch for the passage of the submarines. If they could detect a sub crossing the line, they could know approximately where he was at a certain time. Someone suggested two undersea cables with microphones along their length, so that speed and course could be estimated. Nobody had any idea if the cables could be built or how much they would cost. RCA was given the task of determining if the cable could be built. They too were given six months to determine if feasible, and if so, design, produce and lay a pair of five mile cables off the New England coast near the Electric Boat works. The coming and going of the American submarines there would give a good test of the equipment.