Great video. In the US Army (1980s), we had a switch in our helicopters that would zero the radio and IFF codes. The codes were set prior to the mission with a plunger key that aligned pins in the onboard system. Zeroing the system would release springs that returned the pins to the zero position and erase the code. I vaguely remember mentions of aircraft self-destruct explosives but had no experience with them. If an aircraft went down behind enemy lines and we were certain the crew had escaped or were dead, we could be ordered to destroy it with our weapons (TOW missiles or rockets) or artillery or airstrikes.
FWIW, the setup is designed to prevent access to the code once programmed. It zeroes if the cover is opened, and if all goes well, more subtle methods also result in a zeroing.
Not really, I use to stand out there with a sign when they came back that read "Victory Roll it!" Got a lot of people in trouble... haha All of them later in the pub said it was worth it You could really get your way back then if you showed just a little ankle
@choppergirl Have you seen the painting titled 'Victory Roll?' showing a British WWI fighter at the very top of his Victory Roll, just as his tail begins to break off due to battle damage?? Why do you think that such a painting would have gotten such exposure? Because aircrew were successfully returning victorious from combat and then dying unnecessarily over their home airfield due to structural damage from combat that they might not have been aware of or of the extent of the damage. So, in their eagerness to show off their Victory over the enemy, they killed themselves due to their own youthful stupidity. This activity was not just confined to WWI, it reoccured during WWII, and beyond. Moral of the story is don't do stupid stunts while flying! Case in point; There was a RAAF Hornet pilot who was known to copy the behaviour of aircrew in 'Top Gun' and remove his oxygen mask after violent and exciting manuvers. He had been cautioned about this behaviour and then on one training session he performs the same act. Trouble was that he was breathing heavily and the oxygen level in the cockpit was not sufficient enough to maintain consciousness. The result was that he passed out and fellow pilots were were unable to rouse him over the radio. His aircraft was flying straight and level and was allowed to continue flying out to sea were it crashed due to lack of fuel. This event cost the Australian Defence Force and therefore the Australian Taxpayer, one Hornet fighter and one very expensively trained pilot due to the pilot performing a stupid action which could easily have been avoided. Not only that, his colleagues would have been distressed by his loss and then by the funeral and later the Court of Inquiry. This is why you don't do Victory Rolls or other such showing off! Mark from Melbourne Australia
When I listened to Drach talk about the USS Franklin was possibly blinded by IFF of aircraft on the deck when it was hit, I always wondered how. Your page at 3:35 is a perfect explaination how the radar was blinded.
I saw one of these red cover boxes for sale once at an electronic surplus store. Speaking of explosive bolts. There was an article where they were restoring a ME 262. German engineers who helped build them were part of the restoration team. They discovered the explosive canopy bolts were still in place! Some explosive men removed them. Interesting video.
You might be remembering the restoration of the Smithsonian's Dornier DO-335 Pfeil at the Dornier plant in the 1970s, and the explosive charges for the rear propeller.
@@theodorgiosan2570 That's interesting. So the pilot could bail out I assume. Actually the article I read or saw on yt was a ME262 that was being restored. The canopy and perhaps also the (ejection seat? ) still had live explosive bolts. Perhaps it was a story about an example brought to the USA for study immediately after the war not knowing about the bolts at the time?
Friendly fire was a huge issue in Korea also. My dad told me about colored helmets that the marines used to identify their position for ground attack from corsairs.
@@GaiusCaligula234well yeah to us. They were just invented at this time. It was the british who invented them and they weren’t mandatory in aviation until the 60s.
I bought a couple of those red danger boxes from Apex in San Fernando. I sent them to Dave Jones Mailbag on the EEV Blog and he showed it. The other one was sent before but never got there. Todd Black who used to work at Apex said he sold several of them to people at SpaceX and they used them as paperweights. The push buttons had unique contacts and were wired in series.
As an avionics tech in the Coast Guard in 71 and 72, I saw on the front panel of some of our comms and nav equipment large round covers that could be unscrewed to install or remove explosive devices. We were told that the charges used were essentially 12 gauge shotgun rounds of some sort. In our Era, these were all empty, but much of our avionics was quite old, going back to the post war period.
I worked on a Super Constellation cockpit from 1956 and it also had an "IFF detonator" fuse. It was a former US military airplane, later used civil. The cockpit is now a simulator 🙂
USN, 68-74, ETR-2, NAS Miramar, 70-74, maintained GCA RADAR and TACAN. I vaguely remember studying IFF the ground section of the system in school. At Miramar, FAA ran the search end as Miramar was the regional center. FAA also handled that RADAR and IFF.
“Deep dive” = 10.5 minutes. But, somehow, as always, it really is a deep dive! No idea how he manages this magic that “concise” is also thorough, clear, illuminating, well-referenced, with great source material samples. It’s also entertaining and a bit transfixing. I know a lot about WWII aircraft. Yet I always learn something new when I watch one of these videos. Things I didn’t even realize were blind spots. As always, bravo!
This was a very useful video for my purposes. I work on a historic WW2 PT Boat USS PT658 located in Portland, OR and we have after years of searching, obtained a complete IFF Suite, including a transponder, ABK, the Control and Code Selector Boxes, Power Plug, and recently the Farnsworth BN Unit (Interrogator-Responsor) along with the dipole shipboard antennas and the SO3 Radar Set. I am currently working on connecting all the plugs and connectors to properly display how it would have been installed on board the boat. It will be another effort entirely to actually get all of it working, and that is a longer range effort. But for now, seeing in your video some details of specific cables and plug numbers is a lot of help. Another thing is the D-Plug. I was always told that it was mainly Thermite mixed with Phosphorous, but here you show that it was two detonators and a 2 gram pellet of Tetryl! Having looked on the inside of the ABK Transponder Unit, the destructor only has to destroy 2 vacuum tubes and a few capacitors in order to destroy the unit. Great video at any rate!
IFF had some issues in WW2. Worst one was that it was not - at least initially - encoded. So enemy units could use it to identify Allied units and, later on, home in on the IFF transponders. On the whole, though, there were a lot more Allied forces than Axis at this point in the war, so it was - mostly - a benefit.
Ya, I've been pushing back any product placement. The channel has been offered a high amount of $ for a 60 second ad integration. I'm relying on viewer super thanks and normal YT ads 55/45 $ split.
As always, bravo on a superbly researched and produced video. I'm not surprised at the high error rates, especially regarding aircrew not turning IFF on/off at the correct times - there must have been so many things to do and keep an eye on. Was it the specific responsibility of one crew member?
My Grandfather was one of those Radiomen-Radar Operators on a B-17 with the 384th Bomb Group stationed out of Grafton-Underwood. They bombed the marshalling yards and targets around Potsdam (Berlin); as well as many other targets deep within Germany without fighter escorts. At the end of the war he was stationed to the Pentagon, Korea, and then helped with the creation of the FAA and establishing facilities & training future radar operators. There were quite a few pieces of equipment that required self-destruction so that the Germans couldn't obtain them.
It’s a bit distressing that you felt compelled to make the point that the earth is round. Having seen comments elsewhere that questioned this fact, I understand why you do it.
The earth is not perfectly round but is actually pear shaped. Perhaps the point here is that computing the tables based on a perfectly spherical planet was close enough for operational purposes so they ignored the actual variation from a perfect sphere. Or it could have been an attempt at humor.
@@gort8203 Exactly. The distance from Earth's centre to sea level is 21 km greater at the equator than at the poles which makes absolutely no difference to any WWII artillery or navigation tables. It became of some import only with satellite orbits & GPS. The pear-shaped deviation is ridiculously smaller at around 9 meters [I think] & for that reason describing the Earth as pear-shaped is not a good policy as the deviation is far smaller than the mountain ranges & the sea trenches.
The Earth is flat. It's just the radio waves that are curved for some reason. Probably because they are affected by Earth's gravity, and are falling down while traveling through the air. So when the airplane is far enough and not high enough, the waves are falling to the ground before reaching the ground antenna.
I'm curious about the de icing boots on us bomber wings... Sometimes a black boot on all leading edges, but on some left as bare metal even on a painted aircraft. Other times the leading edge is just painted with the whole wing. Super hot climates this is logical at lower altitudes etc. but what were the technical points that led to these differences?
Are you talking about original planes or restored ones? Because restored crafts do not have deicers anymore. Original rubber rotted away so there are no spare parts left and bombers do not fly that high anymore since they generally do not have working superchargers, turbochargers and oxygen system :)
That IFF radio circuit diagram doesn't show the PL-177 as bridging the detonator. There's not really any place to use a bridge in that circuit. If the manual said "bridge", then it's probably the fault of a writer using the wrong term, but I doubt any electrical engineers were serving as radio operators on bombers or as fighter pilots to notice. The way the firing circuit is laid out makes me wonder if there was a shorting-bar "safety cap" that could be installed on the detonator in place of PL-177. This would be really useful in preventing unintended firings of the detonator that can be caused by things like powerful radio signals and static electricity. Otherwise, PL-177 stays plugged in all the time, and you want a safety pin or something in the safety box. Even then, a shorting bar cap would make removing the detonator or receiver box assembly with detonator installed a lot safer
I wonder if he saw that a flerfer recently tried to use the WW2 German Knickebein radar beam system as a way to debunk globe earth and thought ‘I’m not having my video used for that garbage!’ 😁
Interesting! Have you run across any reports of the Japanese using US Navy IFF against us? In October the USS Darter was grounded and abandoned after attacking the Japanese Center Force in Palawan passage. The crew destroyed the crypto gear, but reportedly the Japanese were able to board the wreck and found several IFF manuals that hadn't been destroyed. The information MAY have led to the Japanese changing tactics to get their Kamikazes close to US ships. That and the practice of Japanese planes "tailgating" returning USN strike aircraft.
I commented about Drach mentioned the USS Franklin was hit because of an IFF blindspot. Like at 3:35, if your aircraft on the carrier deck had IFF turned on, the radar would be completely blind to anything approaching the port side.
I forget the details but the Japanese did figure out how to use allied ship IFF to find use ships. But didn't have the planes or pilots to really take advantage of it.
Yeah, WWII IFF used 'Mode 1' with only 73 good codes and during WWII the IFF systems were slow to get to the fleet, so the lead aircraft had it installed and everyone else was supposed to stay close. We had explosive charges intended to destroy the IFF systems all the way into the late 1980s. It was that important. I have always felt it ironic that as we advance in electronics production in many ways it becomes more fragile than tubes and discrete iron core delays which were hardly more than half a transformer. I still think it strange how IFF worked back then as compared to today. Back then discrete iron core delay line (looks like a metal tube and is heavy due to the iron core) and some tubes, and more modern you may get a control box/transmitter all in one because all the timing is on one chip.
Should do a video on the EP-3, Hainan Incident and how much we lost due to not completing the destruction of intel/comms gear that wound up in enemy hands, though I probably couldn't watch it.
OMG i have one of those ...got it from an thrift shop ...never knew what it was for or out of till now...i use it as a power and reset for my pc lol,,,with some non destructive mods to it of course
IFF marked the birth of the airborne transponder, and today's Mode S transponder is critical to automatic delivery of large amounts of information from aircraft to ground stations and to other aircraft. The Mode S transponder system was developed as part of the equipment necessary for the implementation of the TCAS airborne collision avoidance system in 1992. TCAS provides vital protection in today's crowded skies, even over oceans. The threat these days is always from friendlies.
Ah, no, mode S was not developed for TCAS, though it greatly facilitates it. It was developed due to congestion issues, in particular, the FRUIT problem, which the use of a TCAS style individual whisper-shout system would only have made worse, but which was already happening.
Great stuff as usual. Were the six codes available for selection by the IFF coding switch permanently hard-coded or were they able to be adjusted by ground personnel?
No, the ground crew could not change the function of the 6 positions of the Code Selector Switch, those Codes are created internally using different circuits inside the ABK IFF Transponder. Our crew has assembled a complete IFF Suite on board USS PT658 Museum in Portland OR. It includes both an ABK Transponder and a BN Unit Interrogator-Responsor and a SO3 Radar Set. I was just working on wiring it last weekend. If what you mean by "hard coded" is that it is hardware defined, then yes. It certainly cannot be changed using any non existent software. (eg "soft coded")
@@allaboutboats Thanks for the detail. I know they didn't have digital software back then, but I meant a way to reset the analog switching within the system to vary each code that could be selected. I was thinking of the AN/APX-64 which could hold two Mode 4 codes, one for the present and one for the succeeding code period. But we sometimes operated through more than two code periods, so we could change the succeeding code held in the system with a tool in which you set series of mechanical sliders that varied the depth to which pins would extend beyond a base plate. The length of the pins corresponded to the code being set, and when you inserted the tool into receptacle the new code was set. No software involved.
Wow, I was a Navy IFF technician in the 1980s. I saw the US book said IFF MK III, I worked on the MK XII, They are probably up to XIV at least now! Flashback. Thanks for the weapon info! It's funny how war advances technology. They thought they were set up with just radar but then Pearl Harbor happened and they said, hey wait a minute we didn't think this out enough, lol! I think the British had IFF before Pearl Harbor too. I looked up the Tizard Mission, where Britain gave the US a cavity magnetron, it happened in 1940. The radar used at Pearl in 1941 was made with help by the British, oops. I guess the IFF in 1941 (MK II) wasn't workable enough for the US field of operations.
Kind of interesting that they had a specific button to blow up the radio when all of the crew were issued sidearms and more than likely could have easily just put a few rounds through the radio before jumping out, like we see done to the Norden bombsight in Masters of the Air when one of the fortresses goes down
The charges are likely preset to the exact spots needed destroyed and their charge size precalculated to ensure the job is done. This ensures consistencies among thousands of aircraft going down. Just putting a few rounds in adds wild cards such as, shot placement, individual ballistics, angle and range. Two different people could shoot the same radio and have different results. Plus it might leave enough intact for the Germans to figure out the frequencies being used which is the important part here. Also in the event the entire crew was killed or incapacitated before they could shoot it, this system has a automated system to set off the charges as well. Relying on the crew to shoot it, means relying on the crew to be alive. On a side note the Norden bomb sight wasn't actually special or very good. There was a actual good one but it wasn't used for I believe cost and political reasons. The whole story of the Norden bomb sight being some wonder weapon was basically just propaganda down to instructing the bombardier to protect it with his life. Which is ashame because one has to wonder how many bombardiers died trying to keep their Norden bomb sight out of German hands, when the Germans already had examples in their possession making the sacrifice pointless.
I'm surprised that pilots needed a sign to remind them of something that could save their lives. I supposed they have a lot to think about, but that's what checklists are for.
The ending stats are not surprising. Might have well as left those pilot destruction buttons off and doubled the inertia type because I doubt anyone bailing out is taking time to operate them.
@@philiphumphrey1548it isn't a matter of having the time, it's cockpit management and dedicating the brain power and a free hand to activate it when your crew is at risk.
I wonder if there was a misreading or typo regarding the M3 distructor. 2 grams of explosive, no matter what type really seems like it wouldn't be enough to do enough damage to make such a unit un useful to the enemy.
The IFF destruct feature carried over in the B-47 bombers of the '50s and '60s. The IFF contained an explosive charge that was initiated by the pilot lifting a red cover and flipping a switch.
On January 1st 1945 the Germans launched Operation Bodenplatte, it was their last major air operation against the Allies in the west. Over 400 planes were gathered for it, while heading for the Allied areas they passed over their lines and their own AA gunners shot down ¼th, approximately 100, of their own aircraft. Because it was so secret the AA gunners hadn't been informed and because the AA gunners knew the Luftwaffe was virtually destroyed at that point when they saw that many aircraft in the sky they assumed they had to have been the Allies, despite the fact that they were coming from back over their own lines.
I have one of those switches new in the box. I thought it would be funny to mount it to a milsurp "black box" and give it to someone to put in the officers club on the bar. Anyone dumb enough to push both buttons, a Jack in the box pops out of it holding a sign BUY DRINKS FOR EVERYONE.
I like how they play on human nature as a security feature. If a human sees one button surrounded by red, it will be pressed. Two buttons? Not worth the effort, whatever it does.
.Germans recovered H2S scanning radar unit from downed pathfinder halifax got it operating and were shocked at its effectiveness compared to there obsolete radars
Most important part of IFF system: large cardboard sign.
Great video. In the US Army (1980s), we had a switch in our helicopters that would zero the radio and IFF codes. The codes were set prior to the mission with a plunger key that aligned pins in the onboard system. Zeroing the system would release springs that returned the pins to the zero position and erase the code. I vaguely remember mentions of aircraft self-destruct explosives but had no experience with them. If an aircraft went down behind enemy lines and we were certain the crew had escaped or were dead, we could be ordered to destroy it with our weapons (TOW missiles or rockets) or artillery or airstrikes.
FWIW, the setup is designed to prevent access to the code once programmed. It zeroes if the cover is opened, and if all goes well, more subtle methods also result in a zeroing.
Mental picture of a guy with a sign 'IFF ON' is weird, like those guys today standing outside all day advertising something.
Not really, I use to stand out there with a sign when they came back that read "Victory Roll it!"
Got a lot of people in trouble... haha
All of them later in the pub said it was worth it
You could really get your way back then if you showed just a little ankle
@choppergirl Have you seen the painting titled 'Victory Roll?' showing a British WWI fighter at the very top of his Victory Roll, just as his tail begins to break off due to battle damage??
Why do you think that such a painting would have gotten such exposure?
Because aircrew were successfully returning victorious from combat and then dying unnecessarily over their home airfield due to structural damage from combat that they might not have been aware of or of the extent of the damage. So, in their eagerness to show off their Victory over the enemy, they killed themselves due to their own youthful stupidity. This activity was not just confined to WWI, it reoccured during WWII, and beyond.
Moral of the story is don't do stupid stunts while flying!
Case in point; There was a RAAF Hornet pilot who was known to copy the behaviour of aircrew in 'Top Gun' and remove his oxygen mask after violent and exciting manuvers. He had been cautioned about this behaviour and then on one training session he performs the same act. Trouble was that he was breathing heavily and the oxygen level in the cockpit was not sufficient enough to maintain consciousness. The result was that he passed out and fellow pilots were were unable to rouse him over the radio. His aircraft was flying straight and level and was allowed to continue flying out to sea were it crashed due to lack of fuel.
This event cost the Australian Defence Force and therefore the Australian Taxpayer, one Hornet fighter and one very expensively trained pilot due to the pilot performing a stupid action which could easily have been avoided. Not only that, his colleagues would have been distressed by his loss and then by the funeral and later the Court of Inquiry.
This is why you don't do Victory Rolls or other such showing off!
Mark from Melbourne Australia
When I listened to Drach talk about the USS Franklin was possibly blinded by IFF of aircraft on the deck when it was hit, I always wondered how. Your page at 3:35 is a perfect explaination how the radar was blinded.
I saw one of these red cover boxes for sale once at an electronic surplus store. Speaking of explosive bolts. There was an article where they were restoring a ME 262. German engineers who helped build them were part of the restoration team. They discovered the explosive canopy bolts were still in place! Some explosive men removed them. Interesting video.
You might be remembering the restoration of the Smithsonian's Dornier DO-335 Pfeil at the Dornier plant in the 1970s, and the explosive charges for the rear propeller.
@@theodorgiosan2570 That's interesting. So the pilot could bail out I assume. Actually the article I read or saw on yt was a ME262 that was being restored. The canopy and perhaps also the (ejection seat? ) still had live explosive bolts. Perhaps it was a story about an example brought to the USA for study immediately after the war not knowing about the bolts at the time?
@@josephbingham1255its probably part that and part thinking someone else must have removed them earlier
Friendly fire was a huge issue in Korea also. My dad told me about colored helmets that the marines used to identify their position for ground attack from corsairs.
That is interesting to learn. Indy Neidell is doing WW2 in real time.
A lot of friendly fire between US Military and ROK forces
I didn't even know such sophisticated IFF existed back then, I allways assumed it was a jet age invention
Same
Radio transponder is not a sophisticated technology 😂
@@GaiusCaligula234well yeah to us. They were just invented at this time. It was the british who invented them and they weren’t mandatory in aviation until the 60s.
I bought a couple of those red danger boxes from Apex in San Fernando. I sent them to Dave Jones Mailbag on the EEV Blog and he showed it. The other one was sent before but never got there. Todd Black who used to work at Apex said he sold several of them to people at SpaceX and they used them as paperweights. The push buttons had unique contacts and were wired in series.
As an avionics tech in the Coast Guard in 71 and 72, I saw on the front panel of some of our comms and nav equipment large round covers that could be unscrewed to install or remove explosive devices. We were told that the charges used were essentially 12 gauge shotgun rounds of some sort. In our Era, these were all empty, but much of our avionics was quite old, going back to the post war period.
I worked on a Super Constellation cockpit from 1956 and it also had an "IFF detonator" fuse. It was a former US military airplane, later used civil. The cockpit is now a simulator 🙂
USN, 68-74, ETR-2, NAS Miramar, 70-74, maintained GCA RADAR and TACAN. I vaguely remember studying IFF the ground section of the system in school. At Miramar, FAA ran the search end as Miramar was the regional center. FAA also handled that RADAR and IFF.
“Deep dive” = 10.5 minutes. But, somehow, as always, it really is a deep dive! No idea how he manages this magic that “concise” is also thorough, clear, illuminating, well-referenced, with great source material samples. It’s also entertaining and a bit transfixing.
I know a lot about WWII aircraft. Yet I always learn something new when I watch one of these videos. Things I didn’t even realize were blind spots.
As always, bravo!
This was a very useful video for my purposes. I work on a historic WW2 PT Boat USS PT658 located in Portland, OR and we have after years of searching, obtained a complete IFF Suite, including a transponder, ABK, the Control and Code Selector Boxes, Power Plug, and recently the Farnsworth BN Unit (Interrogator-Responsor) along with the dipole shipboard antennas and the SO3 Radar Set. I am currently working on connecting all the plugs and connectors to properly display how it would have been installed on board the boat. It will be another effort entirely to actually get all of it working, and that is a longer range effort. But for now, seeing in your video some details of specific cables and plug numbers is a lot of help. Another thing is the D-Plug. I was always told that it was mainly Thermite mixed with Phosphorous, but here you show that it was two detonators and a 2 gram pellet of Tetryl! Having looked on the inside of the ABK Transponder Unit, the destructor only has to destroy 2 vacuum tubes and a few capacitors in order to destroy the unit. Great video at any rate!
Hey we got this cool system which avoids that we will shoot you down, when you return.
80% of pilots: Okay, let's not switch it on.
Nice. I like learning about equipment just as much as weapons and tactics.
yes, thanks for making your obsevation.
IFF had some issues in WW2. Worst one was that it was not - at least initially - encoded. So enemy units could use it to identify Allied units and, later on, home in on the IFF transponders. On the whole, though, there were a lot more Allied forces than Axis at this point in the war, so it was - mostly - a benefit.
Highly informative as always. Another way to support the channel - let the ads run.
Ya, I've been pushing back any product placement. The channel has been offered a high amount of $ for a 60 second ad integration. I'm relying on viewer super thanks and normal YT ads 55/45 $ split.
@@WWIIUSBombers
Thank you, I couldn't have survived all those political ads lasting 60 seconds.
@@WWIIUSBombersPlease resist the urge!
The technology development impetus during wartime was outstanding.
War push tech to madness
As always, bravo on a superbly researched and produced video.
I'm not surprised at the high error rates, especially regarding aircrew not turning IFF on/off at the correct times - there must have been so many things to do and keep an eye on.
Was it the specific responsibility of one crew member?
It would usually be the radio operator for bomber/transport-class aircraft, and the pilot for fighter-sized aircraft.
This is awesome. I love learning new things about WW2 technologies. And being blown away by how advanced many systems actually were.
Great video man, lots of well presented info :)
My Grandfather was one of those Radiomen-Radar Operators on a B-17 with the 384th Bomb Group stationed out of Grafton-Underwood. They bombed the marshalling yards and targets around Potsdam (Berlin); as well as many other targets deep within Germany without fighter escorts. At the end of the war he was stationed to the Pentagon, Korea, and then helped with the creation of the FAA and establishing facilities & training future radar operators. There were quite a few pieces of equipment that required self-destruction so that the Germans couldn't obtain them.
It’s a bit distressing that you felt compelled to make the point that the earth is round. Having seen comments elsewhere that questioned this fact, I understand why you do it.
The earth is not perfectly round but is actually pear shaped. Perhaps the point here is that computing the tables based on a perfectly spherical planet was close enough for operational purposes so they ignored the actual variation from a perfect sphere. Or it could have been an attempt at humor.
Nowadays, you have to respect everyone.
It's a problem.
@@gort8203 Exactly. The distance from Earth's centre to sea level is 21 km greater at the equator than at the poles which makes absolutely no difference to any WWII artillery or navigation tables. It became of some import only with satellite orbits & GPS. The pear-shaped deviation is ridiculously smaller at around 9 meters [I think] & for that reason describing the Earth as pear-shaped is not a good policy as the deviation is far smaller than the mountain ranges & the sea trenches.
The Earth is flat. It's just the radio waves that are curved for some reason. Probably because they are affected by Earth's gravity, and are falling down while traveling through the air. So when the airplane is far enough and not high enough, the waves are falling to the ground before reaching the ground antenna.
@@JohnSmithEx Yeah, a radio casing can get full of radio waves - just turn it over & give it a good shake to clear it out.
another great contribution!
I'm curious about the de icing boots on us bomber wings...
Sometimes a black boot on all leading edges, but on some left as bare metal even on a painted aircraft.
Other times the leading edge is just painted with the whole wing.
Super hot climates this is logical at lower altitudes etc. but what were the technical points that led to these differences?
Are you talking about original planes or restored ones? Because restored crafts do not have deicers anymore. Original rubber rotted away so there are no spare parts left and bombers do not fly that high anymore since they generally do not have working superchargers, turbochargers and oxygen system :)
@randomnickify original...
That IFF radio circuit diagram doesn't show the PL-177 as bridging the detonator. There's not really any place to use a bridge in that circuit. If the manual said "bridge", then it's probably the fault of a writer using the wrong term, but I doubt any electrical engineers were serving as radio operators on bombers or as fighter pilots to notice.
The way the firing circuit is laid out makes me wonder if there was a shorting-bar "safety cap" that could be installed on the detonator in place of PL-177. This would be really useful in preventing unintended firings of the detonator that can be caused by things like powerful radio signals and static electricity. Otherwise, PL-177 stays plugged in all the time, and you want a safety pin or something in the safety box. Even then, a shorting bar cap would make removing the detonator or receiver box assembly with detonator installed a lot safer
7:54 wait, what? Was that a dunk on flat earthers???? 😂
My thought too!
I wonder if he saw that a flerfer recently tried to use the WW2 German Knickebein radar beam system as a way to debunk globe earth and thought ‘I’m not having my video used for that garbage!’ 😁
@WWIIUSBombers >>> Great video...👍
Interesting! Have you run across any reports of the Japanese using US Navy IFF against us? In October the USS Darter was grounded and abandoned after attacking the Japanese Center Force in Palawan passage. The crew destroyed the crypto gear, but reportedly the Japanese were able to board the wreck and found several IFF manuals that hadn't been destroyed. The information MAY have led to the Japanese changing tactics to get their Kamikazes close to US ships. That and the practice of Japanese planes "tailgating" returning USN strike aircraft.
I commented about Drach mentioned the USS Franklin was hit because of an IFF blindspot. Like at 3:35, if your aircraft on the carrier deck had IFF turned on, the radar would be completely blind to anything approaching the port side.
I forget the details but the Japanese did figure out how to use allied ship IFF to find use ships. But didn't have the planes or pilots to really take advantage of it.
Yeah, WWII IFF used 'Mode 1' with only 73 good codes and during WWII the IFF systems were slow to get to the fleet, so the lead aircraft had it installed and everyone else was supposed to stay close. We had explosive charges intended to destroy the IFF systems all the way into the late 1980s. It was that important. I have always felt it ironic that as we advance in electronics production in many ways it becomes more fragile than tubes and discrete iron core delays which were hardly more than half a transformer. I still think it strange how IFF worked back then as compared to today. Back then discrete iron core delay line (looks like a metal tube and is heavy due to the iron core) and some tubes, and more modern you may get a control box/transmitter all in one because all the timing is on one chip.
Should do a video on the EP-3, Hainan Incident and how much we lost due to not completing the destruction of intel/comms gear that wound up in enemy hands, though I probably couldn't watch it.
OMG i have one of those ...got it from an thrift shop ...never knew what it was for or out of till now...i use it as a power and reset for my pc lol,,,with some non destructive mods to it of course
An area I didn't think I'd be very interested became something I wanted to finish the whole vid.
IFF marked the birth of the airborne transponder, and today's Mode S transponder is critical to automatic delivery of large amounts of information from aircraft to ground stations and to other aircraft. The Mode S transponder system was developed as part of the equipment necessary for the implementation of the TCAS airborne collision avoidance system in 1992. TCAS provides vital protection in today's crowded skies, even over oceans. The threat these days is always from friendlies.
Ah, no, mode S was not developed for TCAS, though it greatly facilitates it. It was developed due to congestion issues, in particular, the FRUIT problem, which the use of a TCAS style individual whisper-shout system would only have made worse, but which was already happening.
Great stuff as usual. Were the six codes available for selection by the IFF coding switch permanently hard-coded or were they able to be adjusted by ground personnel?
There is no "hardcoding" in those
No, the ground crew could not change the function of the 6 positions of the Code Selector Switch, those Codes are created internally using different circuits inside the ABK IFF Transponder. Our crew has assembled a complete IFF Suite on board USS PT658 Museum in Portland OR. It includes both an ABK Transponder and a BN Unit Interrogator-Responsor and a SO3 Radar Set. I was just working on wiring it last weekend. If what you mean by "hard coded" is that it is hardware defined, then yes. It certainly cannot be changed using any non existent software. (eg "soft coded")
@@allaboutboats Thanks for the detail. I know they didn't have digital software back then, but I meant a way to reset the analog switching within the system to vary each code that could be selected.
I was thinking of the AN/APX-64 which could hold two Mode 4 codes, one for the present and one for the succeeding code period. But we sometimes operated through more than two code periods, so we could change the succeeding code held in the system with a tool in which you set series of mechanical sliders that varied the depth to which pins would extend beyond a base plate. The length of the pins corresponded to the code being set, and when you inserted the tool into receptacle the new code was set. No software involved.
@@gort8203 I will check internally to see if there are similar sliders and pins arrangement
The consequences of leaving IFF on near or over enemy territory could also be severe, once the Germans realized they could trigger it.
I worked on IFF when I was in SAC 1970-75
Wow, I was a Navy IFF technician in the 1980s. I saw the US book said IFF MK III, I worked on the MK XII, They are probably up to XIV at least now! Flashback. Thanks for the weapon info! It's funny how war advances technology. They thought they were set up with just radar but then Pearl Harbor happened and they said, hey wait a minute we didn't think this out enough, lol! I think the British had IFF before Pearl Harbor too. I looked up the Tizard Mission, where Britain gave the US a cavity magnetron, it happened in 1940. The radar used at Pearl in 1941 was made with help by the British, oops. I guess the IFF in 1941 (MK II) wasn't workable enough for the US field of operations.
Pearl Harbour radar is more of an operator/ peacetime error. Like, who's stupid enough to come knocking? Plus it's pretty new...
Thank you!
Fascinating as usual.
Who developed the original IFF system? Was the system originally developed in tandem with radar itself?
Kind of interesting that they had a specific button to blow up the radio when all of the crew were issued sidearms and more than likely could have easily just put a few rounds through the radio before jumping out, like we see done to the Norden bombsight in Masters of the Air when one of the fortresses goes down
The charges are likely preset to the exact spots needed destroyed and their charge size precalculated to ensure the job is done. This ensures consistencies among thousands of aircraft going down. Just putting a few rounds in adds wild cards such as, shot placement, individual ballistics, angle and range. Two different people could shoot the same radio and have different results. Plus it might leave enough intact for the Germans to figure out the frequencies being used which is the important part here.
Also in the event the entire crew was killed or incapacitated before they could shoot it, this system has a automated system to set off the charges as well. Relying on the crew to shoot it, means relying on the crew to be alive.
On a side note the Norden bomb sight wasn't actually special or very good. There was a actual good one but it wasn't used for I believe cost and political reasons. The whole story of the Norden bomb sight being some wonder weapon was basically just propaganda down to instructing the bombardier to protect it with his life. Which is ashame because one has to wonder how many bombardiers died trying to keep their Norden bomb sight out of German hands, when the Germans already had examples in their possession making the sacrifice pointless.
I'm surprised that pilots needed a sign to remind them of something that could save their lives. I supposed they have a lot to think about, but that's what checklists are for.
Theater operational procedures that vary are not part of aircraft operating checklists.
People have burned to death in their cars because they forgot how to unlock the doors of their car.
Super interesting
Fascinating stuff.
The ending stats are not surprising. Might have well as left those pilot destruction buttons off and doubled the inertia type because I doubt anyone bailing out is taking time to operate them.
The pilot normally holds the plane as level as he can and waits until the crew is out first, so there should be time to trigger it.
I would think they are for crash landing instances. The inertia will take care of almost any in air break up for catastrophic crash.
@@philiphumphrey1548it isn't a matter of having the time, it's cockpit management and dedicating the brain power and a free hand to activate it when your crew is at risk.
Could the enemy duplicate the signal from an earlier bomber flight that was challenged and use that as a false flag to get closer to their target?
I wonder if there was a misreading or typo regarding the M3 distructor. 2 grams of explosive, no matter what type really seems like it wouldn't be enough to do enough damage to make such a unit un useful to the enemy.
invented by the royal airforce
Yep, the Brits were integral in helping America with technology during ww2. Especially radar technology.
@@scubasteve3032They don't get enough credit for GEE and LORAN, which was longer range version.
Didn’t the British have a basic IFF system called pipsqueak early in the war ..?
The IFF destruct feature carried over in the B-47 bombers of the '50s and '60s. The IFF contained an explosive charge that was initiated by the pilot lifting a red cover and flipping a switch.
It's an older code, but it checks out...
But wouldn't have the B`17 be coming from a different direction?
On January 1st 1945 the Germans launched Operation Bodenplatte, it was their last major air operation against the Allies in the west.
Over 400 planes were gathered for it, while heading for the Allied areas they passed over their lines and their own AA gunners shot down ¼th, approximately 100, of their own aircraft.
Because it was so secret the AA gunners hadn't been informed and because the AA gunners knew the Luftwaffe was virtually destroyed at that point when they saw that many aircraft in the sky they assumed they had to have been the Allies, despite the fact that they were coming from back over their own lines.
Wind happens :)
IFF ON?
Thanks for the video. Spherical, haha. Remember it's a bit flat on the top and bottom, oblate spheroid.
I would have liked the job of holding the sign.
👍👍
New drinking game: you must drink every time you hear "IFF" ;)
We all died
Were the Germans or the Japanese ever able to use our IFF systems against us by using captured equipment that wasn’t destroyed?
Someone else mentioned that the Germans figured out they could trigger the transponder and home in on it.
I hope you're getting paid by YT OK, only 3/4 through video and there's been more than 20 adverts.
Press both button to forget cipher code of your laptop's Bitlocker
I have one of those switches new in the box. I thought it would be funny to mount it to a milsurp "black box" and give it to someone to put in the officers club on the bar. Anyone dumb enough to push both buttons, a Jack in the box pops out of it holding a sign BUY DRINKS FOR EVERYONE.
Grandfather to the CRM114
"I think that the auto-destruct got hit and blew itself up."
Ahh, yes; program compliance.
Don't show Father Dougal.
nothing pertinent to add.
just feeding the maws of the tube'y'all's algo-deities.
Flat earthers got triggered around 8:40
Love the jab against the flat earthers.
I like how they play on human nature as a security feature. If a human sees one button surrounded by red, it will be pressed. Two buttons? Not worth the effort, whatever it does.
What if the Earth isn't spherical !!!!!
I believe the Earth is shaped like a Klein Bottle.
Like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, sort of.
.Germans recovered H2S scanning radar unit from downed pathfinder halifax got it operating and were shocked at its effectiveness compared to there obsolete radars
Excellent!