Wartime Wednesday: German Maps and Secret Missions

Wartime Wednesday:

German Maps and Secret Missions

In these days of GPS which give instantaneous location information, it’s easy to forget that the technology is relatively new, with the first satellite being launched in 1978. During World War II, the lack of what is called geodetic data – the measuring and representing of Earth’s geometric shape, orientation in space, and gravity field – was an issue because shelling was done over great distances, often without seeing the actual target through gun sights. Unfortunately, this created situations during which the shells “went awry,” as one source put it.

When word reached the upper echelon of the U.S. Army of enormous stashed of maps held by the Germans, it was decided to create a top-secret intelligence force that would ferret out and capture the documents. Named HOUGHTEAM after the man in charge, Major Floyd Hough, the unit was composed of nineteen specifically selected individuals:

• Four educated civilians: an engineer, a geographer, a linguist who spoke five languages, and a Kentucky socialite who’d mostly grown up in Europe.
• Ten enlisted men who included a Japanese interpreter on loan from OSS and European immigrants who had fled to the U.S. to escape Nazi persecution.
• Five who’d been stationed at Camp Ritchey where they received training in interrogation and psychological operations. They would be responsible for questioning civilians about troop movement as well as prisoners of war.

The men carried 1,800 pounds of cameras and other equipment for creating microfilm records and

11,000(!) index cards that included such information as the holdings of the Army Map Services, lists of technical universities, government institutions, libraries, and other places that ostensibly had the materials they sought, and lists of German scientists indicating which might be willing to cooperate and those who must not be trusted. (Can you imagine flipping through those to find what you needed?

In the autumn of 1944, the unit followed the army into Germany often arriving at a particular city days or even hours after it had fallen to the Allies. Speed was of the essence. Aachen was the first major successful mission, and most scholars feel the information found there hastened the end of the war because of the massive cache of scientific data and records discovered in the library. The project stalled when the Allies were held back, then the terrible winter that saw the Battle of the Bulge.

By March, 1945, the Allies were again on the move, and Hough followed, first to Cologne, then onto Frankfurt, and Weisbaden, collecting bundles of papers, books, maps, and survey reports that had immediate operational value. The interrogation of a captured officer revealed the name of two small towns in the region of Thuringia. The U.S. Third Army was in the midst of taking the area, so Hough gathered his men and headed east to Friedrichroda and Waltershausen. A short search turned up the entire archive of the German national survey agency. Just as important was the discovery of a man they’d been seeking for weeks. Questioning provided the name of yet another small town: Saalfeld.

Four days after the U.S. 87th Infantry took the town, Hough and five of his men rolled in. After explaining to the mayor what they were looking for, he led them to a warehouse which held a thirty-foot by fifty-food room stacked flour to ceiling. They’d found “nothing less than the central map and geodetic data repository for the Germany Army – the mother lode.” Exciting, yet, but Saalfeld was in a section of Germany that was going to be Soviet-occupied territory, and the Russians were on their way.

With a pace not thought possible, Hough borrowed (commandeered?) trucks, planes, and enlisted me from nearby U.S. Army units to load the trucks. He also mandated help from German civilians. By the time Germany had officially surrendered on May 8, 1945, Hough and his team had shipped thirty-five two-and-a-half-ton-capacity trucks with maps, data, and instruments such as stereoplanigraphs (cutting-edge technology used to create topographic maps from aerial photos and worth about $7M in today’s money).

In September, 1945, Hough returned to his old job as head of the Geodetic Division of the Army Map Service in Washington, DC, then went on to travel extensively to international conferences to meet with other geodesists about connecting the rest of Europe to the geodetic network. The project was completed in 1951.

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Shetland Sunset

Bonded by a cause but an ocean apart, will their love survive a world war?

After months in Norway helping his cousins with their fishing business, American Askel Westgard seems trapped when the Germans invade until he has a chance to get back at the Occupiers as part of the Shetlandsgjengen, or Shetland gang, a group of fishermen who transport weapons and equipment from Shetland to Norway under cover of darkness. Unfortunately, the beautiful Norwegian woman he’s just met refuses to join him in safety. Will he ever see her again?

Distraught when the Germans overrun her beloved Norway, Tonje Bondevik refuses to take the occupation sitting down. She joins the fledgling resistance movement, deriving great satisfaction distributing the underground newspaper and performing acts of sabotage…until the day the Nazis come looking for her, and she must flee for her life. Perhaps she should have listened to the handsome Norwegian American when he offered to take her to Shetland.

Purchase Link: https://books2read.com/u/4AWqJk

Sources:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15420353.2021.1922569#d1e130
https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/ref-info-papers/79/index.pdf
https://www.neatorama.com/2019/10/23/The-Untold-Story-of-the-Secret-Mission-to-Seize-Nazi-Map-Data/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/untold-story-secret-mission-seize-nazi-map-data-180973317/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ED50
https://medium.com/@NGA_GEOINT/floyd-w-hough-454ca5ac933f
https://amerisurv.com/2020/03/03/behind-the-lines/
https://community.esri.com/t5/coordinate-reference-systems-blog/the-european-datum-a-history-part-2/ba-p/902120

Photo Credits:
Map: http://www.loc.gov/item/2004629096
Equipment: The National Archives
Floyd Hough Passport Photo: The National Archives