Downloaded from https://www.everyspec.com FM 34-54 Updates to handbooks on the German and Italian armies. TECHINT exploitation of captured German Tiger and Panther tanks led to several important battlefield countermeasures. One of these was the adoption of new armor tactics while another was the development of more powerful antitank rockets. The United States started a successful TECHINT program in the fall of 1943 called the ALSOS mission. This unit was made up of Counterintelligence (CI) Corps agents, scientists, and interpreters. Their mission was to capture and exploit personnel and material of S&T value. The successes of this unit included:
Exploitation of Italian and German nuclear scientists. Removal of significant quantities of uranium ore from the Albert Canal. Recovery of the international radium standards from what was to be the Soviet occupied sector of Germany. Throughout the remainder of the 1940's a Foreign Materiel Intelligence Branch at the Ordnance Center, Aberdeen Proving Grounds, MD, continued to conduct exploitation work on captured German and Japanese equipment. THE RAID ON BRUNEVAL—AN OFFENSIVE TECHINT OPERATION: At 2100Z on 27 February 1942, 119 British soldiers of Company C, 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, parachuted into a drop zone near the small village of Bruneval, in Occupied France.
The company's mission was to raid a suspected German radar site on a cliff a few hundred yards from an accessible beach to bring back an item of extreme TECHINT interest—the WUERZBURG radar. The WUERZBURG radar was believed to be a mobile, short-range, high- precision radar responsible for the sudden and serious increase in Allied heavy bomber losses. Routine Allied photographic reconnaissance originally discovered the installation in January 1942. French resistance forces were sent to investigate. They confirmed the site as well as a garrison troop strength of nearly 200 enemy signal, support, and security troops. They also reported that the nearby beach was not mined.
It was the intelligence and urgent need to protect Allied planes that resulted in the commando raid that night. Once on the ground, the commandos moved quickly and split into three equal groups. The first group secured 1-3