Seventy-five years ago this month of May, the mighty German battleship Bismarck broke out in the Atlantic Ocean. His mission (the ship's captain insisted that his ship should be referred to in the masculine rather than the traditional feminine) was to find and sink Allied convoys. But this mission was quickly forgotten in the face of damage received during the Battle of the Denmark Strait; while Bismarck had sunk the most famous British warship, the battlecruiser Hood, she took a few hits from the battleship Prince of Wales which damaged a fuel-oil tank in his bow, and this led to a decision to make port in France.
The German battleship was shadowed by two British cruisers, Suffolk and Norfolk, as she raced east across the Atlantic toward the Bay of Biscay. The intent of the British ships was not to engage Bismarck in another battle, but to track him by radar until another force of British battleships could close in for another major battle. But at one point the German battleship circled around the British cruisers, breaking contact. Ironically, the German sailors might not have been aware that they had broken contact, for not long after they sent a long radio message to fleet commanders ashore, and this helped the British find Bismarck again.
While the British had lost radar contact, it is likely that Bismarck was still detecting the radar signals from a British ship. Radar, short for radio detection and ranging, transmits short radio pulses which are reflected when they hit an object like a ship or an airplane. Some of the reflected energy is then received by the ship that sent the pulse, and this allows a reading of range and bearing to be taken. The hitch is that the pulses have to be strong because only a fraction of the radiated energy would form an echo that the radar could detect.
Because the radar pulses must be rather strong, it is possible that those pulses were detected by receiving equipment aboard the German battleship, even though the echo was too weak to be caught by the British radar at the increased range following Bismarck's circle maneuver. The cruisers were almost 125 miles (200 km) astern of the battleship when the message was sent -- the British battleships were actually closer, so it is possible the radar pulses came from them instead of from Suffolk and Norfolk.
The long message was picked up by two British listening stations which allowed a search aircraft to find the German battleship. The sighting then led to an air attack by torpedo bombers launched from the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, and a one in a million torpedo hit disabled Bismarck's rudder, and this allowed the battleships King George V and Rodney to find and sink the German battleship.
A greater threat than German surface raiders, even one as powerful as Bismarck, were the u-boats which prowled the convoy routes across the Atlantic. The two weapons which helped defeat the U-boat peril were radar and high frequency direction finding (HF/DF, also known as "Huff Duff"). By using antennas at different locations, Huff Duff received a radio transmission at different angles and used the differences to determine a bearing to the transmitter. What made Huff Duff so successful during the war was the speed with which it could determine the bearing to a u-boat transmitting a radio message; this allowed allied warships to locate and attack the enemy submarine.
The battle of the laboratories continued during the Cold War, and the U.S. Navy spent a lot of effort on what it called "emissions control," or EMCON. The purpose of EMCON was to prevent the Soviets from homing in on the radar and radio transmissions of U.S. Navy ships. EMCON could be as simple as turning everything off, radar, radio and any other equipment that emitted an electronic signal. During World War II, the Germans developed a radar detector and such detection equipment became more sophisticated during the Cold War, to the point that it was no longer necessary to use radar to search for the enemy as you could track him through his electronic emissions -- assuming that he had not turned everything off.
Since the end of the Cold War, there has been another wave of technological progress with wireless communications. Rear Admiral William Leigher, USN, a veteran cryptologist who recently carried the title "director of warfare integration for information dominance," stated in a 2013 interview that the electronic emissions problem is significantly greater now than it was in the past.
“It’s not as simple as EMCON that I might have done in the mid-’80s or early 90s,” Leigher warned. For one, you can't just turn everything off because you need your sensors to detect incoming missiles and your jammers to disable them. In the future, suggested Leigher, instead of shutting systems down to avoid detection, a Navy ship might deliberately change the signals it emits to make the enemy think that it is something else -- during World War II, the allies tricked German u-boat commanders into turning their detectors off by suggesting that aircraft could home in on its signal.
Fascinating as all of this is, I'm sure there are many of you who are wondering just what it has to do with anything. As humans, with or without the aid of electronics, we are always emitting something. People see us and hear us, and we send signals through body language as well as through the things that we say -- or even the things that we don't say. Social media allows us to interact with people around the world, even people we don't know -- even people that we are not aware of. We might try a form of EMCON by avoiding people, on social media or in person, but that would leave us isolated and, in any case, probably wouldn't actually work. Even when we keep to ourselves we are sending out signals.
It would be more useful, then, to take a look at what we are emitting. Through our body language and our words we may signal happiness and friendship, generosity and other good things, or we may signal anger, suspicion, selfishness, immodesty, etc. We may signal other things via social media by what we choose to post, or what we choose to like or share.
In recent efforts by members of the LDS Church to share the gospel via social media, people have been using the hashtag "sharegoodness". We can share goodness, or we can share things that are less than good. We may even share goodness on the one hand, while also sharing some not so good things on the other, in which case we are sending mixed signals that may serve to confuse.
When Alma the Younger started his mission to the Zoramites, he took along with him Amulek, Zeezrom and two of his sons. One of these sons left his mission to chase after a harlot; Alma later said to this son, "Behold, O my son, how great iniquity ye brought upon the Zoramites; for when they saw your conduct they would not believe in my words" (Alma 39:11)
Alma went on to say, "And now the Spirit of the Lord doth say unto me: Command thy children to do good. lest they lead away the hearts of many people to destruction" (Alma 39:12).
People are watching us, whether we like it or not. If they see in us a good example, they may become interested in learning more about the church. If they see in us a bad example, they may be less likely to become interested.
We might think that we can hide behind the anonymity offered by social media, but we would likely be deluding ourselves. Some seek to hid their identity as they post certain thoughts, quotes or photos, while at the same time broadcasting that they are active LDS. Even if their identity is never discovered, these actions are mostly likely just as damaging.
We, of course, are human, and we will make mistakes -- and there are those who will deliberately seek to push our buttons in order to accuse us of hypocrisy -- but let us strive to be a good example, let us strive to share goodness. Let us be ever mindful of the signals we send when we post, like or share things on social media.
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Sources:
Freeberg, S. J. (2013) "Navy Battles Cyber Threats: Thumb Drives, Wireless Hacking, & China." Breaking Defense. Accessed September 10, 2014 at: http://breakingdefense.com/2013/04/navy-cyber-threats-thumb-drives-wireless-hacking-china/
Zettering, N. & Tamelander, M. (2009). Bismarck: The Final Days of Germany's Greatest Battleship. Philadelphia: Casemate Publishers.
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