My DH is certain that Townsend received downloads of knowledge from [another} Source. For lack of a better word, he calls them ETs.
In rereading my updated post on Townsend's SILs report about his joy in the natural world, I think he instinctively knew how to tune his emotional set to resonate with his muse, but then I believe all of us have a "guide on the side" waiting for us to be open to their help.
I am a classical Dewey Pragmatist, however, and ask for problems I can solve and they always point me toward the most astounding information. Here are what the facts on the ground around Townsend tell me. Again, I know some of this because I scrutinized the military records that were in Linda's possession. And I believe you documented some of this in your earlier, weightier tome.
Among his papers was the official permission document authorizing Seaman Townsend Brown of the NRL to check out a boat from the Navy Yard, for the purpose of testing of a wavemeter. And, lo and beholdd, look at what else was happening at the NRL about then:
The principle of radar was “rediscovered” at NRL in 1930 when L.A. Hyland observed that an aircraft flying through the beam of a transmitting antenna caused a fluctuation in the received signal.
https://www.britannica.com/technology/r ... y-of-radar
Asky yourself where the wave meter that measured the "observed fluctuations" was likely to be located?
DING DING DING
Sure, the lab employees were civilians, so perhaps Seaman Brown was the only person they could authorize to check out a Navy boat. Or perhaps he was the only one with significant boating experience. Even if (HIGHLY unlikely) he had noting to do with the radar experiment, he was present at its birth. Can I prove it? No. Will I go to the grave believing it? Yes.
In spite of this discovery, the NRL did not actively pursue radar development until later. As we know, there was a funding squeeze in the interim years. Not only could they not fund additional research, no matter how they kicked and screamed they could neither give Seaman Brown a raise in pay, nor could the USN retain him when his enlistment period was up.
Hitler's macroaggressions would incentivize the radio research work of both the Army and the Navy , however and beginning in 1938, greatly benefit by the invention of an antenna that could both send and receive, they went hard at it again. The attack on Pearl Harbor cemented the importance of "radio intelligence" to the forthcoming war.
Cryptologists had learned that Japan intended to declare war that day, but bureaucratic snafus prevented the alert from reaching Pearl Harbor in time. The only warning of the approaching planes was detected by one of the army's first operational RADAR sets, the SCR 270, operating at 100 MHZ. Unfortunately, no one there knew what the signals meant until the bombs started falling.
After that, there was an all out scrum over the Top Level administration and control of radar intelligence: The Army and the Navy had been tussling over this since 1940. Initially, they shared responsibility for transmitting intercept intelligence to the WH, on alternate days. Then they went to alternate months. By mid 1942, the the Navy was girding their loins for the final fight.
MEMORANDUM FOR ADMIRAL F. J. HORNE.
Subject: Radio Intelligence Organization
June 20, 1942
Through the piping times of peace extending over a period of some twenty odd years Radio Intelligence struggled and was never allowed out of the closet. Politically it was illegal to have such an organization and for anyone to devote his time to the subject was committing professional suicide.
Now that the war is in being, many activities are desirous of having a finger in the pie....
https://media-cdn.dvidshub.net/pubs/pdf_63777.pdf
TLDR: June 17 The first two memos are from Joseph Reasor Redman then aide to Admiral Horne who heads USN Department of Communications. The third is from his younger brother, John R. Redman, who was head of the new combat intelligence unit within the OP-20 -G, Naval intelligence organization. The siblings seem to have colluded to move the Radio Intelligence flag from one department to another.
In memo one, Joseph Redman (tactfully and craftily) points out that he can only speak to the Naval organizational structure. He argues, forcefully, that Naval Communications Division ,(vs. Naval Intelligence) would be the natural home for Radio Intelligence since this group had been battle hardened by the in Battle of Corregidor. He also manages a bit of side-eye at the Army's west coast intercept operations in the process, saying, in effect. who knows what the hell THEY are doing?
Notably, these memos describe the complex infrastructure needed to support Radio Intelligence. They affirm that the Washington office had all the needed equipment in place, and it would be cause a delay if it had to be moved. Additionally, the Washington office was already working as a seamless unit with the detachments at Pearl Harbor and Melbourne (relocated there after the fall of Corregidor). They go into plans for adding personnel and offloading as many tasks as possible to WAVES (Hello, Helen Towt), and then layout the bones of what would become the curriculum for signals intelligence training.
Two items in particular caught my eye. What organization was this? "Correlated with this work is the
D.F. organization, which is entirely a matter of radio communications...?" Direction Finding might be a logical answer, but it is not "entirely a matter of radio communications. Or is it? Would it have had its own organization?
I also noted this statement, saying that there was currently much work underway to calculate formulas to make allowances for all known "perturbations in the field.} (sorry, my words, not his.)
SIDEBAR: The periodicity of Townsend's "gravity wave" observations would become a part of the 1952 Cady Report, to be discussed elsewhere in this forum. In brief, the Cady Report is sometimes, erroneously, cited as dismissing the Beifield Brown effect. But folks tend to overlook the fact that though the report looked at Townsend's measurements in regards to all sorts of cyles, Cady specifically states that he did NOT look to verify Browns claims of correlation to sidereal time. http://www.rexresearch.com/ttbrown/ttbrown.htm
I find that most curious in light of future Noble Prize winner and father of MagnetoHydroDynamics (MHD), Hans Alfven's earlier calculations that "even a small sidereal time variation of the cosmic radiation would imply such great magnetic fields as to bend the paths of cosmic-ray particles" {See: On the Sidereal Time Variation of the Cosmic Radiation Hannes Alfvén Phys. Rev. 54, 97 – Published 15 July 1938} IOW, sidereal time might be a key to levering the untapped power of the stars.
As we now know, at the end of all the To-ing and Fro-ing of that time, Townsend was directed to transfer "his" equipment to the USN. He "left" the Navy in October and relocated to the West Coast. Soon thereafter a replica set of his equipment was constructed in the basement of (Paul, help me out, here) the ?- Banks Building in LA, while he resided on Wonderland Avenue, quite near the historic Lookout Mountain facility, headquarters for the newly established West Coast Defense Command. Important to know, because we have been told that Townsend ALWAYS lived close to his work.
If the new command was staffed according to the recommendations of the Redman brothers, there would have been a position for senior Radio Intelligence officer with authority over the implementation and administration of such, with open access to the highest Commanding Officer.
While I think Brown's reported Vega work was certainly legitimate, I do not believe it was the primary reason he was there. In the end, the Navy may have won a Pyrrhic victory, They lost Townsend to the "deeper draft" vessel of all that SIGINT would become, once the genie was out of the bottle.
Or the rabbit down the hole, if you prefer.