What is a Huff Duff? Who is Ginger Tom?

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The true story of a World War Two Huff Duff and its resident cat - Ginger Tom - in the text below...
2024 is the 80th Anniversary of D-Day, the start of the great campaign to liberate Europe
and bring WW2 to an end.
This is the sixth video in the '80th anniversary of D-Day in The New Forest' series of seven videos. Links to the other videos are below.
Please subscribe to our channel, to help it grow! / @livinginthenewforest
80th Anniversary of D-Day in The New Forest Video Series:
No 1. The Arrow: • Uncovering The Mystery...
No 2: The Observation Shelter: • Inside the WW2 Ashley ...
No 3: The Sub Pens Target and a Crater: • New Forest's Secrets: ...
No 4: The WW2 Secrets of Lepe Beach: • Secrets of D-Day (and ...
No 5: The Canadian War Memorial: • Discovering the Canadi...
No 6: The Huff Duff and Ginger Tom: • What is a Huff Duff? W...
No 7: The Airfields Memorial and Beaulieu Airfield: • Visiting the D-Day Air...
D-Day Anniversary Playlist (all 7 videos): • 80th anniversary of D-Day
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Along the south coast of England during World War 2 there was an elaborate communications network set up to monitor aircraft movements, both enemy and defenders.
At the sharp end of this were a series of Direction Finding posts and this video shows the location of one of these, at Ibsley, in The New Forest.
These direction finding posts used high frequency radio bands so they came to be known as HF/DF or Huff Duffs.
Using a system of triangulation, two or more Huff Duffs 30 miles apart could determine the direction and position of defensive aircraft from their radio transmissions. Once this information was passed back to the sector control, defensive aircraft could be guided to intercept the enemy planes.
Each station was also equipped with a "Homer", a radio transmitter beacon to help Allied aircraft navigate their way home in bad weather.
The Huff Duff would have been a 3 storey wooden tower about 30 feet high with a brick blast wall around it to protect the tower from enemy bombs exploding nearby.
On the information panel we can read the story of Ginger Tom, a cat who lived in the Huff Duff with the crew.
Ginger Tom spent most of his time asleep on the warm signal generating set. The crew quickly noticed that whenever they received a radio transmission, Ginger Tom flicked his ears and shook his head. He was even given his own pair of headphones.
One evening in the summer of 1942, Ginger Tom started to twitch but the crew couldn’t find any radio transmissions. They sent up a bearing transmission anyway while Ginger Tom continued to twitch. This went on for some time with Ginger Tom’s ears’ twitching but the crew heard nothing.
It turned out that an American pilot in a P 38 was lost with one engine on fire and the other misfiring. He’d sent out a may day signal which Ginger Tom picked up. The US pilot manged to plot his position and landed successfully at an airfield in Exeter.
Ginger Tom probably saved the American pilot’s life!
At the end of the war Ginger Tom was adopted by a local family and lived out the rest of his life in happy retirement
You can see more about the Huff Duff here:
www.atlantikwal...
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"Huff Duff" refers to High-Frequency Direction Finding, a technology used during World War II for radio direction finding. It was employed primarily by naval forces to locate the position of enemy ships or aircraft by triangulating their radio transmissions.
High-Frequency Direction Finding (HF/DF), commonly known as "Huff Duff," played a crucial role in the Battle of the Atlantic, where German U-boats posed a significant threat to Allied shipping. The technology allowed Allied forces to detect and locate the transmissions of U-boats, enabling them to respond effectively and protect their convoys.
Huff Duff stations were strategically placed on ships, aircraft, and land bases to create a network capable of determining the direction of radio signals. By analyzing the bearings from multiple stations, operators could pinpoint the location of the transmitting vessel or aircraft. This information was invaluable for anti-submarine warfare and convoy protection.
The effectiveness of Huff Duff contributed significantly to the Allied victory in the Battle of the Atlantic, as it helped reduce the number of successful U-boat attacks on convoys. The technology continued to evolve throughout the war, with improvements in accuracy and range, enhancing its utility in naval operations.