Germany The first ferret mission was by the Graf Zeppelin on September 22 1938, flying over the Czech border, on an 11 hour flight. Another 30 hour flight took place on April 14 1939, and another of 28 hours on June 15 1939. A 44 hour flight was over the Dutch Frisian Islands and the North Sea on July 12 1939, and a 17 hour flight over the Poland border on July 18 1939, and a 20 hour flight on July 22 1939. On May 30 1939 the 776-foot
LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin flew up the
North Sea to the
Shetland Islands, searching for any radar frequencies, but the Germans did not believe that British radar was sufficiently advanced, or much too crude, to be effective to track aircraft. But, the Graf Zeppelin had been, nonetheless, precisely tracked by British radar all the way to the Shetland Islands and back, although the German equipment onboard was not adequately working on this flight. Another similar flight was made on August 2 1939, on its Flight 24, with commander
Albert Sammt, from Cuxhaven. This time, British radar did not sufficiently spot the airship, but it was visually sighted. The airship flew gracefully up the eastern coast looking for BBC transmitters and RAF navigational transmitters, at 20 to 52 MHz frequencies. The frequency that was found, was thought, by Ernst Breuning, to be from an ionosphere experiment in Germany. The German
Freya radar worked at 120-130 MHz. The British radar worked on 12 metres, around 25Hz, and the Germans had looked for a much shorter wavelength, and found nothing. Flt Lt
Walter Pretty at Fighter Command Operations Room, realised the object seen on radar was from an airship. Sqn Ldr Findlay Crerar, at
RAF Dyce at Aberdeen, took off with another aircraft of
612 Sqn, and photographed the airship.
United Kingdom The first ferret mission occurred on December 1942, in
Cambridgeshire, England. It involved a
Royal Air Force (RAF) aircraft flown by Sergeant Paulton, with Flight Sergeant Harold Jordan serving as the mission's radio frequency operator and Flight Sergeant William Bigoray serving as radio operator. Aside from Jordan, the aircrew were Canadian. Around 5am on 3 December 1942, the aircraft was attacked eleven times; around 7:20am, the aircraft reached the English coast. Jordan had been wounded in the attack, while Bigoray's legs were severely injured. The crew expected that Bigoray would not survive, and so he was parachuted out while the plane flew over
Kent, with his technical documents tucked into his clothing in case he died. Bigoray landed safely and later recovered. The crew ditched the aircraft near
Walmer at around 8:24am. The Wireless Intelligence Development Unit became
109 Sqn on December 10 1940, which looked for German radio sources.
192 Sqn flew all over Germany, from
RAF Foulsham in north Norfolk, the first British squadron for conducting Ferret missions, with the 'Bagful' detector. During D-Day, 192 Sqn flew constantly from Cherbourg to Calais, looking for German centimetric radar. Later in the war,
171 Sqn were at
RAF North Creake, in north-west
Norfolk. From August 1944 the
36th Bombardment Squadron flew
B-24 aircraft out of
RAF Cheddington in south
Buckinghamshire, on Ferret missions. 192 Sqn became 51 Sqn in 1958, and carries out Ferret missions from
RAF Waddington to this day.
United States The United States' first ferret mission occurred on 6 March 1943, and involved a
B-24 Liberator flying over
Kiska, Alaska. Just over a month after that mission, the 16th Reconnaissance Squadron (now the
16th Electronic Warfare Squadron of the
United States Air Force [USAF]) was formed at Foch Field in Tunisia. In the 1960s, almost 100 aircrew died, or became unaccounted for, flying ferret missions. ==Missile technology==