From its inception on July 1, 1940 until the end of World War II, the Radio Intelligence Division (RID) of the Federal Communications Commission intercepted hundreds of coded messages sent by German espionage agents all over the world and supplied the cryptographic laboratories of our government with these messages at their specific request.
In performing its patrol of the ether, RID located Nazi agents with their transmitters in the western Hemisphere, Africa, Europe and Asia. It sent trained radio intelligence engineers to Latin American Republics to help clean out the infestation of German spies in those countries and trained representatives of those countries in radio intelligence techniques at its facility in Laurel, Maryland.
RID located distressed aircraft lost in the black-out or having cockpit trouble by providing fixes to their radio signals and got them back on course to safe landings.
Another, rather unknown “first” for the RID was the fact that the movie produced about the RID called “Patrolling the Ether” was the first movie to be broadcast on television, March 10, 1944.
A reminder of the very beginning days of RID shows George Sterling and Charlie Elllert standing in the Bunch Bowl area of Hawaii where they set up a critical Radio Direction Finding facility.
The first Radio Intelligence Division Team in Hawaii where they were tasked to set up a Radio Direction Finding facility at Waipahu to be able to listen to enemy radio transmissions.
Historical Documents:
- Spies In The Ether [pdf]
- RID Report 1983 Meeting [pdf]
- RID Report 1981 Meeting [pdf]
- RID Report Of 1980 Meeting [pdf]
- Spark Gap Times 1964-08 George Sterling Stories [pdf]
this content was previously posted at fccrid.org, but is no longer available. It has been posted here as a historical resource.