11 February 1944 Part 2

11 February 1944 Part 2 Radio exercise Tannhäuser exemption for 319th Division

Date note: 11 February 1944.

Seventh Army Headquarters. Army Signals Commander/Ia No. 880/44 Top Secret. Army headquarters, 11 February 1944. Twenty-six copies, copy 26. Subject: radio exercise Tannhäuser. One annex. To Ia war diary.

1. By order of Army Group B, radio exercise Tannhäuser will take place from 13 February to 1 March 1944.

2. Exercise direction for the army area: Colonel Stoephasius, senior artillery officer, Seventh Army Headquarters. Deputy: Captain Rheinfeld, Army Signals Commander staff.

3. During this exercise, radio traffic of corps and divisions is to be controlled so that, with staggered commencement, all radio stations intended for command and supply are operating from 17 February. From 27 February, radio traffic is gradually to diminish again. See the annex for details of the course of the exercise.

4. Implementing instructions.

a. All command authorities in the army area down to and including divisional headquarters participate in Tannhäuser exercise radio traffic. During the same period, exercise radio traffic below division is to continue under Seventh Army/Army Signals Commander No. 1681/43 Secret of 18 June 1943, preserving the radio pattern previously shown in exercises. Measures ordered for Tannhäuser are to be applied correspondingly.

b. The following are also to be simulated: IX Army Corps headquarters at Port-Brillet, 15 km northwest of Laval, with 61st Panzer Division at Craon, 25 km southwest of Laval; 62nd Panzer Division at Loudéac; and 720th Infantry Division at Derval, 20 km east of Redon.

For this purpose, the following are to be detailed to the named places, arriving on 16 February. For IX Army Corps headquarters: one officer as directing officer and one medium motorised radio detachment 100 MW/15 KZ from Seventh Army Headquarters; one medium motorised radio detachment 100 MW from LXXXIV Army Corps headquarters; one medium radio detachment 100 MW/15 KZW from LXXIV Army Corps headquarters. For 61st Panzer Division: one directing officer and one medium motorised radio detachment 100 MW from 77th Infantry Division. For 62nd Panzer Division: one directing officer and one medium motorised radio detachment 100 MW from 179th Reserve Panzer Division. For 720th Infantry Division: one directing officer and one medium motorised radio detachment 100 MW from XXV Army Corps headquarters. [Radio equipment abbreviations retained as identifiers; the last letters of the corps equipment designations are faint.]

The command authorities supplying the directing officers will arrange exercise radio documentation for the simulated headquarters. Exercise direction will issue separate orders for the course of events at those headquarters: command-post moves, subordination, and the number, dispatch times and length of radio messages.

c. The disposition of our forces is to be concealed by changing radio communication relationships and relocating radio stations, except those of 319th Infantry Division, within the limits of fuel availability and while preserving readiness for action at short notice.

Exercise command posts should be 20–50 km from present command posts for corps headquarters, and 10–30 km for divisions. The necessary fuel is to be made available to signals battalions. Fuel consumed by radio detachments of the simulated headquarters will be reimbursed by Seventh Army Headquarters, Senior Quartermaster, after the exercise ends.

d. To present an overall radio pattern roughly corresponding to previous practice, radio traffic should have more or less the character of a technical radio exercise. Message density is to be controlled according to established practice, using the message-number schedule.

e. Corps and divisions will each appoint an officer responsible for conducting the exercise as their exercise director, and report him by 13 February to Seventh Army Headquarters, Tannhäuser exercise direction. Each is responsible in his area for tactically correct selection of command posts and for ensuring that the number, length and timing of radio messages correspond to the prescribed exercise course in the annex. For example, message traffic must take account of reporting during a major enemy landing: operations reports, intelligence reports and senior quartermaster daily reports.

f. Directing officers at simulated corps and divisional headquarters, and the exercise directors of corps and divisions, are subordinate to exercise direction and will continuously report their command posts to it. It is advisable to attach a radio officer or radio senior NCO to them.

g. Message contents may be chosen freely, for example texts from old newspapers, reception results and reports to exercise direction.

5. Secrecy. Written material of every kind is to be destroyed after the exercise. On the telephone and elsewhere it is to be described only as Exercise Tannhäuser.

6. Seventh Army exercise command post from 13 February 1944: Mayenne area.

7. Special technical radio orders and exercise instructions will follow.

8. All radio exercises in the army area are to cease insofar as they interfere with providing equipment for Tannhäuser.

For Army Headquarters, the Chief of the General Staff. By order, signed Pemsel. Certified correct, [signature illegible], Colonel, General Staff. Distribution down to divisions.

Annex to Seventh Army/Army Signals Commander/Ia No. 880/44 Top Secret of 11 February 1944. Course of the exercise.

13–16 February: increase in radio traffic corresponding to a gradually intensifying period of tension.

17–26 February: heavy radio activity of the kind expected during a major enemy landing and the subsequent fighting. Assume that a large proportion of telephone connections have been destroyed completely or temporarily by enemy action.

27 February–1 March: reduction of radio traffic as after the successful repulse or destruction of the landed enemy.

[This is an exercise order and timetable, not a report of actual landings.]

German Seventh Army Headquarters (AOK 7), NARA T-312 Roll 1565. Roll 1565 Jersey and Channel Islands English translations.docx, reference 7. Scan extracts: img009_10_18763_20853.jpg, img009_11_20853_22942.jpg, img009_12_22942_25054.jpg, img010_01_0_2020.jpg, img010_02_2020_4083.jpg. Extract filenames identify the original image strip, section number and horizontal pixel boundaries; these are not archival frame numbers.