Operations and Technical Radio Committee (Watson-Watt Committee): Sub-committee for...

Reports and memoranda on German radar, communications and electronics work investigated by the Sub-committee for Investigation of German Electronics and Signals Organisation, a British inter-service sub-committee of the Operations and Technical Radio Committee.

Topics

Radio and television

Computing

The Sub-Committee for Investigation of German Electronics and Signals Organisation (SIGESO), formed in September 1944, was a British Inter-Service body, a sub-committee of the Operations and Technical Radio Committee whose Chairman was Sir Robert Watson- Watt. The function of the SIGESO was to arrange British investigation on German work on radar, communications and electronics, and to co-ordinate the contribution of the British Supply Department, Research and Development Establishment to the work of Group 1 C.I.O.S. (Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee). It also provided information derived from its investigations to allied governments, and various institutions including universities and trade associations.

The work of the SIGESO was divided into four branches: a travel agency which arranged the formation, briefing and dispatch of all investigating teams, a record office which collected and published intelligence, a small permanent field team, and a branch for miscellaneous activities which included the interviewing of German scientists.

Amongst the functions of the Record Office branch was the preparation of a digest of research intelligence, a digest of production intelligence (which incorporated much of the detail of the former but with more information useful to manufactures) and the maintenance in the Central Radio Bureau of a library of German research reports.