IMETS receives weather information from polar-orbiting civilian and defense meteorological satellites, the Air Force Weather Agency, artillery meteorological and remote sensors, and civilian forecast centers. The vehicular mounted configuration IMETS version is shown here. (U.S. Army file photo.)

The brief, yet startling, “crack” or “pop” heard while listening to the radio during a storm might only capture your attention momentarily. For Bob Fetzer, those noises signified a proposed amphibious assault on the Japanese mainland during World War II (WWII).

A veteran of the Army’s 4th Air Force, Fetzer’s story precedes the satellite-based weather prediction systems used by the Army today that are designed for High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles, command posts and even laptops. During WWII, Fetzer was part of a secretive sferics project where the Army used the radio waves of the lightning discharge from which the aforementioned sounds result to predict storm fronts and typhoons. “The sferics [system] was used to pick up hurricane fronts and other weather phenomena over wide ranges of land and sea and was to be used primarily for a proposed invasion of Japan,” Fetzer said.

The sferics system included a large, box-shaped terminal with an adjacent radio. A tall antenna, located outdoors, was used to pick up electronic impulses produced by the sferics. Sferics are the radio waves produced by lightning discharges and are still used in lightning detection technology today. They can be heard by listeners of commercial radio stations as a result of lightning discharged nearby.

During WWII, sferics system users could monitor impulses that were represented through various lines that appeared on its nearly 2-by-2 foot cathode ray tube screen. A user who noticed a spike would press a button, which alerted Soldiers at other stations to examine the same spike on their respective screens. “There were a lot of spikes on it, but you picked big ones — ones that really shot out from the center of the screen,” Fetzer said.

The system was staffed by two Soldiers, 24 hours per day. During an 8-hour shift, one Soldier would read off data related to the spikes, which the other would record. Both were only responsible for reporting the information over the radio and did not take part in analyzing it. A second lieutenant, who was in charge of the project, would plot the data and compare it with information received at other stations.

The sferics system in use during 1961, with a cathode ray tube similar to what Robert Fetzer saw during WWII. (U.S. Army file photo.)

Today, commanders at all echelons use an automated weather system called the Integrated Meteorological System (IMETS) to receive, process and disseminate weather observations, forecasts and environmental effects. IMETS development is headed by Project Manager Distributed Common Ground System-Army (DCGS-A). DCGS-A is assigned to Program Executive Office (PEO) Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, which is headquartered at Fort Monmouth, NJ.

IMETS receives weather information from polar-orbiting civilian and defense meteorological satellites, the Air Force Weather Agency, artillery meteorological and remote sensors, and civilian forecast centers. It then processes and collates forecasts, observations and climatological data to produce timely and accurate weather reports tailored to the warfighter’s specific needs. Rather than distributing information over radios, as the sferics operators did, IMETS users view data as it is updated on a computer screen. Satellites and sophisticated weather radar were nonexistent when Fetzer served.

Fetzer was a 19-year-old private and already a trained weather observer in the U.S. Army Air Corps when he first arrived at Fort Monmouth in September 1944. There, he and other Soldiers from his unit first received training as sferics operators. “They gave us classes there, in which they taught us how to read the sferics system,” Fetzer said. The Soldiers took classes in what was formerly a bar with a dance floor at a nearby hotel located in Red Bank, NJ. Fetzer spent a few months at Fort Monmouth, where he slept in a 1-story barrack, in a large room designed for 50 Soldiers. It included a small sergeant’s cubicle.

In October 1944, the Soldiers left Fort Monmouth and traveled to Saint George, Bermuda. There, Fetzer tested the sferics system in a large, mobile trailer. Stations were set up at Fort Monmouth, Bermuda and a third location where sferics-related information was passed. The Army deemed the testing of the system a success when it was able to pick up responses in the Atlantic Ocean. In March 1945, the Soldiers traveled to and stayed at Fort Monmouth for about 2 months. They flew by C-47 aircraft to a location near the coast of the East China Sea called Changting, where Fetzer set up a station and prepared the system. The Army planned to use the system to predict impending typhoons that could have endangered a massive assault planned for the fall of 1945 on the Japanese mainland. “When they were going to invade Japan they were going to use a lot of amphibious landing [craft] and they didn’t want to get hit with a typhoon,” Fetzer said. The assault never occurred, as President Harry S. Truman decided to use two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, which led to the Japanese surrender in WWII.

Weather radar and sferics data of a 1955 tornado in Blackwell, OK, is shown. This diagram was taken from “Lightning Discharge” by H.W. Kasemir, Army Electronics Laboratories, TR 2401, May 1964. (Photo courtesy of the CECOM LCMC Historical Office.)

Today, Fort Monmouth plays host to the Team Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance organizations that oversee the creation of systems fielded to warfighters throughout the world. At Fort Monmouth during WWII, Fetzer saw only military personnel. Today, the Fort’s workforce is mostly made up of civilians.

Training on the system was much different than that of today where Soldiers receive over-the-shoulder training and assistance from support personnel. Now, digital systems engineers (DSEs) and field service representatives work with units during predeployment exercises and in theater. “You were trained on the job primarily,” said Fetzer, of the training he received on the sferics system. “The longer you read the screen, the better you got at it.”

Today, during a unit’s training exercise, the DSEs help resolve issues, set priorities, repair boxes, provide some over-the-shoulder training and explain systems. Many deploy to support the same unit in Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq or Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. “I am an embedded DSE and wherever the unit goes, I go,” said Josh Adams, 1st Brigade DSE, with the Battle Command Network Support Directorate (BCNSD), Fort Hood, TX. The BCNSD is assigned to Project Manager Tactical Radio Communications Systems of the Army’s PEO Command, Control and Communications Tactical (C3T), which is headquartered at Fort Monmouth.

For more information on the sferics system used at Fort Monmouth, please visit the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) Life Cycle Management Command (LCMC) Historical Web site at http://www.monmouth.army.mil/historian.