<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the movie <\/span>Kelly\u2019s Heroes <\/span><\/i>(1970 – MGM Pictures), Kelly (Clint Eastwood) leads a rag-tag assemblage of soldiers deep behind German lines with a singular goal in mind.\u00a0 While his commanding officers mistake Kelly\u2019s assault as an unbridaled act of bravery, his real aim is to raid a bank vault containing gold bars hidden away by the Nazi\u2019s.\u00a0 In this WWII comedy about double dealing and chicanery, Kelly and the Germans guarding the hoard call a truce long enough for each side to remove a .9 million dollar share (per man) of the bullion before going their separate ways.\u00a0 The all-star cast included notable names like Gavin MacLeod, Stuart Margolin, Harry Dean Stanton, Telly Savalas, Carrol O\u2019Connor, and Don Rickles, but the all time oddball of the bunch was the tank commander played by Donald Sutherland (whose nickname just happens to be \u2018Oddball\u2019).\u00a0 <\/span>Kelly\u2019s Heroes<\/span><\/i> is a sideways glance at WWII in much the same way that <\/span>M.A.S.H.<\/span><\/i> parodied the Korean War (or Conflict if you prefer).\u00a0 It is an entertaining tale, but a tale about a rogue band operating outside of the main battle plan while moving independently behind enemy lines separated from the regular Army units is surely a work of pure fiction. . . right?<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As the end of World War II approached in the European Theater, U.S. Army Major Floyd W. Hough was the head of an independant expeditionary force known as HOUGHTEAM (personally, I would have liked to call them \u2018Hough\u2019s Heroes\u2019, but it was long before the movie mentioned above).\u00a0 His team carried special blue passes from the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force that allowed them to move about the combat zone freely.\u00a0 They weren\u2019t searching for gold bullion, but what they were seeking was more valuable to the United States than that precious metal.\u00a0 The nineteen member force included ten enlisted men, four highly educated civilians, and an assortment of European immigrants who had fled to the United States to escape Nazi persecution.\u00a0 All were secretly trained in interrogation methods and psychological operations. They were charged with capturing the accumulated archives of geodetic information that the Nazis had been removing from Berlin.\u00a0 To protect this stash of information, the German\u2019s were secreting documents away in obscure villages far removed from the battle hotspots.\u00a0 As much as this information would hasten the end of the war, those who framed HOUGHTEAM\u2019s mission were also looking beyond the end of the war when such information would give the Americans an incalculable advantage in future global conflicts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0An excerpt from science journalist and co-author of <\/span>All Over the Map:\u00a0 A Cartographic Odyssey <\/span><\/i>by Greg Miller was published in the November 2019 issue of <\/span>Smithonian<\/span><\/i> magazine. In his book, Miller unravels the remarkable story of this top secret mission (the article\u2019s full title:\u00a0 <\/span>behind THE LINES:\u00a0 The Untold Story of the Secret U.S. Mission to Capture Priceless Mapping Data Held by the Nazis<\/span><\/i>).\u00a0 How secret were the mission\u2019s objectives?\u00a0 The HOUGHTEAM were not allowed to open the envelope containing their orders until they were two hours into their flight to Europe.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Geodesy, defined by Miller as \u2018the centuries-old science of measuring the Earth with utmost mathematical precision\u2019 does not often pop up on the list of \u2018essential weapons of warfare\u2019.\u00a0 Today,\u00a0 when one can get pinpoint GPS coordinates for any place on the planet with their phone, even using maps in battle seems an antiquated idea.\u00a0 Miller points out that the first Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) were launched by the U.S. military in 1978.\u00a0 Reaching the globe spanning capability of today\u2019s GPS systems required decades of satellite launches and the continued refinement of the software needed to process the information.\u00a0 Gathering accurate geophysical data points in the centuries before GPS was a much more painstaking proposition involving physical, boots on the ground measurement.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0During the 1979-80 academic year, I was back at NMU finishing the last requirements for a Master\u2019s degree in Geography.\u00a0 As a graduate student, my twenty hour a week assignment was to man the Geography Department\u2019s Map Library.\u00a0 Part of my job involved stocking and resale of all the United States Geological Survey (USGS) topographic maps covering Upper Michigan.\u00a0 Map coverage for an area as geographically small as the U.P. still required a lot of standardized topographic maps.\u00a0 Still, the USGS maps I sold were all housed in a couple of cabinets in the front corner of the room across from my desk. \u00a0 The large rectangular room housing the Map Library was ringed with cabinets that stored a large inventory of classroom wall maps that were available for professors to check out and use in various classrooms and lecture halls.\u00a0 By far the largest section in the Map Library was the collection housing 250,000 declassified military maps (occupying cabinets that took up the 90 percent of the floor space).\u00a0 Northern Michigan University was one of a series of nationally designated map repositories where the U.S. Military would send their old maps once newer maps were put into use, a fact that I was not aware of until taking care of them became one part of my grad student position.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the course of my ten month tenure as the Map Librarian, I was asked to find specific maps from the declassified collection a handful of times.\u00a0 When business was slow, fellow Geography grad student Mike and I would look for obscure places just for the fun of it.\u00a0 If we managed to look at 1000 maps in this time, we viewed a paltry .4 percent of the collection.\u00a0 The maps were indexed in four or five large binders each 8 to 10 inches thick.\u00a0 If there was a place called, say \u2018Lower East Slambovia\u2019, the index would direct us to Drawer K-12, Slot #18.\u00a0 Low and behold, there would be detailed topographic maps of \u2018Lower East Slambovia\u2019.\u00a0 In more recent years, the collection was relocated to the Olson Library across the Academic Mall from the West Science building and is no longer part of the Geography Department.\u00a0 If there were 100 such repositories around the country and each collection contained a similar number of maps, one doesn\u2019t even need to do the math to get a mental picture of the mountain of maps the U.S. Military relied on.\u00a0 How much of this work is done strictly in digital form these days is unknown to this old paper map guy.\u00a0 It is a pretty safe bet to say an Army unit going into combat would want a hard copy back up of any digital information necessary to wage war.\u00a0 Yes, I would think the pertinent maps are still available in paper form but please remember, my personal knowledge of the declassified military maps is forty years old.\u00a0 The last visit I made to the NMU Geography Department twenty years ago was a bit of a shock because the pen and ink cartography lab had already gone digital (and on that visit I never got to take a look at my old stomping grounds in the old Map Library).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If they made a movie about the HOUGHTEAM, it would be interesting to see who they cast as Major Hough. Miller describes him as, \u201cA short, serious man of 46 with receding red hair and wire-rimmed glasses.\u00a0 Hough had a degree in civil engineering from Cornell, and before the war he led surveying expeditions in the American West for the U.S. government and charted South American rainforests for oil companies.\u201d\u00a0 When his team touched down in Paris, they were toting 1800 pounds of camera gear and equipment for creating microfilm records of their finds.\u00a0 They had lists including potential targets, names of German scientists who might prove helpful in their search (as well as those who should be avoided), and 11,000 index cards detailing information already on file with the Army Map Service.\u00a0 When the first German city fell into Allied hands (Aachen on October 21, 1944), the HOUGHTEAM moved in to search for materials at the Technische Hochschule (Technical University).\u00a0 They found bundles of folders that (to Hough) appeared as if the Germans, \u201chad left a number of files all roped up ready to load into trucks when they made a hasty exit.\u201d\u00a0 The files were microfilmed and sent directly to the commanders at the front.\u00a0 The information was put into use immediately to improve the targeting accuracy of the Allied artillery units.\u00a0 The long term benefit of this information would not be fully\u00a0 realized until after the war.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Hough\u2019s team found their progress slowed as the Germans mounted the counteroffensive known as the Battle of the Bulge in December of 1944.\u00a0 The HOUGHTEAM were hunkered down in Paris during this pivotal battle but they were not idle.\u00a0 They continued their research six days a week.\u00a0 When the Belgians requested assistance microfilming survey data and secret lists of artillery coordinates they had acquired, Hough was happy to help.\u00a0 What he didn\u2019t mention were the duplicate copies he made and sent off to Washington.\u00a0 The French city of Strasbourg was soon reliberated and the HOUGHTEAM removed a cache of top-quality German survey equipment before the French army even knew it was there.\u00a0 When the Allied forces regained the upper hand and resumed their eastward march toward the German heartland, Hough and his team were poised to follow them across the Rhine.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As they moved from Cologne (on March 7) to Frankfurt at the end of March, they continued to interrogate those who could provide information about the hidden geodetic information they were seeking.\u00a0 Surprised that some of the Germans were willing to be helpful (\u201cIt is surprising that these Germans cooperate as they do,\u201d Hough reported in a memo to Washington), he wasn\u2019t sure if the scientists were anti-Nazi or just afraid of what the Americans might do to them.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The team found a major cache of material in Wiesbaden marked \u2018Secret\u2019 or \u2018Confidential\u2019.\u00a0 An interview with a captured officer of the German national survey agency (the Reichsamt fur Landesaufnahme or RfL) put two small towns east of Thuringia on Hough\u2019s target list.\u00a0 There they located the entire RfL archive stashed in three doll factories, private homes, a ranch house, and a stable.\u00a0 Hough wrote, \u201cCannot begin to estimate yet what is here but it is plenty.\u201d\u00a0 April 12 found Hough at Ohrdruf, a satellite camp of the Buchenwald complex, at the same time as Generals Eisenhouwer and Patton.\u00a0 \u201cThere are not words capable of expressing the horrible scenes on every hand,\u201d Hough wrote.\u00a0 \u201cIt was revolting and we were left almost speechless.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0While overnighting in the city of Gotha, a less than cooperative RfL official finally blurted out the name \u2018Saalfeld\u2019.\u00a0 The HOUGHTEAM entered Saalfeld on April 17, some four days behind the advancing U.S. 87th Infantry Division.\u00a0 Here they discovered nothing less than the central map and geodetic data repository for the German Army.\u00a0 With an estimated 4,000 Soviet and Polish refugees running amok (they had been liberated from the nearby forced labor camps), Hough was concerned that this mother lode of information might be destroyed by some of the drunken, angry mobs.\u00a0 He requested 150 troops to help transport the materials and to protect the townspeople.\u00a0 By the time the Germans surrendered on May 8, Hough\u2019s men had shipped 35 truckloads (some 250 tons) of captured materials 75 miles south to the town of Bamberg.\u00a0 Haste was necessary as Saalfeld was in the previously agreed upon \u2018Russian Zone\u2019 and if they had waited until the end of the fighting, the Red Army would have laid claim to the valuable intel.\u00a0 Among the captured items were 100,000 maps covering all of Europe, Asiatic Russia, North Africa, and the Middle East.\u00a0 By Hough\u2019s estimate, 95 percent of this data was new to the U.S. Military.\u00a0 The HOUGHTEAM was still removing materials from Saalfeld as late as July 1.\u00a0 The Soviets took possession of the area none the wiser on July 2.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Hough was still in country at Bramberg when the war ended, but he already had an idea of how to apply the captured data.\u00a0 Geodesists had a dream that one day they could create a geodetic network or \u2018datum\u2019 covering the whole world.\u00a0 Hough was now in charge of the data needed to construct the network for Europe.\u00a0 He brought an RfL geodesist named Erwin Gigas to Bramberg and had Gigas\u2019 team begin the calculations needed to integrate survey data for Central Europe.\u00a0 He even arranged for them to receive room, board, and pay equal to the salaries they had been paid by the German government during the war.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By September of 1945, Hough had returned to Washington D.C. and his position as the head of the Geodetic Division of the Army Map Service.\u00a0 His involvement with the European Datum (the ED50) culminated when the project was completed in 1951.\u00a0 The ED50 became part of the new global coordinate system known as the Universal Transverse Mercator which is now the standard coordinate system used by the U.S. military and NATO.\u00a0 According to Yale science historian William Rankin, \u201cThe Universal Transverse Mercator was a crucial step along the path from old-fashioned maps . . .\u00a0 to coordinate systems such as GPS.\u00a0 It was like GPS before GPS.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Hough died in 1976 at the age of 77.\u00a0 When military cartographer Thom Kaye learned about the HOUGHTEAM just a few years ago, he began a campaign to have Hough be inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.\u00a0 This posthumous honor was granted in 2018.\u00a0 He may not be remembered as the leader of \u2018Hough\u2019s Heroes\u2019, but at least he is enshrined in the Hall of Fame.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As for <\/span>Kelly\u2019s Heroes, <\/span><\/i>it was filmed\u00a0 in Yugoslavia (now Croatia) because their army was still using WWII vintage tanks and other mechanized equipment – German and American.\u00a0 British TV and film writer Troy Kennedy Martin based the story loosely on a true story featured in the <\/span>Guinness World Records (1956-2000) <\/span><\/i>called \u201cThe Greatest Robbery on Record.\u201d\u00a0 The <\/span>Guiness<\/span><\/i> tale recounts the removal of the German National Gold Reserves in Bavaria by a combination of U.S. Military personnel and German civilians in 1945.\u00a0 Lack of corroborating evidence at the time Martin was writing the movie script led Guiness editor Norris McWhirter to advise MGM\u2019s Head of Research that, \u201cAny film made will have to be a historical romance rather than history.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0British researcher Ian Sayer began a nine-year investigation of the incident in 1975 that confirmed that this \u2018Greatest Robbery\u2019 had been the subject of a cover up.\u00a0 Eventually Sayer was able to personally view two of the remaining gold bars (replete with Nazi markings).\u00a0 On September 27, 1996, these two bars of bullion (now valued at more than $1 million) were secretly handed over to the American government.\u00a0 The gold was then transported to the Bank of England to be added to the account of the Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold (TCRMG).\u00a0 The location of the rest of this gold hoard is another historical mystery waiting to be solved.<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 War is always a good excuse to hear\u00a0WAR<\/em>