I wasn't going to update my patch post until later this week but I NEED to make a post right now.
Siri play, tell me why for the 100th time-
I was fully expecting to make a post update about VQ squadrons in Japan and the use of bats and dragons, etc but this just killed me LOL
So overseas during the cold war Naval Security Group Activity [papa podlodka's group] was filled with nerds doing cryptologic stuff. Telemetry, ELINT, russian language interception and interpretation. This newer group is linked to Cybersecurity and electronic warfare along with weapons systems, night vision, etc.
Whew. Okay I need to go have a little lay down.
Tagging all the tags and matrixgate because this slots in pretty well with that or a story about a rogue AI/War Games.
and I am certain crane was one of the tudum puzzle answers
(via Preserving the History of Women in Cryptology - by SJStone)
Following concerns that the National Cryptologic Museum had covered over pictures of women who had faithfully served the United States of America in the field of cryptology, I decided to screenshot the 18 women on the museum’s website out of concern the current administration, full of weak men threatened by professional, educated woman, might try to erase that history. Here are those posts to both preserve and celebrate their tireless contributions.
Last night I uploaded the most prestigious of the group, Elizebeth S. Freidman. Today, the list continues with Agnes Meyer, Ann Caractisti, Barbara Clack and Dorothy T. Blum.
Operation Primrose and Red October are the Keys to understanding Stranger Things
Or;
We just watched one big sleight of hand
This is the text of the essay I wrote on substack below the break since it's so dense and there's a lot of historical context
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was teaching Winston Churchill how to be a good spymaster and cryptologic genius when it came to operations that involved sleight of hand over raw intelligence. Though the psychological operations the United Kingdom [and subsequently the United States would pull off decades later] more times than not - saved countless lives or provided cover for other sensitive intel gathering ops. Operation Mincemeat and Operation Primrose were lessons the United States would take to heart.
For the United States twenty to thirty-five years after WW2 would allow for the West to and USSR to gather the spoils from Nazi Germany. Radio Equipment, scientists, military equipment, and submarine technology would be divided between the USSR and US. Less than two years after the second world war ended an Iron Curtain would descend across Eastern Europe and suddenly we were in the Cold War.
From Chruchill's Sinews of Peace “The dark ages may return, the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of science, and what might now shower immeasurable material blessings upon mankind, may even bring about its total destruction.” While World War 2 would be defined by mass shelling, genocide, and rations this new cold war seemed to be Governed by Mars and Neptune; a weird dreamy paranoia of military and technological advancement, the Atom and The Sea.
To understand Stranger Things as a whole we need to go over a couple historic events that would change the world. Let's start with Operation Primrose. This was a British Royal Navy operation that pulled the Enigma Machine off U-Boat U-110. Captain of the Boat Lemp was shot by a British Sailor according to one other Nazi sailor. The Brits also grabbed the Kurzsingale book. Captain Lemps crew abandoned ship and went with the Brits as prisoners.
According to The American Churchill museum, “All told the allies managed to secure just three Enigma machines - two courtesy of the British and one via the USA - but also managed to capture many codebooks. The successful breaching of the German system was significant to the outcome of WWII.”.
Within Stranger Things we are shown references to the cold war or other wars in Various ways. Season three shows Dustin hoisting an antenna much like the Flag on Iwo Jima. There's a stained glass of a red primrose in season four that is prominent in the main story line. This almost assuredly is referencing Operation Primrose. There's use of a mannequin in seasons three and five which could be alluding to Operation Mincemeat. Even using a fake body in season one is skating very close to referencing the WW2 plan to plant war plans on a dead body to be dropped out of a submarine in hopes it would be intercepted. Both these missions saved countless lives. I encourage you to look these missions up as there is so much information.
Let's talk about Hunt For Red October. Big Red is referenced in every season. I didn't notice HFRO aside from season three and that was years ago. Upon rewatching prior to season five I have discovered it's everywhere.
Red October as a book was born out of a need to break the Soviets financially in a multi step game of psychological warfare. During Kissinger's talks with Brezhnev to reduce and limit arms both sides had to contend with losing their missiles. This was exceptionally tricky when dealing with SLBMs. America had an advantage with electronics manufacturing so making smaller platforms was an easier task than for our adversary.
The Following is from The Ford Library.
Kissinger: Yes.
Brezhnev: Someone else could trigger it -- Burma~ or someone.
Kissinger: It is the Burmese nuclear arsenal that we're concerned about.
No, I understood your question.
The General Secretary said we wanted to be superior. This isn't,
strictly speaking, what is being said. What is being said is that the United
States should be second to none.
Brezhnev: I want a specific answer to my question: What do you mean by the
statement that the United States has to be stronger for there to be peace in
the world? And Henry, please don't think I'm in any way irritated when I say that;
I ask in a friendly way.
Kissinger: I understand. But first I want to say what is being said, and
second is the objective reality to which it refers. First, what is being said is
that the United States should be second to none. But I won't stick on that
quibble; I now want to explain the objective realities of American defense planning
The Back and forth of this meeting is one of the most consequential in history. Throughout you can see Breznevh's convern about MIRVs and how many missles each country would have on each boat. Since USSR couldn't make their submarines smaller but wanted to keep up with the US they built the typhoon/Yankee class submarine. The lead boat would be called Dmitri Donskoi.
Once Reagan was in office with Bush as vice president they went to work with Secretary of the Navy John Lehman. Under Lehman's leadership the US Navy went to work on the submarine force of the soviets. This is not to say there weren't other ops just as important across agencies and branches. Sometimes joint ops like Able Archer proved their worth in data points almost immediately. But let's be kind and rewind to 1978.
According to the Undersea museum:
This particular Yankee trailing operation—given the code name Evening Star—began on March 17, 1978 when USS Batfish (SSN-681) intercepted a Yankee SSBN in the Norwegian Sea. Batfish, towing a 1,100-foot sonar array, had been sent out from Norfolk specifically to intercept the SSBN, U.S. intelligence having been alerted to her probable departure from the Kola Peninsula by the CIA-sponsored Norwegian intelligence activities and U.S. spy satellites. These sources, in turn, cued the Norway-based SOSUS array as the Soviet missile submarine sailed around Norway’s North Cape.
“After trailing the Soviet submarine for 51 hours while she traveled 350 nautical miles, Batfish lost contact during a severe storm on March 19. A U.S. Navy P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft was dispatched from Reykjavik, Iceland, to seek out the evasive quarry. There was intermittent contact with the submarine the next day and firm contact was reestablished late on March 21 in the Iceland-Faeroes gap.
“The trail of the SSBN was then maintained by Batfish for 44 continuous days, the longest trail of a Yankee conducted to that time by a U.S. submarine. During that period the Yankee traveled 8,870 nautical miles, including a 19-day ‘alert’ phase, much of it some 1,600 nautical miles from the U.S. coast, little more than the range of the submarine’s 16 RSM-25/R-27U missiles. The Batfish report provides day-to-day details of the Yankee’s patrol and the trailing procedures.”. [Cold War Cat and Mouse, Part II - Submarine Force Library & Museum Association https://share.google/65kl2Q1Cz39H7v8MX]
One of the biggest thorns in the Soviet's sides was knowing the US had been able to trail its newest, largest, and most expensive apparent stealth missile platform. The full details of this would become known to USSR once John Walker gave up the information. Along with Aldrich Ames this was devasting but it didn't deter the US Strategy.
When Big Red came out in book form it was a wake up call to the Soviets that the US would stop at nothing to financially break them. The inability to produce microprocessors is one of the dominoes that would cause the soviet military industrial complex and then the state, to fail.
The story of Red October is one amalgam of nautical history in the mid twentieth century. Captain Ramius defecting with his men after giving up essentially the cold war's own enigma, matches that of U-110. Red October is not scuttled like U-110; not yet. Not before the intelligence agencies can glean information from the boat.
At the end of the story The Ambassador says he lost another submarine. He is then told by the US Government, maybe one day equipment will exist to check the sea floor for. The implication here is a few years prior, Howard Hughes would help the CIA pull of the biggest sleight of hand heist the world had ever seen. The CIA and Naval intelligence would use a giant claw to pull part of sunken K 129 from the sea bed.
Author's note: based off the CIA insignia honoring this mission it's possible there was more divers involved than we realize. A matroyska of deception. Perhaps the claw lowered Trieste or something similar and allowed divers out.
Meanwhile sensitive intelligence gathering there and other locations where prying eyes couldn't see.
At the end of season five of Stranger Things Eleven apparently sacrifices herself. I truly believe if we take everything this show has told us we can walk away with one main idea: What we have seen may not have been the truth and was one huge sleight of hand.
Owens is posted up infront of this wall in season 4
which look like one of these cards [sometimes they look like crossword puzzles]
Henryk Zygalski invented what was later called the Zygalski Sheets, which exploited the repetitiveness of the signs in a key message.
i pulled that from this Website who talks about Henryk and the other two polish folks who helped with enigma prior to and during Alan Turing.
additionally in relation to ST
The Cryptologic Bombs
Rejewski again proved himself to be the ultimate engineering genius by designing a machine called cryptologic bomb. It was an electro-mechanical device whose functioning was rooted in Zygalski’s idea – the tracing of repeating letters in the key messages. The name ‘bombs’ probably comes from the ticking sound it made while working, which reminded its constructor of a ticking bomb.
off the wall batshit theory- i surmised a couple posts ago that if will somehow is made out of Alan Turings basecode [or maybe multiple people are] that it got corrupted with a virus but that his memories or dreams may be encrypted much like folks have been relating theories back to inception
whats more cruel than making alan turings future synth great great great grandkid believe he's nuts than to encrypt his memories and make the bombe/bomba ticking sound not like the machine he used to save lives but make it sound like a random clock.
WHICH OKAY EXPLAINS INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE. going on an adventure with your maker ARE YOU KIDDING MEEEEE i just rewatched it a couple days ago and have been trying to figure out how it would relate. This is how. DUDE I hope CG gives us a time travel adventure to meet all these nerds omggggggg
holy. shit.
It's Possible Henry is Henryk but i still think Alexei is Marian or Jerzy.
Henryk has suits and ties like Brenner lol
Considering all the tudum puzzles keep pointing to poland and intelligence history post season 5 this is crazy
omfg there was a naval security group in Bremerhaven, Germany LOL but I think the show is highlighting Augsburg
AHAHAHA
jfc now i gotta modify this essay. also
lol, lmao
if i end up discovering something with papa podlodka I'm gonna die laughing
patches for good measure
dude im about to lose it lmao
ST is NSGA all the way down
uhhh
okay i think im gonna put out a video tomorrow [coming out friday afterboon] because i need to talk about all this. you guys don't get it. this is historic.
this group has never been in the spot light.
omfg im laughing my ass off
May I present The Elephant Cage:
oooooh duffer brothers. if you read this let me interview the historical researchers or sources omg.
I'm crashing tf out
This doesn't dismiss Teufelsberg either. There's probably some joint mission.
I am going to say something [probably neither] controversial yet brave and I am going to mention 9/11, and the CIA and whatever is going on with Stranger Things multiple fan bases.
I suspect this will also become a series or a longer post, eventually.
and not to sound like a ww2 propaganda poster:
How all this relates to you, dear readers:
I wrote to the man who managed the kryptos puzzle at the end of summer 2025 after going back and forth for years trying to decipher my own family background. Lucky for me intelligence dad, or, papa podlodka if you will was in during peak cold war times through the fall and then a couple years after. This means that while I finally had the wherewithal to ask Podlodka-dad more questions, a literal fuckton of documents was being declassified for the 40 year mark of 1981-1984. At this point, I'm in. Inject these declassified boring ass documents straight into my veins. Any dad secrets?
heck no. or he'd have to yeet me off a bridge.
So I reached out to Kryptos-man if only to excise whatever demon was stirring in my head after reading about the puzzle. And the minute ancillary details that seemingly make no difference? oh, dear reader, they do make a world of difference.
You build a more complete picture this way. And Kryptos? oooh boy was this straight up my alley.
So while I cannot crack the fourth panel, I learned more about myself and US and world history this way.
I'm being vague on purpose. I do expect to copy over what I wrote to the kryptos handlers because I suspect it may be helpful to others working the puzzle. But I am giving his team a chance to reapond in-case there's something in there that shouldn't be.
Here's where I am getting to the CIA circa 9/11. The information was so compartmentalized and locked down, it did no one any good. Had intelligence been shared in more efficient ways and not hoarded by a select few we may have had a couple different outcomes. Was this by design? I believe so. But that's not why I am bringing this up.
The group my dad was in was not related to the cia [tbh who knows lol] though there were JSOC missions involved. With these types of ops for specific classifications within UMBRA or ULTRA as examples, it is infinitely better to share and discuss information you find valuable to bounce it off of each other. That's how humans learn, anyway.
There was a team called the active measures working group within the bowels of the CIA who countered mis and disinfo on the regular during those same peak cold war years. The outcomes were exponential. They were a small team bit did their best to JSOC-it, work together.
I am lurking in the stranger things tags but specifically conformity gate because I like to analyze media and do comparative analysis with real life historical events. I did not feel this way when ST first started. I had to evolve a little bit.
I don't care if there is extra content or another episode or episodes.
I'm doing rewatches because quite frankly I am insane and being able to extrapolate tangible evidence makes my brain feel fufilled.
What I am seeing within these communities is nothing short of amazing. Y'all are basically intelligence analysts and you didn't even know it. That's something you should be extremely proud of.
There's a type of analysis called OSINT, Open source intelligence, and kids, you're there. Now we could talk about the veracity of OSINT in today's world but we can do that another time. You're doing media analysis at its best. So keep it up whether it's for fun or hope.
Intelligence History through Stranger Things Pt 8?!?
Henry's pocket watch
My head is just the gif of Al Pacino on repeat saying everytime I think I'm out they pull me back in. Stranger things y'all gotta officially end this. I can't keep watching documentaries and getting eleventy billion more ideas 😐
We might be on pt 9. I will check later. This will be short though I've said that about 8 days in a row.
What pray tell is going on with this man's pocket watch.
me to me: play the tape
So anyway those are rotors to the Enigma machine.
update # 1:
Besides that call back it's possible Henry's watch is a [US?] Navy diving or torpedo stop watch. I can't tell from the angle. I can't tell if those circles are moons or something else.
update #2 HOLD ON
This is a kreigsmarine stopwatch below, so
So the kreigsmarine were the Nazi Navy. Now Mr W/ Henry says it's his father's watch in the behind the scenes video it now resides in Henry's bedroom. Henry/Mr W is dressed in Khaki and as far as I can tell is wearing USN colors and brass belt.
Now something to think about = Scoops troop is wearing similar colors to Kriegsmarine Sailors. Could this be a dang ole coincidence? sure. sailor colors are common bright blue and white
This is where I start going back and forth on robin because she did say enigma won the war but for me syntax wise I have not taken that at face value. Robin also wears a USN jacket which could be a relatives. Or, she could be like our other characters and be hiding something like @o11yradio has brought up a couple times for other folks maybe shes a spy within a spy. WAVEs were very important during ww2 especially linguists doing cryptologic tasks.
Where she sort of loses me again though is talking about Will and his antenna.
ON THE FLIP SIDE THO this is why I COMPLETELY believe steve whether he knows it or not is either old enough to remember the nazis or somehow ended up in this timeline because he accidentally said Germans.
These uniforms could be a nod to soviet/russian ones as well. whomst among us really knows.
Okay let's loop back around to Henry's parents***.
So in general I don't believe everything we are seeing. But to go a step further I truly believe this is some exercise that went really wrong inside of a computer or someone's brain i don't know.
***So if Victor said he bombed an allied farmhouse then what pieces are we missing?? What is actually going on here?
Is henry actually trying to push back against whatever Nazi force that's trying to win WW2?? What tf did brenner do??
Update #3 Robins Chevrons are from WW2 era Marine Corps. I'm not sure about any other branch and who knows who these chevrons belong to - if you were a linguinst or whatever in the field you wouldn't wear your lightning bolts or the marine equivalent.
update 4: looks like the watch has blue and green hands on it can't see yellow
