From Fauquier Now Staff: 

The Cold War Museum in Vint Hill has announced its newest exhibit, "Fields of Secrecy: Vint Hill Farms Station, the Birthplace of Modern Army Signals Intelligence,” will open to the public at 11 a.m. on Nov. 22 to commemorate the 82nd anniversary of the Oshima Intercept. 

The exhibit tells the story of Vint Hill Farms Station, also known as Monitoring Station No. 1, from its top-secret work during World War II in support of Arlington Hall codebreakers and D-Day invasion planners, to its Cold War transition to an electronic warfare research and development support center run by the NSA, CIA and Army Security Agency. 

Vint Hill Farms Station in Fauquier County was an active U.S. Army base from 1942 to 1997. The Cold War Museum occupies one of Vint Hill’s original barns used by the Army Security Agency during World War II. 

"The exhibit starts with an overview of cryptology in the interwar period,” Francis Gary Powers Jr., the museum’s founder and chairman, said in a news release, "highlighting the efforts and setbacks of Herbert Yardley’s Black Chamber and William Friedman’s Signals Intelligence Service in breaking Japanese diplomatic codes before World War II, culminating in Friedman’s team reverse engineering the Japanese PURPLE code machine from pure mathematical analysis in 1940.” 

One section examines how Vint Hill interacted with and was supported by Fauquier residents through the lens of newspaper articles. Local residents donated furniture and Sunday roasts to support the service members, even though residents never learned what exactly was being done behind the barbed wire fences. 

Another section examines wartime contributions of the Nisei and Women’s Army Corps, or WAC, service members at Vint Hill. The Nisei – second-generation Japanese Americans – performed vital work at Vint Hill translating decrypted Japanese messages despite prejudices and suspicions against them at every stage of their service, the release states.

Major displays in the Vint Hill room include a cabinet of Morse code training equipment, including a telegraph key where visitors can try their hand at tapping out dots and dashes, and a rack of intercept receivers arranged to show the evolution of signals intercept technology from World War II until the end of the Cold War.

The exhibit concludes by exploring the Cold War evolution of Vint Hill from a wartime intercept site to an electronic warfare research and repair depot during the late 1950s to the 1980s. 

Looking at Vint Hill’s connections to the Army Security Agency, the National Security Agency and later the Army Intelligence and Security Command, the exhibit features the new programs and technologies that came to define Vint Hill in the Cold War. Some of the once-secret military technologies like digital voice vocoders and GPS receivers have found their way into devices like smartphones, revealing one aspect of the Cold War’s technological legacy.

Powers credited museum staff members for crafting the exhibit, including curator Doug Harsha and assistant curator Jeff Proehl, and volunteers Jill Hallden, Kenzie Hool, Mike Washvill and Bryan Zwanzig.

"A special thanks goes out to Kenzie Hool for her exhaustive newspaper research on wartime Vint Hill, Mike Washvill for his innumerable fixes and improvements to the labels, layouts, and exhibit spaces, and Jeff Proehl for his proofreading and generous donation of paint and painting supplies,” Powers said.

From Fauquier Now Staff: 

The Cold War Museum in Vint Hill has announced its newest exhibit, "Fields of Secrecy: Vint Hill Farms Station, the Birthplace of Modern Army Signals Intelligence,” will open to the public at 11 a.m. on Nov. 22 to commemorate the 82nd anniversary of the Oshima Intercept. 

The exhibit tells the story of Vint Hill Farms Station, also known as Monitoring Station No. 1, from its top-secret work during World War II in support of Arlington Hall codebreakers and D-Day invasion planners, to its Cold War transition to an electronic warfare research and development support center run by the NSA, CIA and Army Security Agency. 

Vint Hill Farms Station in Fauquier County was an active U.S. Army base from 1942 to 1997. The Cold War Museum occupies one of Vint Hill’s original barns used by the Army Security Agency during World War II. 

"The exhibit starts with an overview of cryptology in the interwar period,” Francis Gary Powers Jr., the museum’s founder and chairman, said in a news release, "highlighting the efforts and setbacks of Herbert Yardley’s Black Chamber and William Friedman’s Signals Intelligence Service in breaking Japanese diplomatic codes before World War II, culminating in Friedman’s team reverse engineering the Japanese PURPLE code machine from pure mathematical analysis in 1940.” 

One section examines how Vint Hill interacted with and was supported by Fauquier residents through the lens of newspaper articles. Local residents donated furniture and Sunday roasts to support the service members, even though residents never learned what exactly was being done behind the barbed wire fences. 

Another section examines wartime contributions of the Nisei and Women’s Army Corps, or WAC, service members at Vint Hill. The Nisei – second-generation Japanese Americans – performed vital work at Vint Hill translating decrypted Japanese messages despite prejudices and suspicions against them at every stage of their service, the release states.

Major displays in the Vint Hill room include a cabinet of Morse code training equipment, including a telegraph key where visitors can try their hand at tapping out dots and dashes, and a rack of intercept receivers arranged to show the evolution of signals intercept technology from World War II until the end of the Cold War.

The exhibit concludes by exploring the Cold War evolution of Vint Hill from a wartime intercept site to an electronic warfare research and repair depot during the late 1950s to the 1980s. 

Looking at Vint Hill’s connections to the Army Security Agency, the National Security Agency and later the Army Intelligence and Security Command, the exhibit features the new programs and technologies that came to define Vint Hill in the Cold War. Some of the once-secret military technologies like digital voice vocoders and GPS receivers have found their way into devices like smartphones, revealing one aspect of the Cold War’s technological legacy.

Powers credited museum staff members for crafting the exhibit, including curator Doug Harsha and assistant curator Jeff Proehl, and volunteers Jill Hallden, Kenzie Hool, Mike Washvill and Bryan Zwanzig.

"A special thanks goes out to Kenzie Hool for her exhaustive newspaper research on wartime Vint Hill, Mike Washvill for his innumerable fixes and improvements to the labels, layouts, and exhibit spaces, and Jeff Proehl for his proofreading and generous donation of paint and painting supplies,” Powers said.