Obviously, such an operation required close contact with the enemy, plus known possession of standard-wave radio receivers by enemy personnel.
=Air Support.= Normal communications channels, such as might be used for air-ground combat liaison, form one of the most valuable aids to the small unit. From time to time it is possible either for the unit to make up the leaflets (if it has a PW team) and to request their dropping by the associated air unit, or else to make a direct request to the appropriate higher Psychological Warfare headquarters, asking that the headquarters not only make up the leaflet but arrange for its dropping at a stated time.
=Leaflet-Discharging Weapons.= The airplane was far and away the most important leaflet-distributing device. In the CBI Theater, there was developed a leaflet belly-tank of local design for use on pursuit planes. The belly-tank was converted to a leaflet-throwing machine. Adjustment of the controls could regulate the speed at which leaflets were discharged, so that the pilot could give enemy units or installations bursts of leaflets in precisely the same way that he would strafe them with machine guns. This, however, was exceptional, owing to the tremendous dispersion of the Japanese in the jungle and the need to conserve leaflets. In most instances, the leaflet bomb or leaflet box was the standard Air Force method of distributing leaflets.
Among the ground weapons used for discharge of leaflets, there are the following:
chemical warfare shells converted to leaflet use, especially smoke shells;
almost every variety of available artillery shell (howitzers having proved especially useful);
leaflet bundles with a small quantity of explosive, attached to a quick fuze, packed so as to be thrown in a manner similar to the manual throwing of a grenade.
Mortars were probably the chief leaflet-throwing device on both the European and Asiatic fronts; the Germans went so far as to develop a special propaganda mortar. Smoke shells proved particularly easy to adapt.
The firing of leaflet shells is a responsibility of the unit possessing the guns. Psychological Warfare teams were not issued their own guns, save for unit protection. The actual distribution of leaflet shells was effected, taking the Fifth Army as an example, in the following manner: