Quote:
Originally Posted by Lev
I suppose all the radio operators of the boats are faced with absolute silence on the air, which is impossible in real life. The noise of the air is always there and it is also filled with signals of radio interference, atmospheric interference, feedings. How to solve this problem? What kind of utility is needed so that the radio operators of the boat can hear a realistic broadcast, and not the silence of a wired connection at sea, which is completely absurd!
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Interesting thoughts. It was general practice on u-boats to take down and decrypt messages to and from other boats, as this sometimes enabled them to give news, if they returned, of the fate of other uboats whose signals had not been received by BDU. So yes, there was a LOT of signals traffic going into a radio room, and a fair amount going out.
That said, most morse-signallers would not have continuously worn head-phones, as there are short preambles of the Q-codes, which basically establish that the 2 stations can hear each other, or otherwise, before the main transmission is started. All morse operators would be extremely familiar with these pre-ambles, and would memorise the 1st few characters they heard as they got their headset on, and very likely would not have put their headset on until they heard one start. This suggests that radio-operators were likely not listening to static 24/7, but rather, put the head-set on as soon as they heard the start of a pre-message pre-amble. This isn't an area I have much knowledge of, so if there are morse/u-boat historians out there who know different, please sing out. But I believe I'm correct. The hydrophone operator, by contrast would likely have stayed with headphones on all the time he was on watch and the boat was underwater.