A wartime thought on radios.

[timmy41]

Originally Posted by Capt. Teach

Also, and once again I'm speaking from very limited knowledge, but didn't the german navy get pretty much ignored? Additionally I'm pretty sure that Doenitz and Goering (might have butchered that spelling) didn't exactly get along ... so the Luftwaffe didn't provide very good support for the navy under the best of conditions due to that little feud. [perhaps its just the way history is written for the most part but almost all of what I see and hear about WWII Germany concerns the Luftwaffe and the Army.] I mean, didn't Doenitz only recieve 1/2 of the number of subs he stated he would require to impliment the blockade? If that is the case I would think his only real alternative would be to "bare bones" his subs so his budget or whatever would allow the production of more. This would place expensive [and then] high tech decoys on the backburner if not totally scrapped.

And last, but not least, this brings into focus just how much we take satellites for granted now.

Im not going to get into any specifics, but the german military was filled with blundering incompetence and politics at the higher levels. Politics and petty feuds often prevented incredible machines of war from being made, or being made in enough numbers, or early enough. The me110 (one of the worst aircraft of the war) was chosen over the fw187 (an absolutely incredible aircraft that could have held its own until 1941) because someone didnt get their blowjob that morning. Hitler told the navy he wasnt going to start a war until 1948, and the plan to build the navy was made accordingly. Obviously one can infer that the navy was in NO position for war in 1939. Germany was supposed to have 3 Aircraft carriers, 9 or so battleships, a good dozen cruisers, and so on. The Navy itself (except Dönitz) felt that submarine warfare was dishonerable, and preferred the soon to be outdated capital ships. If the amount of subs that Dönitz wanted could be provided (about 300 on patrol at any time), surely britian would have had a far worse time, and had a MUCH greater chance of falling. The OK was filled with traditional prussians who were to egotistic to get over the fact that the franco-prussian war was over and that they needed to look into new ways of doing things.

The panzers didn't have to communicate with Germany, from as far away as Canada, The Carribean Sea, or The South Atlantic. Totaly different circumstances.

And how would one go about coding voice transmissions?!

[timmy41]

Originally Posted by Snestorm

The panzers didn't have to communicate with Germany, from as far away as Canada, The Carribean Sea, or The South Atlantic. Totaly different circumstances.

And how would one go about coding voice transmissions?!

I think you completely misunderstood his question.
And one does not code combat transmissions like that, its too tedious and silly.

Originally Posted by Snestorm

The panzers didn't have to communicate with Germany, from as far away as Canada, The Carribean Sea, or The South Atlantic. Totaly different circumstances.

And how would one go about coding voice transmissions?!

What Snestorm says speaks volumes for the issue...

The technical requirements for line of sight voice radios (known as RT - Radio Telephony) was significantly different from that of HF using morse code (known as WT - Wireless Telegraphy). Tanks needed only low-power short-ranges capability and in any case were usually limited to a fairly narrow frequency band. The artillery needed more range but much of the problem could be solved by using flexable long-wire directional antennas for a VHF RT setup. Until the American very portable VHF Walky-Talky came into service, radios in a infantry battalion below company level were rare. Ground-air voice communications was also available from the start but under most circumstances it was line of site only.

Continental navies and the IJN were remarkably slow to make the move to VHF RT for the tactical passage of information and command control, preferring flag signals and morse code with searchlights (Aldis lamps in British service). It is possible that part of the problem was institutional inertia, the signalling organizations in most major navies tended to be very large, bureaucratic and conservative; only in the USN was a VHF RT system in place from the beginning as TBS - Talk Between Ships.

U-Boats outside visual range generally had no direct means of communicating with each other or with friendly surface ships, coded WT was passed to BdU via HF and then re-broadcast. They could not talk to aircraft at all as a rule so any tactical infomation concerning convoys had to go through BdU to Group West to the corresponding Luftwaffe HQ in France and then back to the plane in the air, all repeatedly encoded, broadcast and reciepted and decoded. It is no wonder the Luftwaffe tried to operate alone when it operated over the Atlantic at all, information was frequently outdated before it was even recieved - and they knew it.

And none of the communications systems were close to perfect and are still not even today. For all of the vaunted German Army panzer radio excellence, when Rommel wanted to punch 7th Panzer across the Meuse River in May 1940 he had to dismount from his half-tracked radio command vehicle and pass orders in person rather than sending them via RT.

And one does not code combat transmissions like that, its too tedious and silly.

Maybe so but encoded WT was the rule for navies other than the USN for much of WW2 when passing information to and from ships and aircraft outside of visual range.

[Capt. Teach]

Thanks guys, great info! This really cleared up a lot of my questions!

At one time in my life I was a Ranger ... so I understand radios in the field and the limitations of those (and even know a few high speed, low drag, field expedient mods that can be done to increase the capabilities of the radios) for this time period. However, up until this post I really didn't have much of a clue how it was done then, specifically.

Originally Posted by timmy41

The Navy itself (except Dönitz) felt that submarine warfare was dishonerable,

Ah ... the concept of honor ... always puzzled me ... like in this instance pointed out by Timmy41. For example, it was ok to deploy snipers in the woods sure ... but sniping with subs was dishonorable. Or, it was ok and common and accepted tactics to set up ambushes for infantry on the ground ... but ambush a ship on the ocean and you are dishonorable. Bah! [Which really isn't unlike the american's in the pacific ... prior to Pearl they were looking down their collective noses at the german sub policies. Then we got a proper spanking in Pearl and suddenly its "Sink 'em if you see 'em". What happened to honor sir? ( Oh I get it ... honor is cool right up until a thorough spanking ... then its Anything goes. )]

Also, if you are thinking [as I am as well] "But those are civilians in a civilian ship" then the next thought that springs to my mind is ... "Yeah but its ok to strafe a civilian line of convoy trucks or strafe and bomb a train on tracks ... but not ok to sink a ship?" Hmm.

Actually I would disagree entirely with the idea that "honour" had anything to do with the execution of naval operations in WW2 at all, on either side.

For Hitler's Navy, the trauma of WW1 was omnipresent and inescapable. U-Boats had failed to win the war as promised while adding to Germany's enemies in the process and for that reason alone, a lack of enthusiasm for them in OKM is entirely reasonable.

One of the most perplexing aspects of Nazi naval strategy is why the KM stuck to the fiction of cruiser warfare as long as they did. It had failed miserably in WW1 other than minor propaganda worthy cruises by enterprising and heroic captain's like Luckner and Mueller. WW2 would see a handful of propaganda successes but the surface forces were totally incapable closing the sealanes to Britain for more than a few days and in reality never even achieved that.

As for unrestricted submarine war on civilian shipping, it is a characteristic of machine age high-intensity warfare that made good strategic sense at the time but is largely counter-productive in the types' of wars we have seen since 1945.

There is a scene at the end of the file The Cruel Sea where Ericson, the captain of the frigate HMS Saltash laments the loss of so many brave men and fine ships and comments to the effect of "The U-Boats...for all the good it did them, they might just as well stayed at home." Although a line from a movie based upon a novel, it does pretty much sum up the U-Boat campaigns in both world wars.

In a vain attempt to get back on topic there was several signallers featured in the movie and even a wireless set or two...