A wartime thought on radios.

[maillemaker]

So during the war, subs got nailed whenever they used their radios, due to direction finding equipment.

I'm surprised that they did not event a throw-away floating radio transmitter that they could put their message in, throw overboard, and then, when they were far away, it would transmit the message and then sink.

Or, better yet, set up a floating transmitter and anchor it somewhere (or let it drift), while it transmitted from time to time, and then lie in wait and nail whoever steamed along to try and "sink" the "sub". In other words, use the transmitter as bait.

Steve

[Dissaray]

I'm not sure they could get a delayed system working at that time, that seems fairly high tech. I figured they started puting radio antena on the parascopes or snorkels beacouse they kept geting found out when they were transmiting. It would be much harder to find some one when all that was sticking up was a parascope and an antena.

Originally Posted by maillemaker

So during the war, subs got nailed whenever they used their radios, due to direction finding equipment.

I'm surprised that they did not event a throw-away floating radio transmitter that they could put their message in, throw overboard, and then, when they were far away, it would transmit the message and then sink.

Or, better yet, set up a floating transmitter and anchor it somewhere (or let it drift), while it transmitted from time to time, and then lie in wait and nail whoever steamed along to try and "sink" the "sub". In other words, use the transmitter as bait.

Steve

So many technical issues make this thoroughly modern idea totally impractical in 1939-45.

- Vacuum tubes made radios large, heavy and expensive. They also required accurate frequency tuning and long warm-up times before they could transmit. Throwing one away every time a message was sent would be wildly impractical.

- As there was no solid state electronics, radios were prone to problems with moisture, as in sitting on a raft. There were emergency beacons produced but these could only send a homing signals on a single frequency and could not transmit a message.

- Solve the radio problem and the relatively poor state of storage battery technology of the day rears its ugly head. The sophisticated batteries needed for autonomous radio rafts used exactly the type of strategic materials that were in short supply in Germany. German remote weather stations actually demonstrate the OP's concept but they were big, unreliable and the message bank was extremely limited and repetitive. A U-Boat could carry only one and they required several hours and some several men to set up, tune and test. And they were set up on land.

- There was little high-frequency (HF) voice communication, HF was primarily by morse code. There were means of pre-recording morse traffic as typified by the teletype machine but these were very big and complex devices and used large amounts of electrical power for their operations.

- HF radio waves were bounced off the ionosphere so the antennas were long-wire's mounted horozontally, the so-called jumping wire on a U-Boat running from the conning tower to the forepeak carried the HF transmitting antenna. Mounting a horozontal long-wire antenna on a raft might prove difficult. Vertical VHF antennas for voice commincations were shorter and more familier in the here and now but still a bit of a novelty in WW2. Only the Allied navies, thanks to the USN's VHF Talk Between Ships (TBS) radios made extensive use of voice during the war and VHF was limited by the horizon and so strategically useless to the U-Boat waffe.

- Long-range HF traffic required certain atmospheric conditions and with a manually operated set, the operator had frequency options that could be used if one frequency was not working for whatever reason. There was no way to automate this function during WW2.

- Probably several hundred other technical issues prevented putting anything like the OP proposal into effect as well.

[desirableroasted]

Exactly the sort of reply that makes just being on these boards educational.

I knew half of that.. now I know the other half.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by maillemaker

So during the war, subs got nailed whenever they used their radios, due to direction finding equipment.

They don't seem to have had a clue that it was happening. Doenitz insisted on constant reporting, and never seemed to put the two together.

They also got attacked by radar equipped planes, and caught on late because the vaunted German engineers didn't manage to invent one that operated at the centimetric level for another couple of years, and if they couldn't do it then nobody could.

[Capt. Teach]

Very cool info ... but it does raise the question in my mind ... how then did they equip all those panzers with radios? I was always under the impression that one of the key features of the blitzkrieg was radio comms for all the tank commanders. Also, I'm not sure but ... didn't the panzers utilize vertical antenna's?



[Although ... it still would not solve the battery problem for a remote radio decoy or that it would have to be waterproof ... not to mention cooling considerations once all those tubes were fired up ... I think they would fry up after a short time anyway since there wouldn't be a venting system for the heat if it was waterproof. Also, there is the question of range? I dont know much about radio's but wouldn't there be a significant difference in range capability between a sub radio and a panzer radio(as well as a significant difference in range requirement)?]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

They don't seem to have had a clue that it was happening. Doenitz insisted on constant reporting, and never seemed to put the two together.

But lets be honest too ... history, indeed even the present is rife with examples of so called "leaders" being ... hmmm ... shall we say "less than competent" so it wouldn't surprise me that panzers did have the comms and vertical antenna's (army) and the subs didn't (navy).

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.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

They don't seem to have had a clue that it was happening. Doenitz insisted on constant reporting, and never seemed to put the two together.

They also got attacked by radar equipped planes, and caught on late because the vaunted German engineers didn't manage to invent one that operated at the centimetric level for another couple of years, and if they couldn't do it then nobody could.

I am currently reading Doenitz's memoirs and he wrote that he did not think that Direction Finding would be that great of a risk. He was mistaken.

"Antisubmarine Warfare" By Owen (2007) has a good history of how Germany considered Radar's capability and scalability. They were mistaken.

[timmy41]

Originally Posted by Capt. Teach

Very cool info ... but it does raise the question in my mind ... how then did they equip all those panzers with radios? I was always under the impression that one of the key features of the blitzkrieg was radio comms for all the tank commanders. Also, I'm not sure but ... didn't the panzers utilize vertical antenna's?



[Although ... it still would not solve the battery problem for a remote radio decoy or that it would have to be waterproof ... not to mention cooling considerations once all those tubes were fired up ... I think they would fry up after a short time anyway since there wouldn't be a venting system for the heat if it was waterproof.]

The plan to have every vehicle have a radio started in 1934, but wasnt really fully finished until just before the beginning of the war. The first series of radios was the FuG1 (which could only receive) but the most common series for early combat vehicles (like the III and IV series) were FuG5 that could transmit and receive, at short range. Many command vehicles early in the war carried the FuG6 and 11 series that could transmit and receive from much longer distances, and was one of the more recognizable ones by the large rack on top of the vehicles (like on 232 and panzer I command vehicles). I cant think of any german units that went into war without at least 1 radio, and the very few that didnt have radios in every vehicle were recently acquired from other countries like france.
The artillery used Fug 4, 15, and 16.

[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...

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Capt. Teach

But lets be honest too ... history, indeed even the present is rife with examples of so called "leaders" being ... hmmm ... shall we say "less than competent" so it wouldn't surprise me that panzers did have the comms and vertical antenna's (army) and the subs didn't (navy).

Very true. Peter Padfield in his War Beneath The Sea points out that the Royal Navy was chortling about Ultra and knowing the secrets of Enigma, but never seemed to believe that the Germans might also be reading their mail.

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!

I think the big difference was that snipers were shooting at other soldiers, and submarines shot at civilians carrying food to feed the populace. Or at least that was the way it was presented.

In WW1 the u-boats originally would surface and demand to see papers, then allow the crew to abandon ship before boarding and sinking it with explosives. The British came up with the concept of the Q-ship, which was a merchantman with disguised guns on deck. They would not only stop when hailed, but began to carry a whole second crew who would go through the whole Abandon Ship drill - manning the lifeboats and rowing away. The gun crew would wait until the u-boat pulled alongside to come aboard, and then - KAPOW!

So the Germans started shooting from underwater, and of course the Brits cried "FOUL!" and raised a big stink.

Ain't love grand?