Operator, Wireless and Line

[greenstar]

just to add a little from a conversation tonight. The layout of the form posted by Ken, above, is familiar to her. messages were given to her for transmission in this way. Sometimes they were headed 'URGENT', and she had to complete her current job and send that.
The London station she worked at was under the War Office. There were several levels, and she was told she was on the same level as Churchill's office. There was also a Cypher Office, but nobody knew what they did. She was posted on request from London to Kent, which was her last posting. After the Japanese surrender all the stations were closed, and she returned to London to be demobbed.

[greenstar]

One puzzle I need to clear up that may shed light on other things. She has repeatedly referred to using a 'Canadian 9' set at several postings, presumably a transceiver, a huge thing with several dials - she indicated a metre across at least - I have not been able to identify anything likely. I showed her a picture of an HRO, which she wasn't sure about - her sets were bigger with more dials.

[Herald1360]

19 set maybe- complete with its PSU it's about a metre wide with plenty of knobs!

[HamishBoxer]

Ar88 ?

[Stockden]

The Wireless Set No. 9 Canadian was, er, the Canadian version of the 9 Set, a predecessor of the 19 Set. Both the British and Canadian versions were indeed a bit of a monster, with a lot of dials. There's pictures of both here and a copy of the EMER for the Canadian version here.

Hugh

[greenstar]

That really is very interesting. If it was indeed the set Hugh refers too, this must say something about the network. My mum never knew where she transmitted or received from, and this suggests it was a local network. She didn't seem familiar with the HRO, and nor does the AR88 fit the description. I understood both were widely used in the uk networks. But usually her memory is pretty good - she remembered her service number straight off, so it's likely a set she used daily would be remembered. I'll show her a photo. Be nice to get a look at one.

[greenstar]

Interesting material here - accounts of several wireless operators. There seemed to be several training centres, and several associated trades.
http://www.atsremembered.org.uk/teleops.htm
Tantalisingly, none correspond exactly to my mother's, and it's hard to see how they relate.

[trh01uk]

Originally Posted by greenstar

One puzzle I need to clear up that may shed light on other things. She has repeatedly referred to using a 'Canadian 9' set at several postings, presumably a transceiver, a huge thing with several dials - she indicated a metre across at least - I have not been able to identify anything likely. I showed her a picture of an HRO, which she wasn't sure about - her sets were bigger with more dials.

WhY do you have difficulty believing that she used a Canadian WS9? Its exactly as she describes. That was a standard issue set early in the war, and possibly favoured by units that didn't need to move a rather large lump around too often. Full details of the set are in Wireless for the Warrior - I can post a few more if you don't have a copy.

A picture of the set is available at http://www.wftw.nl/wsets.html - there are three images of the WS9, two of them Canadian. I believe the WS9 Canadian Mk.I was the one adopted by the UK as an improvement on their own, original WS9.


Richard

[trh01uk]

Originally Posted by greenstar

That really is very interesting. If it was indeed the set Hugh refers too, this must say something about the network. My mum never knew where she transmitted or received from, and this suggests it was a local network. She didn't seem familiar with the HRO, and nor does the AR88 fit the description. I understood both were widely used in the uk networks. But usually her memory is pretty good - she remembered her service number straight off, so it's likely a set she used daily would be remembered. I'll show her a photo. Be nice to get a look at one.

Actually I don't think the HRO and AR-88 were used in UK networks. I assume by "network" you mean one unit communicating with another via 2-way radio? If so, then they would generally use a transceiver, like the WS9, WS11, WS1, WS19 (late) and the WS53. These did use a separate receiver, typically the R107.

The HRO and AR-88 were principally used in listening stations. The sort of stations that were monitoring German and Axis powers radio traffic from Europe. For this purpose, you wanted a dedicated communications receiver, with first class filtering to pick out weak signals from a myriad of noise and interference.

Two-way radio - such as your mother was using - demands a rather different setup. Receivers like the HRO and AR-88 are very fine, but not ideal for the job, because their muting facilities (when you go to transmit) are not very good. They are just aren't designed for this task.


Richard

[greenstar]

Hi Richard, thanks for this clarification. I had always assumed that her work was over a longer distance. Bear in mind I know next to nothing about the context. What also seems odd to me is that she knew nothing about the nature of the work, which was always coded, and never given any explanation. Even people in the 'Y' network and those monitoring German signals knew what they were doing, as indicated by their accounts on the above ATS website. I have requested her service record, which may give a clue.

[HamishBoxer]

This has been a great post and I hope there is clarifacation at the end of the day.All very intresting indeed.

[trh01uk]

Originally Posted by greenstar

Hi Richard, thanks for this clarification. I had always assumed that her work was over a longer distance. Bear in mind I know next to nothing about the context. What also seems odd to me is that she knew nothing about the nature of the work, which was always coded, and never given any explanation. Even people in the 'Y' network and those monitoring German signals knew what they were doing, as indicated by their accounts on the above ATS website. I have requested her service record, which may give a clue.

Yes. Many apparently strange things happened during the war which are very hard to now find explanations for. When you say "over a longer distance" I presume you mean from UK to somewhere overseas. That's a reasonable supposition for using radio, since you would presume that within the UK, picking up a phone would be a lot simpler and more secure.

However, things are not that simple. Firstly, phone lines could be in short supply. Or not run just where you needed them. Or blown up by bombs. And I understand that military camps had a habit of moving about. Not sure why - maybe to avoid becoming a fixed target for enemy bombers. If that was the case, then radio might well have to be used to supplement phone lines.

One radio set - the WS36 transmitter and R208 receiver - was designed specifically to replace phone lines that had been destroyed by enemy action or other mishap. That system worked at VHF, so its range was limited to tens of miles.

Another reason for sending radio traffic was to spoof the enemy into thinking there was a build up of troops in a certain place - when there wasn't. Famously this was done before D-Day to try and convince the Germans that an entire army was sitting in Kent just waiting to invade them via Calais - it was part of Operation Fortitude, and it was called the First United States Army Group.

Of course some of the traffic was entirely fake, from sets rigged up with wire recorders. But some was sent via human operators as well. Its possible your mother was one of them - though she wouldn't have been told she was sending encoded "nonsense" in case that changed her normal sending style, even unconsciously, which the Germans would be sure to detect.

Even stranger is the fact that the Signals side of the Auxiliary Units set up originally to deal with a German invasion, were kept in place in the period leading up to D-Day, not because an invasion was still at all likely, but so that they could send lots of useless fake radio traffic, just as I have described above. Harrietsham was one of those places where such operations probably occurred.

Most of this history has been largely removed from any official document sources. You won't find much in the National Archive, and the secret services are still very touchy about the whole thing I am told. The little I know about it has been pieced together by getting first hand accounts from those involved.


Richard

[greenstar]

It really is very peculiar. She trained at Strathpeffer, where other OWLs described their training as based. She then went to Shrewsbury, and from then onwards seems to have done a specific thing, sending and receiving in code, and never knowing any more. She worked out in the sticks in outposts in Wales, with a base at Shrewsbury, followed by a period under the War Office at Whitehall. From the set she used it seems she was communicating within 50 miles. She doesn't describe any other duties as do other OWL's, than her radio and tape operations. The stations seem to have been permanent during the war, fixed installations. Some were in odd places, such as the hut in the fields at Tonfanau. She was working with others - her platoon - all doing more or less the same thing. Other postings were offered, which she took every advantage of, and it seems still did the same thing.

[greenstar]

I stand corrected. While my mother recognised the Canadiian 9, she has now said that she used these mostly in Shrewsbury. Previously I notice she said that they were not everywhere 'mostly Shrewsbury and London'. This is the problem with gathering information from oral accounts. I once worked as an interviewer for an oral history project, a very interesting time. Respondents (as do we all) don't really remember an actual event. What is given is really a script, which is drawn from a memory, and edited. A lot of material is sensitive, traumatic, or just of no interest. Stories are not like tape recordings, but more like a program prepared from them, and there are a lot of processes in between. But the full memory is there somewhere. Asking my mum over again for details tends to bring up the same account, and going beyond it is difficult given her deafness. I've given her the ATS accounts to read, will be interesting to see if this brings up anything new.

[carnivalpete]

''.........Or blown up by bombs. And I understand that military camps had a habit of moving about. Not sure why - maybe to avoid becoming a fixed target for enemy bombers. If that was the case, then radio might well have to be used to supplement phone lines........''

My father was in RAF ground troops around 1940 to late 1945, ultimately in support of a Typhoon Squadron, and I have been able to track the locations of his many changes of UK encampments prior to D-Day, sometimes adjacent to an army camp. I understand that the main reason for moving on so often was to get all units used to the idea of frequent and rapid moves from location to location, largely in tented encampments, in order to be prepared to keep up with the forward movement of troops and attack aircraft as they followed the advance of the front line across Europe after D-Day.
His biggest disappointment was that he could not qualify as a radio operator due to the family curse - colour blindness. pete

[David Dunlop]

Greenstar.

Your Mum was clearly working long distance communications if she is familiar with the Cdn Wireless Set No. 9. It is powerful, huge and heavy and was nearly always a base station setup. Canada built a copy of the original British Set as a Mk I. They then did some significant design improvements which became the Mk II, early in the war. Canadian Marconi then developed a Mk III, but the improvements were so vast, it was actually renamed the Wireless Set No.52 Canadian. If you compare photos of these two sets, you will spot the lineage immediately.

I am enjoying your thread and can relate to your challenges with your Mum's story. My Mum served in the NAAFI during the war, based out of Camp Surcouf, just East of Algiers, Phillipville and several other locations. Had good days and bad with her near the end with getting information from her, but would not have missed the opportunity for the world!

Keep it up and very best regards to you both!

David

[greenstar]

David, thanks for the encouragement. My mum is compos mentis but can be impatient - and she has added nothing yet after reading the ATS accounts, which i thought would spark off some comments. I have a tape I made years ago which I hope to digitise soon, may have material I've missed.
One discrepancy - you know the set and say the Canadian 9 was used for long distance work, but the information on the link above says: Frequency range 1.875-5MHz. MO/crystal control. RF output 50W/30W. R/T, MCW, CW. Range up to 50 miles.
This why I thought she was working locally, also as the set appears to be the sort of thing used on a vehicle or in the field. Can you clarify further?
Tony

[Stockden]

Tony,

The range that could be achieved depended on the aerial/antenna used. The 9 set was intended for use in armoured vehicles and, with a 6ft rod antenna, had a quoted range of 8 miles (according to British Army Signals in the Second World War). Used with a skywave antenna it would achieve a range of several hundred miles.

The reason for your mum using a vehicle set on fixed links is quite straightforward. It all boils down to availability of equipment, particularly in the early stages of the war. This quote from Nalder's book on the history of the Royal Corps of Signals may help illustrate:

Anti-Invasion Communications

In addition to the line system a wireless network connected all headquarters. Owing to the loss of equipment in France most of the sets available were of short range, Nos. 9 and 11 sets, and generally there were insufficient to provide more than one channel from each echelon of command to the next. These deficiencies however forced units to devise methods of improving communication range by the employment of more efficient aerials and of increasing the traffic-carrying capacity by better operating.

I suspect that your mum may appreciate the last part of that final sentence!

Earlier I think that you were surprised that your mum sent and received traffic that was in code and without knowing the content. Above the tactical level that would have been entirely normal, with the traffic being encrypted (either by a hand cipher or Typex machine) in a cipher office before being passed to the operators for transmission.

Hugh

[David Dunlop]

Hi Tony.

As Hugh has said, it largely depends on the aerial, in both design and height above ground. To a lesser degree, the output capability of the transmitter plays a factor as well: not enough power and it will not be capable of pushing an effective signal out the aerial.

Every November 11th here in Canada, there is a 19-Set Net put together and the only rule is the wireless sets must be all original, no tweaking or mods. Aerials are up to the operator. Some pretty impressive distances can happen across Ontario and into the Eastern portion of Manitoba. Sol must be in a good mood as well, but great fun none the less.

David

[greenstar]

This is most interesting. I had always understood that aerials affected range, but not that sets made for shorter ranges would be widely pressed into use for contact with Europe or beyond. It fits with my mother's account. I had thought that transmitters would have been made in such numbers it wouldn't have been an issue. Possibly this is more true of receivers. Dunkirk being June 1940, my mum's involvement starting I think in 1943, I would also think any shortfall must have been made up by then, but then possibly sets such as the Canadian 9 were found to be perfectly adequate. I have been rewriting my compilation of her reminiscences, and heading towards a more coherent version, making sense of but trying not to alter what she actually says - too easy to read into an account what you think it should be.
'Had to change aerials on a station flat roof, between two big poles, had to shorten or add lengths. Also did this at night. Did day and night shifts in Shrewsbury. Set for short and long range, overseas and Britain'.