[Elecraft] OT: CQ WWII naval radio ops

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

Doug, KR2Q wrote:

Earlier this week, on our drive back from Nova Scotia, my wife and I
stopped by Battleship Cove in Massachusetts where I was entranced by
Radio Central on the USS Massachusetts.

They had a mock recording of CW going, mostly 5 letter word groups.
It was going around 16 wpm and I wondered if that was a typical speed
or not.  Some guy walked by who had something to do with the ship's
display and said that his "friend from then could go the fastest in
the world...around 35 or even 40 wpm."  Well, some of us do that in
our sleep, so that couldn't be right.

What speed was typical for back then?

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What was "typical" probably varied as much as the "typical" speed for Hams
today, but 15 to 20 WPM was a very common Morse speed in WWII and earlier
for both military and civilian communications. 

Some civilian services prohibited speeds faster than 18 WPM on the basis
that solid 18 WPM copy moved traffic much faster than 20 or 30 WPM with
"fills" required. 

In the military, I ran ARMY CW nets (in the 1950's) at 15 WPM. 

Both civilian and military organizations using CW had to accommodate a large
variety of operators of varying skills from "fresh out of code school" on
up, so it was folly to assume someone could whiz along at high speed. 

Places where that was not true included:

1) Two stations moving off frequency to pass traffic in a net. If the two
operators recognized each other (remember, very few used keyers - everyone
was on a manual key and many could recognize individual fists) they might
speed up to pass messages one-to-one.

2) Some services (I've been told) involved the same small number of
operators on a circuit who worked each other day after day after day. These
were often intelligence branches that maintained a very small and stable
staff. Some of the guys who worked those circuits say they got up well over
40 WPM regularly.

Ron AC7AC