[GreenKeys] Early Teletype in the RN

[Nick England]

I haven't come across any mention of high-speed Morse use aboard US Navy
ships (just for shore station-to-station traffic). AFAIK all shipboard
Morse send/receive was via earphones and hand key. Qualified speed key
operators could use a bug and higher speed CW circuits but this was still
manual.
http://www.navy-radio.com/ships/images/ship-cw-101a.JPG
Boehme equipment (Wheatstone tape) was also used to transmit the Fleet
Broadcast at around 18 wpm.

The AGC amphibious assault command ships had TTY aboard at least as early
as 1943.
http://www.navy-radio.com/ships/agc/agc4-1943-01.jpg
http://www.navy-radio.com/ships/agc/agc15-02.jpg

Teletype equipment started to be installed in a small number of USN capital
ships in late 1944, early 1945, but as folks have pointed out, standard M15
printers didn't work too well in shipboard pitch and roll. The TT-49/UG was
a modified M15 "with aluminum side frames, a new carriage return assembly,
and lighter weight carriage parts. As a result of these modifications, they
operate satisfactorily while tilted as much as 45 degrees." Scroll about
1/3 way down on this page to see photos -
http://www.navy-radio.com/tty.htm

The big USN RATT conversion came with M28 gear, of course. The US Navy
bought the first 5000 or so of these. Not only did teletype eliminate
manual Morse transcription, it enabled on-line crypto which made a huge
difference in message processing.

Nick England K4NYW
www.navy-radio.com

On Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 11:21 AM, Jim Haynes <jhhaynes at earthlink.net> wrote:

> On Tue, 3 Jan 2017, John Nagle wrote:
>
>>   Teletypes on shipboard didn't really catch on
>> until about WWII. There's a "battleship version" of
>>
>
> And even then...I had a friend, now deceased, who was a radio operator
> (Morse) on a battleship in WW-II.  I asked him if they had Teletypes
> and he told me they did not.  I didn't ask him about high speed Morse.
>
>
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