[Milsurplus] D Day Comm (continued)

[W7QHO at aol.com]

Browsing through one of the "Green Books" (The Signal Corps, The Outcome) this evening. I found specific reference to the use of the SCR-608 and SCR-610s (BC-659s) for ship-to-shore comms during the invasion of Sicily. Chapter cites the same use of SCR-509s there on both ship (LST) and shore. 

Moving on to D-Day, aparently a lot of radio equipment was to have come ashore with the early waves but very little made it.  The book mentions the 116th Infantry lost 3/4 of it's radio sets destroyed or waterlogged and the 293rd Joint Assult Signal Company lost half of it's equipment when a shell struck the landing craft 350 yards offshore.  The failure to get an SCR-193 ashore is cited as creating a gap in radio communications between beach and the VII Corps' headquarters ship, the USS Bayfield. Also found mention of a pair of BC-659s reaching the beach and being the only form of communication between a couple of elements there for a period before wire could be strung.  No menton of SCR-608/609 ship-to-shore use at Normandy found yet. Will keep looking.

Also found mention of an SCR-499 remodled to mount in a 1/4 ton trailer and successfully delivered inland in a glider on D-Day. (no mention of the generator, however.) The same chapter mentions radios being included in the equipmet bundles dropped with the troops.  Specific types not identified (the Green Books are frustrating in this respect) but certainly could have included SCR-509, 609, 284, 300, etc.

 
Dennis D.  W7QHO
Glendale, CA