[Milsurplus] More Navy radio in China 1944 - 1945

[Hue Miller]

Well, not much reaction to my last post suggesting aircraft use of LF band.

Here's some more interesting quotes:

"On the 15th [ July 1945 ]  Navy Group China attained its full complement of
2500 officers and men and the weather intelligence and coastwatcher groups
began full operation......

"As Japanese and [their] puppet troops in the Amoy area began to withdraw,
coastwatchers called in teh 14th Air Force and Navy bombers from the 
Philippines to attack them.......When the planes arrived, coastwatchers, by
voice contact, directed them to the withdrawing enemy."

Now-

1) this quote helps understand that coastwatcher radios needed to be
voice capable, for real usefulness - and helps narrow down the possible
rados used for that-
2) supports the evidence that the China coastwatcher radio was the
TBX
3) rules out the Navy's CMS and MBM radios for this. Altho the
skywave, 4-14 Mcs, cw only, MBM set might have still been a deployable
choice for far-flung weather stations. OR - maybe the MBM got into
production too late and "missed" the war!

Also this quote:

"On July 18, the Japanese captured two more enlisted coastwatchers. Both were
located in a prison at Canton at the end of the war."

This surprised me, because if coastwatchers were captured on the Pacific Islands,
the were without an exception, executed, and likely tortured besides. Even 
missionary families, non-combatants. The war in China was different, apparently
to some degree, from the rest of the Pacific War.

Here's another quote:

"Personnel and equipment began arriving in July and August 1944, radio operators
and equipment especially. When the Chinese weather stations were first 
established there was a constant demand for portable radio batteries and thousands
of them were furnished before Navy radio operators discovered that the Chinese were
hooking up the batteries backwards and allowing them to discharge themselves. A 300
watt TBX portable transmitter with an Olin 400 cycle rectifier power supply that was 
run by a small engine replaced a 7 megacycle short wave set for communication with 
the fleet and Pacific commands. As one radio operator recalled, "It whined, but what
a signal! It could pierce anything. The trouble was that it used a lot of gasoline and we
would run out of it....We finally got diesel generators. Whe had difficulty getting 
diesel fuel too, but the generators were more efficient"

[ above quote from "The Army-Navy Game", Roy Stratton, 1977, page 167. Previous
quotes from same source. ]

Now, my comments on above paragraph:
1) The "portable radio batteries" rules out the MBM from weather station use, or 
should i say, MOST weather station use, as the MBM did not use receiver batteries.
The TBX, of course, did.
2) I am thinking more and more the MBM either never got into use or was hardly used
at all, rarely used.  I am thinking this applies to other exotic radios as well, PRC-1, PRC-5,
TRC-10. Standard-issue, off the shelf radios were readily available and maybe could do
the job as well or better.
3) the above quote, i would correct these lines to read as follows. I think the confusion
arose because the author was recalling a conversation and not being a radio person,
confused some of the details:
"A 300 watt TBW portable transmitter.....replaced the usual TBX, 7-megacycle upper
limit, shortwave set, for longer reach communications to the fleet and Pacific commands
in the Philippines and Guam and Hawaii. "
[ I recall the Navy developed a modification to the TBX that allowed transmitter operation
up to 7 mcs. The receiver already went that frequency. I do not however know the first
date of this modification - but may be able to find that in my research.

Enjoy mulling these tidbits!   -Hue Miller