[Milsurplus] TCS-12 Radios

[Jerry K]

Nope, up until some time in the mid 60's or so, all USN ships had an
unclassified voice call that never changed, as well as a four-letter CW
call. My first ship, which was an old LSD, was "NWOP" on CW (a very hard
call to send fast without introducing a "swing" which would attract the
attention of the Chief Radioman), and "Skid Tango" on voice, up until around
1964. The big dogs like carriers, cruisers, and battleships were of course
always allocated the cool sounding voice calls like "War Eagle", "Rampage",
"Thunderbolt", "Warrior", etc., and the rest of us peon ships got the
leftovers, most of which were two-word calls that made no sense. We used the
same voice call even on harbor control circuits, steaming in formation, and
tactical exercises, at least until Vietnam got cooking good, then at some
point all units switched to a rotating system of two letter voice calls that
changed every day on a prearranged secret schedule.

This was before digital secure voice technology was implemented, so even
tactical radio signals had to be sent in the clear, which is why the Navy
used radio silence and those colorful signal flags and flashing light CW so
much when steaming in formation. It was also why ham band HF bootlegging was
universally frowned upon. There was some limited analog secure voice
available on narrowband HF, but most UHF/VHF was unencrypted. We didn't even
have single channel secure TTY on my ship until around 1963. I happened to
be one of the first few dozen techs to be sent to crypto repair school to
maintain the early tube-driven crypto receivers. What a hoot. Many plug-in
circuit boards (cutting edge technology at the time) stuffed with dozens and
dozens of subminiature tubes. The system worked fine, though. Sadly, they
also worked fine for the North Vietnamese and ChiComs after that SOB John
Walker sold a bunch of key card decks to them, which ultimately caused the
death of thousands of our guys before we figured it out.

There were some Tactical Pubs that listed pre-Vietnam voice and CW calls,
but I can't remember their titles, it's  been too long. They would have been
something like "ATP-3" (Allied Tactical Publication #3), or similar. Most
were not classified, except for maybe "NOFORN" (no foreign government) or
"Allied Use Only". Maybe an ex-Radarman or Radioman would be able to
remember their titles, since they used them the most. The same series of
pubs listed things like the "Q" and "Z" signals for radio and radioteletype
use. Who knows, some of them might still be available in some dusty
warehouse somewhere, but were probably mostly destroyed when replaced by
other newer pubs and voice systems.

Sorry to use so much bandwidth, but this subject brought back a flood of old
memories, and the older I get the more sea stories I tend to tell. :-)

Jerry W5KP   LT, USN (Ret)


-----Original Message-----
From: milsurplus-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:milsurplus-bounces at mailman.qth.net]On Behalf Of mikea
Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2005 9:49 AM
To: milsurplus at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] TCS-12 Radios


On Thu, Mar 10, 2005 at 08:33:10AM -0600, Bob Wilder wrote:

> A question arose the other day at LST-325.  Where can you find tactical
> call signs used during WW2.  LST-325 has the CW call NWVC but the voice
> tactical call is unknown.

Wouldn't those have been variable, and assigned with the (monthly weekly?)?
COI from next-higher                                                      ?

Kudos to the PT boat restorers for doing what they're doing, but I really,
really hope that someone in the area can take the "honey catches more
flies" approach to getting a working TCS (or other WW II) rig on the boat.

--
Mike Andrews, W5EGO
mikea at mikea.ath.cx
Tired old sysadmin
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