[Milsurplus] Higgins PT Boats

[Richard Arland, W3OSS]

Bob Neilson, the owner of WNAK, where I engineered for a time, was a sparks 
on WWII fleet boats in the PTO. He went on 5 war patrols.

I picked his brain a bit and regarding CW in the war zone, he said that all 
Sparks were forbidden to use semi-automatic keys (Bugs), and used only the 
old J-38 straight keys. The reason was that with a Bug, a definite "fist" 
could be detected and, over a period of time, CW intercepts could actually 
identify the boat that the Sparks was on.

Anybody ever hear of this theory?

73 Rich W3OSS

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Flory" <robandpj at earthlink.net>

| My contact said the radio was HF, and also talked about the need to
| maintain radio silence.