[Milsurplus] Stinson's Law of Technological Progress

[Ray Fantini]

Operation Market garden was plagued with communications failures. Type 22 sets that were under powered and unreliable, frequency coordination that called for using frequencies that were also being used by broadcast stations in Germany and in one case by the BBC and ground to air radios that were equipped with the wrong crystals that prevented any coordination between troops and air support.
On Wiki there is this regarding communication problems and Market Garden:
"After the war it was identified that the Royal Corps of Signals was either unaware, or did not make aware Divisional Signals of the communication problems identified in November 1943 due to sun spots by the Scientific Advisor's Office to the 21st Army Group. Consequently Urquhart ordered the 4m antennae to be used, which were useless due to physics of radio propagation. The wrong frequencies were part of the same problem due to Signals personnel not being aware of the scientific considerations behind radio communications".

The battleship Maryland being used as a Command and Control center turned out to be an issue at Tarawa. The communications equipment had never been tested in battle conditions and when the sixteen inch guns started communications failed. The failures of TBX and TBY sets ashore as noted in "Tarawa:  Testing Ground For The Amphibious Assault" by Douglas F. Ashton section 4.5 "The division suffered because of difficulties with their TBX and TBY radios, used for beach-to-beach communications.  The fault lay with the bulky and hard to handle radios which were not waterproof or shockproof.  Once wet, as happened to every set sent ashore, they were inoperable until dried out. This not only complicated both the control of naval gunfire and air support, it more seriously perhaps kept Colonel Shoup and General Smith in the dark tactically and caused both to make decisions on the basis of inadequate knowledge of the situation."

This is just two examples of what happens when technology, procedures and planning fail. I do not think we are any better or worse at doing things today then we have been in the past and any time you upgrade technology or engage in a large operation there is opportunity for things that were never foreseen to happen. Integration to packet switched digital radio is the future. Some municipalities, counties and agencies may make mistakes by trying to cut corners and saving cost and often systems may fail but tell me when this has not always been the case?

RF