[Milsurplus] FW: TBX at Roi

[Hubert Miller]

From: Jason Breidenbach

Sent: Thursday, December 7, 2017 9:36 AM

To: Hubert Miller



Hue,

Please take a look at the attached. Just found this on page 133 of Code Talkers. Doesn't sound like TBX or a TBY. What do you think?

[cid:image003.jpg at 01D36F50.71F64C70]



Reply: this is an example of memory being scrambled and synthesized, something I have come across in other veteran accounts, even when the narrator is

trying to be scrupulously honest.



The TBY is the backpack radio, could be used while being carried or set ground; operates on VHF ( short range very high frequency ), operates from

batteries which clamp below the radio, and which aren't seen when the radio is operated in its bag. This radio is a one-person load. The antenna is a

maximum of around 6 foot. TBY backpack radio has connections for two headset-mic sets at the same time and the bag contained two headset-mic sets

in its storage area at top. To start transmitting either person has only to push the button on the microphone, just like any other CB or 2-way radio.



The TBX is a field radio, in three to five carry loads, radio alone is around 30 lbs.;  requires mast antenna or wire antenna up into trees, is higher powered

and longer range than TBY. To transmit a message, you have to crank the generator each time you transmit, that means each voice or telegraph message.

There is no energy storage from the generator. Normal resting state of the radio is receive; and receiving, listening is normally powered from a small battery

pack. The TBX field radio has connectors for ONE headset and for ONE microphone. To change from listening to sending, you had to flip a switch on the

front of the radio and have the assistant start cranking the generator.



Neither set uses a red-yellow cord to headphone; the cord was black rubber. The TBY headsets DID have a red and white rubberized cushion on the

earphones.



The above description is old hat to the readers of this group. The only thing maybe worth bringing up is we have to understand  the fallibility

of memory in veteran memoirs. Movie makers regularly get things wrong. I seem to recall in the movie "Windtalkers", an actual correct Japanese

radio was seen, but the radio's generator was being cranked while a message was being received. Wrong.



I can understand how the memories get scrambled. Those veterans were young, it's been an age since then, and they were not radio hobbyists

before or after the 3-year experience of the war. It was just a tool they used.



Tim N6CC ran into something similar when he interviewed a 'Merrill's Marauders'  CBI veteran and tried to nail down the radios used. It sounded

like the AN/TRC-2, but there were some remembered descriptions that were definitely odd.

-Hue


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