[R-390] Was it classified

[K PERALES]

I signed up for the ASA in 1967 under the mistaken idea that I would be around things that FLY.  The MOS was said to be Air Traffic Controller. I had flunked my hearing test for helicopter pilot training.  The recruiter told me about this really special group call Army Security Agency that my test scored qualified me for and they had opening in said Air Traffic Control.  The real seller was that there was no ASA in Vietnam which in 1967 when everyone else was being drafted to go to Nam sounded like a good idea.  My enlistment for 4 years was based on a number of mistaken ideas.  Number one, Air Traffic Control turned out to be deciding which radio messages were important and to what group they were directed, not things that fly.  Ended up being a good thing considering the number of people killed around flying things in Nam.  Second mistake was thinking that the Army was really going to let me choose what like of work I was going to do.  When I reported to Fort Devens for MOS school, they told me they had to many Air Traffic Controllers and I was now going to be a Ditty Bopper (05H20 Morse Intercept Operator)  and a week later I was screaming Di Dah Alpha and running around the outside of the building carrying a 20 pound manual typewriter because I did not scream load enough.  After finally meeting the 15 GPM requirement to move on, I was sent to the big brick building filled with room after room of hundreds of R-390A radios and introduced to the wacky world on morse intercept.  We were told that everything about our mission was classified Top Secret Crypto and that we could be sent to prison forever if we talked about it to anyone other than our fellow troupes.  I found out that was BS on our first weekend passes into Boston where we met a whole legion of ASA groupie college girls that knew everything about our school and mission far better than we did.  They all knew Morse Code and could speak to us in morse just like we did in the barracks to practice all the time.  They also knew before we did that we were going to Nam regardless what the recruiter told us and that we would be called Radio Research instead of ASA.   My girlfriend at the time even told me about asking for an advanced class in Communication Jamming to be able to stay in Boston for an extra 4 months.  Project Crazy Cat turned out to only be used in Nam so I ended up volunteering to go the Nam against everything I tried to avoid by going into ASA in the first place.  While the mission of the ASA was classified and how the R-390 was used was  classified, I believe that the radio itself was not.  I found an ad on the web from 1969 CQ magazine that offered the radio for sale to the general market while I was still in Nam actively still using the 390 to monitor VC and NVA signals.  And while the military thought that our mission was a secret, about half of the messages we copied in Nam and back at Vint Hill Farm Station listening to Russian and Chinese radio traffic was them listening to us, listening to them, listening to us.  Their radios to listen into our radio traffic was ever bit as good as ours.  And I can say after monitoring Russian radio traffic for the last years and a half of my time that their female morse radio operators were way faster and better than any American operator I ever listened to.  We were told that they would train up to 4 years before ever being allowed to send live over the air.  Speeds of between 60 and 90 GPM (Groups Per Minute as messages were sent encrypted into numbers in groups of 10 numbers per group, 10 groups per line and 50 lines per block)  were routine and fewer than 5% of us Ditty Boppers would even copy them without having to use tape replays to go back over the message a number of times to get it all.  I was one of the few on our shift that could copy the Russians live.  I once went through a case and a half of fanfold paper (1000 sheet to a case) in one 8 hour shift.


Every manual the military ever put out during any kind of conflict was labeled Restricted or Top Secret even for burning cans of shit from the outhouses in Nam and I doubt there was anything actually secret about how to mix diesel with crap and light it with a match and stir for 6 to 8 hours.  Labeling the use of the R-390 radio Top Secret was form rather than function.  I was told that because I had been in the ASA, I could not fly over any Communist country after I got out of the Army for 10 years.  As if there was anything I could tell the enemy about tuning a radio and how to identify a Russian station from a ship to shore radio was anything they did not already know.


Now the fact that we had planes (RU-8D) doing Airborne radio direction finding over Nam and could pinpoint an antenna to withing 20 meters on the ground was something that was classified at the time and even then, the VC knew that certain kinds of planes like our twin engine non-armed planes could find them was enough that if they could see the plane over head, they knew enough to stop transmitting when out plane was pointed directly at them.  They may not have known how or just how accurate we were but they knew what was going on.  There was nothing about the R-51 radio that was all that special but the manual on how to use the radio and for what was classified.


Even today, the equipment used by the NSA is not all that special, it is the way they use it and who and what they are listening to that is secret.  Back in the 60's we had satellites that could take pictures to read the label on a beer can along side the road.  The class where we learned how to dump pictures from satellites, the walls were covered with pictures of girls/women sunbathing topless in their backyards from all across the US and the world.  Look at Google Earth and how much detail you can see of houses and yards and that is just what you are allowed to see.  Imagine that someone can read the label on the package of meat along side your BBQ and know what else they can see when you think no one is looking.


The picture of the Ditty Bopper from Nam, was trying to show the radio we used without actually showing a classified radio that could have got someone in trouble showing the radios we actually used.  I spent hundreds of hours sitting at a position just like that and they were all R-390A not what ever mixed up version that was supposed to be.


 Ken

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Public sale.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 172113 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/r-390/attachments/20190528/d1cfaf86/attachment-0004.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Hard at work2.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 278567 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/r-390/attachments/20190528/d1cfaf86/attachment-0005.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Image9.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 74098 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/r-390/attachments/20190528/d1cfaf86/attachment-0006.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Image11.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 46726 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/r-390/attachments/20190528/d1cfaf86/attachment-0007.jpg>