Chapter 12: The Test at Issue in North Africa (November 1942–May 1943)
The assault into North Africa was remarkably successful, in view of the haste and improvisation with which it had been prepared.1 Like nearly every element of the attack, communications, though much less than perfect, proved to be good enough under the circumstances. The signal equipment turned out to be excellent, but too often its usefulness was canceled in the hands of inexperienced signal troops. This was true particularly of radio, which in an amphibious assault bears the initial burden of military communications.
Communications, Assault Phase
In both the Eastern and the Center Task Forces, command and administrative radio communications were at least fair, thanks especially to two communication ships, the Bulolo and the Largs (employed respectively at Algiers and Oran), which the British had outfitted for the purpose, an innovation the Americans were soon to adopt. General Matejka, Eisenhower’s chief signal officer, subsequently judged that without them the Allied Force Headquarters in Gibraltar could hardly have maintained adequate contact with the Eastern and the Center Task Forces.2 These communication ships provided vital service during the initial absence of the SCR-299’s, which the signal planners had assigned to the 829th Signal Battalion in order to handle the command and administrative nets ashore, allotting 2 sets to Algiers, 6 to Oran, and 4 to the Casablanca area. But they were tardily discharged, both because of rough seas and because the SCR-299 trucks and trailers were stowed deep in the holds of the convoy ships.3
At Oran only one SCR-299 got ashore very early in the invasion. As the combat command of the 1st Armored Division moved to capture the airport at La Senia, this SCR-299 was the only set available which had enough power to reach the headquarters of the II Corps still at sea. Shortly thereafter, upon the capture of the French fortress protecting Oran, Lt. Col. Grant A. Williams, signal officer of the 1st Armored Division, sent the first word over this set
reporting to headquarters that Oran had fallen.4
The lesser radios in the local radio nets of the invaders performed well. Colonel Tully, signal officer of the II Corps, Center Task Force, reported that the first ship-to-landing party contact was made over an SCR-284 operated by one of the regimental combat teams. A second contact with the division headquarters ship was made by a unit of the 1st Armored Division using an SCR-193.5 The 18th Infantry, part of the 1st Infantry Division, used SCR-511’s for its regimental command net. The regimental commander and each battalion commander had a set, and they were never out of contact during the battle for Oran. Other units declared that the SCR-511, though good only while its batteries lasted, provided a very successful link between ship and shore.6
Unfortunately, signal personnel for the most part were not familiar with their equipment. Perhaps the worst example in the Center Task Force was one battalion which had never been engaged in a maneuver. Thirty percent of its men were Class IV and V enlisted men who had been received only a few days before leaving the United States. They had no opportunity to work a single problem with all subordinate units before they engaged in actual combat.7 Even the best troops tardily established signal communications, mainly because equipment was slow getting ashore. Some of it, notably vehicles, had simply been left behind, crowded off the transports. The decision to leave off many vehicles had been made at the highest levels before the convoy loading, in view of the shortage in shipping.8 The decision cut heavily into the supply of vehicles for all invading units, and slowed operations in many ways. Certainly the lack of trucks was one big reason why supplies in some areas could not be cleared rapidly from the docks, which became congested with material, in turn slowing the rate of discharge. Some signal units arrived with only 25 percent of their transportation, and on D plus 13 were still short by 30 percent.9
One consequence which arose from the separation of men and their equipment, as well as from the inability to unload them quickly, was that too few message center troops and too little communications equipment reached shore in the early assault phase. In fact, at H plus 20 hours in the Oran area, only three men were ashore to run the advance message center for the American troops, and through D plus 2 the principal means of communication between the message center and the command ship were the battery-operated SCR-511 radios. The 53rd Signal Battalion landed on the night of D Day. But, separated from its equipment, the unit was unable to take over the tactical net until D plus 3.
Communications on the beach in North Africa were established through such equipment as telephone switchboard BD-71 (above) and radio SCR-284 (below)
A detachment went ashore in the wake of the assault troops and operated a small switchboard in a dock warehouse and another at the French naval air station. On the 9th several jeeps and radio vehicles were landed and established radio communication with the 1st Infantry Division and Combat Command B. The battalion also took over from the 1st Signal Company the commercial switchboard in the PTT (Postes, Telegraphes et Telephones) building. Corps headquarters was established in the local school for girls but the command group remained aboard HMS Largs now docked in the port. Messenger service was maintained as required. On 10 November a 53rd Signal Battalion officer and two men, while carrying a message to the 1st Infantry Division in the vicinity of St. Cloud, were killed by fire from an artillery battery.10
Some signal units, such as the 32nd Signal Platoon Air Base, found themselves in the predicament of coming ashore with no equipment and with no immediate prospect of getting any. Having landed at Arzeu docks, near Oran, early on 9 November, uncertain of its assignment, the unit marched to St. Leu, six miles distant, to report to the headquarters of the XII Air Force Service Command. They were ordered to wait in a field nearby. There they camped during 9 and 10 November in a cold rain with but one blanket and a shelter half to a man. On the 11th, under orders from the headquarters, the men moved to the Tafaraoui air base. They arrived by evening, only to have their confusion compounded, for no one at the base knew what to do with the orphan unit. On the following day, receiving orders from the signal officer of the Twelfth Air Force, the men moved again, this time to the La Senia airdrome. Since the telephone system there had been severely damaged, the men at last had a job to do. But—they had no facilities at hand. Some of their equipment, such as that shipped in their convoy from England, now lay scattered along the miles of landing beaches and docks. After a time they found two of their trucks, which had been appropriated by other units at the time of landing. Eventually, by searching daily, they recovered most of their communication equipment.11
A bright spot in the signal scene around Oran was afforded by units assigned to the Armored Force and equipped with the new FM radios in the 500 series. Colonel Williams, signal officer of the 1st Armored Division, reported enthusiastically: “We provided excellent communications. We even furnished communications for General Doolittle. We drove a tank up to a command post and sent his messages to the tank battalion headquarters, and from there they went to the combat commander, to the II Corps to Gibraltar and it really worked. Toward readying portable radios for the landing,” Williams commented “we made bags out of heavy shower proof canvas with a draw string at the top and made handles at the sides. ... We even devised a special antenna so that the equipment would operate while it was being carried. We used these small radio sets until the vehicles arrived and as soon as the latter landed, we sent them inland and established tactical communications.” He added that the SCR-509’s were used to exchange messages pertaining to unloading the ships.12
The Signal Corps unit serving the 1st Armored Division was the 141st Armored Signal Company. Twenty men of the 141st made up the beach signal party. Disembarking onto an LCP about 0230, 8 November, they took six SCR-509’s, six EE-8 telephone sets and a quantity of assault wire to the beach. There they established contact with a 509 radio and its two operators who had remained at the headquarters aboard the transport, and they set up lateral wire lines along the beach to adjacent troops. Their first vehicular signal center ashore sprang up around an SCR-193, which had been brought in by dawn to establish communication with a British radio, a No. 19 set, aboard the headquarters ship. “During the landing and in the action which followed in taking Oran, the communications of the invasion force were of the highest order,” the historian of the company congratulated its men. “Radio nets,” he added, “were established without much difficulty, signals were good, contact was maintained throughout the whole battle which lasted for three days.”13
This unit was undoubtedly one of the best signal outfits in the Army, including as it did many a radio enthusiast, beginning with Grant Williams himself, who was the commanding officer when the unit first took form in 1940 as the 7th Signal Troop, soon redesignated the 47th Signal Company. It was during the formative period of this signal unit that Williams did much to modernize vehicular radio, promoting FM crystal-controlled sets, especially for the Armored Force.14 The service provided by this crack unit suggested how effective communications could be in the hands of experienced troops. In general, communications were not quite so good during the assault upon Oran but, on the whole, the signal plan for the Center Task Force met the test rather well.
By contrast, communications in the Western Task Force area fell short of the plans, even broke down at times. This was the case in General Patton’s headquarters, the Army message center aboard the heavy cruiser, USS Augusta. The Signal Corps consequently received some scathing criticism. “A glaring deficiency,” read an official report on TORCH, “was the almost complete breakdown of communication in certain instances. ...”15
The ships of the Western Task Force steamed within gunshot of the Atlantic littoral of French Morocco at three points: off Port-Lyautey, about seventy-five miles northeast of Casablanca; off Fedala, the beach resort of Casablanca itself (Casablanca harbor held dangerously strong units of the French Navy); and off Safi, well over a hundred miles down the coast, southwest from Casablanca. Throughout its voyage, the armada had observed strict radio silence to avoid giving notice of its approach. But before the zero hour, 0400, when the first landing craft were scheduled to touch shore, a short-wave news announcement from Washington, heard over receivers aboard the ships, reported to the world that American troops were landing on the west coast of Africa. City lights and lighthouse beacons which had been shining along the shore suddenly blacked out.16
Now transmitters were turned on, as guide boats and landing craft left the darkened ships lying offshore and headed for the beaches. One powerful transmitter in particular went on the air at 0630, the five-kilowatt set aboard the Texas, speaking the recorded words of President Roosevelt, asking that the Americans be received as friends and liberators. Despite much skepticism the signal plan of the Western Task Force had included a psychological unit, its advocates having pushed it with the highest priority. Subsequent reports from the French revealed that many listeners thought the Allies had already landed and taken over the radio station at Rabat.17 Certainly it is true that the French did not resist determinedly or for long, and “from that time on, there was no major Allied landing from Normandy to the Philippines that did not have a Psychological Warfare Division as part of the force.”18 When the Texas fired her big guns in support of the invasion, the blast knocked out the transmitter, but it was soon repaired back on the air.19
On duty in the signal center at the AFHQ advanced command post in Gibraltar, where General Eisenhower and his staff awaited the news that morning, was a detachment of one officer and forty enlisted men from the Headquarters Company, 63rd Signal Battalion, and a detachment from the 827th Signal Service Company, flown in from England, ETOUSA, the night before, together with British signalmen.20 Reports filtered in scantily, according to Col. Darryl F. Zanuck, who was on hand to supervise Signal Corps photographic activities: “Battles are raging, and we seem to be in control of most of Algiers and Oran, but the Casablanca theater is ominously silent,” he jotted in his diary. The next morning, just before taking off in a transport plane for Algiers, he noted, “Communications are still difficult.”21 Zanuck arrived in Algiers just after the airport had been secured. His first assignment there was to occupy and close down a radio station in the city. Existing radio stations were naturally immediate objectives for Signal Corps units. A small detachment of the 9th Signal Company, attached to the 39th Combat Team, had gone ashore in the early morning of 8 November with the first wave of invaders, landing at Surcouf near Algiers. Ashore at 0200, by 0700 they had reached and seized the important Radio Algiers and its powerful transmitter at Eucalyptus.22
Difficult was a mild word to describe
what was happening meanwhile at Patton’s headquarters aboard the Western Task Force’s warship, the Augusta, flagship of Rear Adm. Henry K. Hewitt’s naval command. It had seemed best to the planners to set up a single combined message center which, during the amphibious assault, would handle all headquarters traffic: U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and British Navy. The radio equipment, together with the message center coding and distribution facilities, could not be compressed into one room, and so was put into three widely separated locations spread over the crowded ship. The main room, Radio One, held jammed into its 300 or so square feet 11 radio receivers, 3 cipher machines, and other equipment, along with 25 operators.23 The Army tactical and administrative radio nets had to be controlled from the flagship until Patton’s headquarters could go ashore. They required two channels emanating from the net control centers on the Augusta. These Army control centers, it had been planned, would be operated by 9 Army radiomen, using naval equipment. But the 9 men, evidently from among the very ones whom Colonel Hammond had assembled during the last frantic days in Washington, proved to be too green. Their training insufficient, they had to be relieved, presumably by naval operators, before noon of D Day.
It was not till afternoon, therefore, that communications were established over the tactical net to all sectors ashore. Further misfortune ensued. The tardily accomplished contact was cut short, two hours later, when the Augusta’s heavy guns fired on French warships off Casablanca. The shock knocked out the transmitter and rendered practically all radio circuits on the Augusta inoperative.24 Since the circuits were the principal means of communication with the subtask force and General Eisenhower’s headquarters, all echelons of command were left with very little information concerning the progress of the invasion. The only messages to reach AFHQ were sent by the Navy, but naval radio channels were so congested that the traffic moved slowly.
Finally, after repairs had restored the transmitter aboard the Augusta and traffic again flowed over the tactical net, the messages were found to be worthless. They had been improperly enciphered. As for the administrative net centered in the control station aboard the Augusta, it fared no better than the ill-starred tactical net. Its operators were likewise below par, and its equipment also had suffered from gun shock. Accomplishments on D Day were next to nil. The operators did keep a log, which revealed upon subsequent examination that, while the subordinate stations in the net had called in periodically, the headquarters had failed
to answer. Late in the first day the operators even intercepted a French message in plain text, describing the damage done in Casablanca and recounting French battery counterfire. They recorded the message, but failed to report it.25 Gradually, matters aboard the Augusta mended, until by the end of the second day the Army’s tactical net in the Western Task Force was performing well.26 But obviously during the crucial first hours, there had indeed been a “glaring deficiency” here.
Communications on the beachheads were only a little better than those aboard the Augusta. The planners had pinned much hope upon the large SCR-299 radios. They had assigned six, specially mounted upon half-tracks, to the 1st Armored Signal Battalion. But the battalion landed only one in time to be of any use in the landing operation, and that one not until 10 November, when it took over the Western Task Force command net. Five of the six sets had been loaded deep in one vessel. The sixth set was lost with the sinking of the ship that carried it.27 Because of the lack of the 299’s on the beaches, the secondary Western Task Force net contemplated in the plans was never established during the assault. A detachment of Company C, 829th Signal Service Battalion, eventually succeeded in putting six large sets on shore: three SCR-188’s and three SCR-299’s. Of the three 188’s, intended, according to the plan, to establish contacts with Accra, Oran, and Gibraltar, only the contact with Gibraltar met success, and that success was considerably dashed by enemy jamming. The three 299’s fared no better. They were intended to communicate with Gibraltar and Oran, and with the Western Task Force elements. But only the local Western Task Force channels actually performed at first, and not till the third day after the invasion did one of the other two sets establish a contact with Oran.28
The smaller radio sets, the SCR-511’s and the 284’s, and the larger 193’s served less well in the western landings because of the seas and surf, which, many had thought, would utterly prevent amphibious operations along western Morocco and which were indeed rough enough to capsize landing boats in some areas. Waterproof bags, as ordered in the Signal Operating Instructions, had not been distributed for all sets. When soused in sea water, the power supply cords and contacts shorted and the radios died. Jeeps plunged into several feet of surf, soaking the 193’s. On shore, although half-tracks carrying radios were able to get through, the radio trucks themselves slithered helplessly in the sand. In at least one instance a radio vehicle was wrecked by French strafing from the air.29 Some portable sets worked well, notably at Safi, on the southwest flank of the western assaults. Of all the landings in western Morocco that morning, the operation
against Safi was the smallest and the most successful, taking its objective with effective surprise and efficiency. A pair of SCR-511’s and an unauthorized FM net provided valuable assistance. Two destroyers laden with troops headed for the harbor, to land men at the very docks. A scout boat had gone before them to locate the darkened harbor entrance and then to flash an infrared light seaward to guide in the destroyers’ skippers. It was a guide light invisible to the unaided eye. To Safi citizens or guards it yielded no telltale gleam, but through the infrared telescopes of the watchers on the first destroyer it shone brightly. The ship gained the harbor entrance safely, then ran aground, yet in a sufficiently advantageous position so that her troops were able to land promptly over the bow. The watchers aboard the second destroyer, however, failed to see the infrared guide light, and their ship was heading toward the harbor’s breakwater when the scout boat party hastily turned on a radio which they had brought with them, an SCR-511. With it they at once made contact with another 511 on the destroyer and gave warning just in time to avert a disaster on the breakwater’s rocks. They then talked the ship into the harbor where it docked without incident.30
The communication radio nets which were intended, according to the plan, to serve the landing effort locally were AM, utilizing SCR-511’s, 284’s, 536’s, and 193’s, the usual Infantry radios of that date. But at Safi the actuality differed. Most of the radio communications passed over an extemporized FM radio net, based on Armored Force sets. Armored Force units of the 2nd Armored Division participated in the assault on Safi. The men tried at first to use the Infantry AM radio sets according to the signal plan and to establish the authorized AM nets. But they failed. For one thing, they were unable to keep the sets properly tuned (both the 284 and the 193 required manual tuning). Armored Force men had their own pushbutton FM radios and turned to them, setting up an unauthorized FM net of four SCR-509’s: one for each battalion commander, one for the subtask force commander, and one for the transport division commander. This net worked with the simplicity and clarity of FM radiotelephone operation, employing pushbuttons to select the correct frequencies. It actually handled “the bulk of the radio traffic in this operation for a period of three days,” allowing good communication up to eleven miles and handling local requests for fire or air support without a hitch.31
Safi was the one bright spot in the communication scene along the coast of western Morocco on 8 November. Elsewhere, the adverse circumstances which harassed the Center Task Force recurred in the west: signalmen without equipment, equipment inaccessible under layers of other supplies still aboard the ships or scattered at landings far removed from the units to which it belonged. These difficulties were compounded in the west by the rough wet landings, overturned craft, and considerable opposition from the French. Not only did equipment lie at the bottom of holds, not being discharged till many hours or days after the initial need for it, but some of it was not unpacked at all. It remained in the
holds of ships that returned to the United States to meet convoy schedules, since dockside congestion and other factors had delayed unloading too long. This happened to some of the heavier signal equipment, notably the radar sets intended for a number of the Aircraft Warning Service battalions assigned to the Army Air Forces. Other radars, too, were sunk when several ships, still laden with cargo some days after D Day, were torpedoed off Morocco. They carried down quantities of valuable radar equipment.32
Even when the troops in the western assault could lay hands on their signal equipment, they often found it damaged, water-soaked, or out of operating condition, alignment off and batteries low.33 These difficulties were intensified as they were not at Oran and Algiers, by very considerable opposition, especially at Port-Lyautey on the northeast flank. Here there was fighting and not much communications the first two days. General Truscott and his staff, though they had planned to go ashore at 0600 on 8 November, delayed until some sort of communications had been set up on the beach. They did not disembark until 1340. On the beach there was still almost no communication with the front lines and Truscott visited the front himself to find out how affairs were progressing. Many small portable radios had come ashore drenched and quite dead. The same was true of vehicular sets.34
A detachment of about seventy officers and men from the 9th Signal Company landed at Mehdia, a village near Port-Lyautey. Coming ashore with the third wave of the 2nd battalion, 60th Infantry, some of the men served on signal liaison duty at the village throughout the first day. That night they received orders to form an outpost on high ground guarding the battalion’s left flank. Dawn of the next day found them outflanked by Moroccan soldiers. Attacked from the rear, the signal group suffered losses of six men killed and two wounded. Consolidating during the day in the village and reinforced, by the afternoon they established a radio contact with the ships offshore. By 10 November, as more men and equipment landed, they built up communications ashore for this subtask force.35 Here, then, these Signal Corps men served as infantry. Here, too, another signal unit, the 2nd Broadcast Station Operation Detachment, did everything but operate a broadcast station. First, they unloaded ammunition and threaded machine
gun belts; then they served variously, on burial detail, on guard detail, on baggage detail. Not until 20 November did they turn to their specialty, when they took over the operation of Radio Maroc, the large official Moroccan radio at Rabat.36
Stabilizing TORCH Communications
Communications for the AFHQ quickly became established in Algiers. An advanced echelon moved in with the Eastern Task Force on 8 November, followed by a second group of signalmen the next day. Maj. Kirk Buchak, General Matejka’s administrative officer, at once pressed French fixed radios into service to supplement and then replace the temporary channels which had been set up by the British communications ship, HMS Bulolo, anchored in Algiers Bay. Company A of the 829th Signal Service Battalion, a detachment of the 63rd Signal Battalion, and the 365th Independent Signal Battalion (British) soon converted the garages, the servants’ quarters, the wine cellars, and the barroom of the St. George Hotel in Algiers into the AFHQ Signal Center.37
Signal Corps’ big mobile SCR-299 radio sets now began to weave a dependable communication net over the entire sweep of the TORCH invasions. The sets served as excellent stopgaps ashore till permanent ACAN radios could be installed.38 In the Oran area an SCR-299, which Company B of the 829th Signal Service Battalion put into operation, established a direct channel to England. The SCR-299, originally conceived as a radiotelephone good for “100 miles in motion,”39 proved to have surprisingly long ranges, in the hundreds and thousands of miles when used in radiotelegraph operation on sky waves radiated from the usual whip antenna or from a directional antenna array which could be set up quickly in any more or less fixed situation. So it was that here, in Oran, an SCR-299 maintained contact over the long distance to England, with little atmospheric interruption, until the Signal Corps replaced the set with a permanent 15-kilowatt fixed station in December 1942.40
During the days and weeks following the Allied invasion of North Africa, the SCR-299’s provided the chief means of long-range communications. They operated over distances up to 2,300 miles, Colonel Tully reported enthusiastically. His sets at Oran made contact with Gibraltar on 9 November, with Algiers on the 11th, with Casablanca on the 12th, with Accra on the 17th, and with England on the 21st.41 “The SCR-299 is far and away the best field radio equipment in the theater,” reported Maj. Lawrence C. Sheetz, adding that “this is the unanimous opinion of all British and American officers. ... “ Stating that the 299 performance exceeded all expectations, he cited the fact that one set at Oran, using only its normal whip antenna, was maintaining contact both with England far to the
The SCR-299 in North Africa
north and with Accra, even farther to the south.42
But good equipment could not by itself ensure good communications. Not until D plus 10 could the radio service connecting Casablanca, Gibraltar, Oran, and Algiers be considered really satisfactory and dependable. The delay stemmed from the men and the methods. Signal Corps men who had to communicate in radio nets with the British Army, the British Navy, the Royal Air Force, and the American Air Forces encountered almost insuperable difficulties in coding and decoding and in relaying and routing the traffic. Message center personnel, too few, too inexperienced, poorly trained or in some cases even incapable of absorbing the training, were further bedeviled by the fact that they had not been informed about the call signs for the many stations. Codes and ciphers entangled and snarled. Capping the whole confusion was the fact that changes had been made in the radio procedure plan at the last moment before the invasion, and not everyone had been informed. The men had to learn the tricks and adjust to the situation as they struggled with their task.43
Radio bore the brunt of the initial communications. Thereafter, as wire facilities built up, they took over from radio an increasingly heavy share of the traffic. But even from the first moments of landing, wire played a large part. Signal Corps wire units
the first infantrymen. In the Oran area, two six-man teams of the 286th Signal Company, Composite, landed at 0100, 8 November, with the 1st and 3rd Battalions of the 16th Regimental Combat Team and established wire circuits to the battalion command posts as well as local circuits in the beach area. At 0430 two officers and fifteen enlisted men landed with the headquarters of the 16th Regimental Combat Team and laid a local wire net for the temporary beach posts.
Hardly had these temporary, local lines been installed than the Signal Corps men began to make use of existing French facilities, such as pole lines which ran a bit inland and parallel to the shore. These were tapped by beach parties of the 141st Armored Signal Company in order to duplicate the laterals along the beach itself. The French system had a two-position switchboard in Arzeu, which the 1st Signal Company took over the first day. Later they transferred its operation to the 53rd Signal Battalion. By D plus 3, the 53rd assumed control over the entire telephone system of Oran and, by the day after, established telephone links over PTT facilities with Algiers and Casablanca. They set up Army equipment too, as fast as they could get it, for example, a BD-96 which they placed in the PTT building. Within forty-eight hours after the landings, the Gibraltar and Algiers cables were in use, as well as a cable link to Vichy, whence the Americans received a number of cable messages from the Vichy French government and turned them over to G-2.44 The 53rd Signal Battalion set up the Center Task Force signal center in the Grand Hotel, Oran, and was soon serving about 100 units in the area, besides establishing teletype service to AFHQ in Algiers, to the Western Task Force in Casablanca, to the Air Forces net, and to naval stations in the dock area.45 In the Casablanca area, the 239th Signal Operation Company established wire communications quickly, thanks to the French, whose help was badly needed. The Americans had received insufficient coaching about the French-type telephone exchanges, the French wire circuits, and outside construction. “If the French had not been cooperative,” said Capt. Herman L. Purkhiser, commander of the 239th, “we would have had a great deal of difficulty operating the system.” As for the wire units sent to North Africa, Purkhiser thought their organization was good, their equipment excellent. The only large inadequacy upon which he remarked, as did all other signal reports, was the insufficient training of the men.46 But they would learn, on the job.
The first test posed by TORCH, the assault phase, concluded with the French surrender on 11 November. Whatever the specific failures, the assault had succeeded. The Signal Corps men, their organization, and their equipment had met the first test at least reasonably well in view of the circumstances. Such signal failures as occurred were by no means the fault solely of the Signal Corps. In a post-mortem dated in February 1943, the Services of Supply headquarters made emphatic some of the points which the Army had learned from TORCH: plans must be begun earlier in anticipation of an assault; men and material must be
Restoration of communications facilities was aided greatly by French cooperation. French telephone cable is loaded on a charcoal-burning French truck (above), and French telephone operators assist American operators on a switchboard (below)
carefully selected and assembled; above all, the men must be trained, not just in their specialties, but in the added refinements of amphibious operation such as techniques of loading and discharging the convoys. In particular, the SOS spotlighted the need for improved communications between armies, between the Army and the Navy, and among the Allies. This meant, first, agreement at top levels on equipment, frequencies, call signs, codes and ciphers, and procedures in radio and wire operation; and second, selection of competent operators and the training of them somewhat longer than overnight. “It is the responsibility of every person in the military service,” SOS directed, “to take such action as lies within his power to insure that none of the lessons derived from the recent amphibious operations in North Africa shall go unheeded.” Other landings lay ahead, far more dangerous. The Allies had been lucky in North Africa.47
New Developments in Combat Communications
Communications in war immediately suggest tactical command messages, officers taking and giving orders, commanders receiving information and directing their forces. Although the cutting edge of wartime signals, for which the whole Signal Corps exists, this is only a small part of the whole. It is sometimes less than 10 percent of the communications load in a theater of operations. The front cannot move forward without bases immediately behind and farther behind, and these require huge communication nets. “An Army needs a virtual AT&T system,” said Maj. Gen. Francis H. Lanahan, Jr., after the war, “to carry huge and complex administrative traffic—hospitals, convoys, depots, transportation, press, personnel.”48 Further, as the fighting units move forward, taking along their tactical communications, they can rarely afford to leave a signals vacuum behind them. The terrain they have won must be laced with heavy-duty communication facilities. All this had been foreseen by the Signal Corps, whose research and development workers had readied military carrier systems and spiral-four field cable.
But the Army in North Africa was not yet ready to use such equipment. The Army had scarcely heard of it, had received no training in its use, and would have to be trained on the spot. The need was immediate and dire, in direct proportion to the speed with which the troops advanced from Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers, eastward along the coast to Philippeville and Bône, inland to Constantine, and southeastward to Tebessa, in order to grapple with the Germans in Tunisia. Movement was rapid, distances were great, and existing French wire lines were in poor condition, totally inadequate to handle the large volume of messages that had to go through.
TORCH planners had already ordered huge quantities of commercial-type carrier-wire equipment to implement the A to H project, contemplating an extensive, open-wire system for the Allies across great lengths of North Africa, first to Algiers and then to Tunis. Carrier facilities would be necessary to provide enough circuits.
General Matejka subsequently pointed out that, after the Tunisia Campaign, the preparations for the invasion into Sicily required 32 circuits alone between Constantine and Tunis. Already, by February 1943, the A to H equipment had all been shipped, having gone out in three lots, dispatched in November, December, and January, along with Signal Corps units to install it, the 27th, the 28th, the 63rd, and the 251st Construction Battalions. In March Colonel Lanahan itemized the fixed-wire equipment which had been shipped, such as Western Electric switchboards so big that each required eight operators, quantities of C type commercial carrier terminal equipment, and pole line material sufficient for 500 miles, averaging ten wires. Then came orders for 1,350 miles of pole line material, weighing thousands of tons.49
All of this was heavy-duty, ponderous wire equipment which simply could not be installed rapidly enough. As late as April, when the Tunisia Campaign was in its last weeks, General Matejka reported that the only long-distance trunk circuits in use by the Army from Casablanca to the eastern boundary of the Tunisian battlefields were French lines.50 Long before this Matejka had realized that the Army must have something that could be installed more quickly, and in December 1942 he had ordered large quantities of spiral-four, rapid-pole-line and military carrier equipment. Early in the year the quantities had begun to arrive, jamming the base sections and overwhelming depot personnel, who did not understand what the material was, or how to handle or issue it. Only little by little did it filter down to the troops, and then often in a damaged condition. Moreover, neither the troops nor their signal officers appreciated its use. A British expedient called multi-airline (MAL) equipment saved the tactical communication situation, reported one Signal Corps officer, at a time when “the acute shortages of circuits in the area behind Army Headquarters, then near Constantine, became the principal problem confronting the Chief Signal Officer [Matejka].”51
Both the British MAL and the American rapid-pole-line, RPL, were expedients devised for a nearly treeless land where telephone poles could not be obtained locally. Standard 40-foot poles by the thousands were forbiddingly awkward and bulky to transport to North Africa. Hence RPL had been devised. The poles were 20-foot building studs, or 2 x 4’s; that is, they were timbers sawed two inches thick by four inches wide. Two of them could be nailed together to form a 4 x 4-inch substitute for a pole or they could be crossed to form an X-shaped support. Naturally, they were easy to handle and could be packed neatly for
transport, but they were expected to hold up standard crossarms, insulators, and hardware, which proved too heavy for them. Moreover, they had to be spaced twice as close as standard tree-type poles, every 150 feet instead of every 300. Since this doubled the quantity of crossarms and fixtures, the number of holes to be dug, and the installation time, rapid-pole-line turned out to be not so very rapid. Moreover, the studs twisted and warped under sun and rain and not infrequently broke or blew over. Consequently, RPL was not altogether a success.
“In construction in this area,” said a Signal Corps officer speaking of North Africa, “it was found that a construction platoon could set up approximately 5 miles of RPL a day, and 8 miles of standard pole line a day, and, of course, the latter is much easier to maintain.”52 A substantial amount of RPL was used in North Africa, nonetheless, during the Tunisia Campaign, along with MAL, which was possibly the better of the two expedients.53 Theater needs during early 1943 were met chiefly by a combination of rather conventional wire facilities, commercial French, British military, and American military. The American wire most used was field wire W-110, on poles of varied sorts or on the ground.
In such circumstances, extensive use of spiral-four cable might have been expected. With carrier installations at the terminals, one spiral-four field cable could do the work of many wire lines. The new cable was tested and ready, having been proven in the previous summer. The AFHQ had ordered it in quantities, but the sad truth was that no one in the field understood its use. When an early shipment of 2,000 miles of spiral-four arrived in North Africa early in 1943, it came without instructions or explanations. Supply officers simply placed it in depot stock and issued it as long-range field wire to all comers.54 And as field wire the signal officers and wire crews at first treated the cable, generally mishandling it so badly that many concluded this new “wire” was worthless. They tugged and yanked it and hung it on poles in great long festoons, as often as not with a connector joint in mid-span. Under the stress of weight and wind, the connectors frequently failed and the manufacturer’s splices within the cable parted.55 Colonel Hammond concluded that “spiral-four is completely unreliable.” “Dump it in the ocean,” said another signal officer serving with the Army Air Forces; still another, “our troops had never seen this material prior to being put on it to construct the lines and I guess that we made every mistake in the book and a few of our own as well.”56
The whole trouble was that there were no instructions or instructors until General
Matejka sent for them.57 Consequently early in 1943 a team headed by Maj. M. M. Bower from the Ground Signal Equipment Branch went to North Africa to instruct everyone who handled spiral-four, carrier equipment, and RPL material. The team opened up schools in Oran and Algiers, set up demonstration lengths of spiral-four and RPL with carrier equipment at the terminals. They demonstrated proper methods of suspending spiral-four cable above the ground and of burying it quickly and efficiently in trenches dug by the useful cable plow LC-61. They prepared instruction folders and distributed them. In short, they provided the instruction which Signal Corps officers and wire crews should have had at home: instruction which normally they would have received had not the preceding months been crammed with such innovations as normally appear only over years. Training facilities and training time simply had not been able to keep up, let alone do justice to older equipment and methods.58
Major Bower and his helpers, D. L. Chaffee and H. E. Weppler, both from the Eatontown Signal Laboratory, provided the needed assistance toward getting the new developments installed in North Africa. Utilizing French commercial wire lines already in place, they got the first four-channel CF-2 military carrier telegraph system into operation in North Africa, between Oran and Algiers. They helped similarly on a 75-mile stretch of RPL from Mostaganem to Oran and on lines from Souk Ahras to Souk el Arba. And they saw to it that spiral-four lines went to work with an efficiency which completely refuted the “dump-it-in-the-ocean” reaction. A 20-mile length of spiral-four simply laid, like field wire, on the ground alongside an airline (MAL) installation, gave more continuous service, Bower reported, than the MAL did during three weeks of action around Kasserine Pass. Especially important were four spiral-four carrier systems totaling over 300 miles from Djidjelli along the coast to Mateur, some of it buried with the aid of the cable plow, some of it strung on poles on messenger wire (the supporting wire under which a cable is slung). It was spiral-four carrier systems with all their advantages of great speed of installation and of tremendous traffic capacity that provided the first and only telephone circuits from AFHQ in the Constantine and Bône area directly into the Mateur-Bizerte area of Tunisia when the campaign ended victoriously in mid-May for the Allies,59
Victory by no means ended the need for such heavy-duty communication facilities in North Africa. On the contrary, the need intensified. North Africa became the base area for staging and supplying further invasions into Sicily, Italy, and southern France.60 Tactical communications in North
Africa then gave way wholly to its bigger brother, administrative communications. Spiral-four field cable together with the military carrier telephone and telegraph (CF-1 and 2) equipment filled the very need which General Lanahan described as “a virtual AT&T system.” Eventually it was accomplished with the assistance of a very new development indeed, which tied together radio and wire facilities into one single integrated communication system by which a message could travel from a radio transmitter over the air, into a receiver and onto wire, to a switchboard, and so to an individual’s telephone set, or vice versa. This development, child of the North African campaign, was radio relay. The idea that it might become a valuable military facility already had been circulating among some Signal Corps officers and laboratory engineers.61 Early in 1943 the Signal Corps was able to put the idea to the test, thanks to General Eisenhower.
In the closing days of 1942 General Eisenhower demanded a radiotelephone with which he could call up his headquarters, however distant. Ordinarily, an SCR-299 radio truck and trailer accompanied Eisenhower’s car. Whenever he stopped, the men ran a short line linking a telephone in the car directly to the radio in the truck. On 24 December, however, the day on which Eisenhower decided to call off the abortive effort against Tunisia, an urgent message came in from Algiers announcing the assassination of Admiral Jean Francois Darlan. Urgent though it was, the message could not be delivered at once. The general was absent from his temporary headquarters and was out somewhere on the road without benefit of signal personnel (this at his own request). A special dispatch rider searched, but could not find him. Not till nearly midnight did the radio officer locate the general near Souk Ahras. As soon as he returned to his headquarters and to the SCR-299, communications were quickly established with General Henri Honore Giraud in the French sector of the front and then with Lt. Gen. Mark W. Clark in the Allied Forces Headquarters, Algiers. General Eisenhower dictated to the radio officer his message choosing Giraud as Darlan’s successor, and the receipt came back from Algiers only six minutes later.62
It was incidents such as this, it seems, which made the general decide that he must have a long-range radiotelephone small enough to fit into the trunk of his car, and he sent a staff officer back to Washington to emphasize his demand. The demand fell upon General Colton, head of the Signal Supply Service, in his capacity as development chief. A radiotelephone, trunk size, able to reach from the Tunisian front hundreds of miles back to headquarters in Algiers, was obviously impossible. Yet something very like it was possible. In recent months Signal Corps laboratory workers had cogitated upon radio equipment able to link breaks in wire lines, as across water barriers. This had been accomplished in recent years by commercial companies in a number of applications using AM radio. New FM techniques so improved radio-link operation that by late 1942 the Signal Corps was developing radio-link equipment to meet the Air Forces needs for relatively short lines of point-to-point communication, replacing wire altogether.63
General Colton, pondering Eisenhower’s demand, called in Colonel O’Connell, one of his ablest officers in research and development, who suggested a series of radio relay stations strung forty miles apart from Algiers to the front. With an ordinary radiotelephone installed in his car, Eisenhower could talk to the nearest relay pickup station. Though the mobile radiotelephone would have to be reasonably close by, within twenty or forty miles, the nearest pickup could instantly flash the voice back through as many relays as might be needed to cover the distance to headquarters. That very autumn the laboratories had experimented with radio relay, trying to find military takers, at maneuvers in North Carolina. This equipment, so far unsolicited, Colton at once dispatched to Eisenhower, together with a crew of Signal Corps laboratory experts.64 Eisenhower’s specific demand would promote an idea, which some Signal Corps men had been trying to sell, into an actuality of tremendous import.
In January 1943 a team of six radio engineers from the Coles Signal Laboratory went to North Africa carrying radio equipment that was principally Motorola police radio, FM type. The radios would operate only on very high frequencies and therefore the sending and receiving relay stations had to be located in a line-of-sight, without obstacles intercepting the beams of signals. In so rugged a land as North Africa, that meant locating the relay stations atop high elevations. Aided by Company D of the 829th Signal Service Battalion, the men set up the first three stations on 4,000-foot heights averaging about 100 miles apart: Djebel Toukra near Bougie, Djebel Ouasch near Constantine, and Djebel Rorra on the border of Tunisia. The last station was installed in time to be of service to the II Corps while it operated in the vicinity, so that a mobile terminal accompanying the corps headquarters could flash messages to the Rorra station, whence it could transmit through the other hilltop stations back to Algiers, and vice versa.
The actuality differed somewhat from the demand. Eisenhower had wanted a command radiotelephone, emphatically for voice alone. Accordingly, the Signal Corps teams arrived with voice radio only. But the officers responsible for signal security objected. “We didn’t get very far in putting any voice on the air,” said Russell A. Berg, one of the civilian radio members of the laboratory team. “They wouldn’t tolerate General Eisenhower going on the air and putting his latest thoughts on the air as to what they should do with the armies for the next two weeks.” Instead, all traffic had to be enciphered and sent on teletype. The team did some quick calculations and procured British two-tone telegraph and teletypewriter equipment. This union of American FM radio and British teletype bore good fruit. Radio relay became a radioteletype for moving headquarters, only slightly short of a radiotelephone for the general’s personal use. Mobile equipment at the front was loaded into a weapons carrier and was able to communicate back to the relaying station from any point up to fifty miles distant.65
About 20 April the relay system began to work, as a simplex single-channel radioteletype. As the campaign progressed and the mobile equipment serving the II Corps headquarters moved farther into Tunisia away from the third relay station atop Djebel Rorra, it became necessary to set up a fourth relay, which went up on the renowned Hill 609, known simply by its height in meters, as printed on Army maps. The Signal Corps crew put this fourth relay station into operation nine days after the Germans had been driven from the stubbornly held height. Upon the fall of Tunis in May, the mobile headquarters station radioed the news to Hill 609, whence it flashed back in four giant mountain hops over the 400 miles to Algiers, some twelve hours before the usual wire circuits became available and a message center was set up at Tunis. This first American Army radio relay system handled large quantities of II Corps traffic and press reports, with interruptions due to equipment failures or atmospherics amounting to less than 5 percent of the time, a percentage of outages much smaller than that suffered by wire lines in the same area.66 Beginning with these first relays linking Algiers and Tunis, Army tactical communications enjoyed the large facilities hitherto available only to administrative systems. From now on, military communications would make increasing use of radio relay, as the equipment took form in the AN/TRC types, commonly called antrac.
Along with these new developments in the communications of the ground troops in North Africa, there arose, in consequence of combat experience, changes and innovations in the signals of the Army Air Forces also. The airmen had spread their own radio nets over North Africa, paralleling Army nets. Like the ground forces, too, they used the SCR-299’s for long distances (rather than SCR-188’s, the older long-range set which the Signal Corps had originally designed to serve the Air Corps). Ground-air communications were indifferent at first. Visual signals—such as lights, pyrotechnics, or panels of colored cloth laid out on the ground—were considered unsatisfactory.67 Air support for ground troops was not always obtained with ease. But the II Corps in the Tunisian fighting developed good coordination. During the fighting in central Tunisia, a direct wire line linked the corps command post switchboard with the 12th Air Support Command, so that the II Corps could get air support within thirty to sixty minutes.68 One innovation in particular, which Colonel Tully described as highly satisfactory and effective, was the air-support party. An air-support party served with each division or combat team. Equipped with an SCR-299 and an SCR-522, it could communicate both with the ground forces and with any friendly aircraft within range.69
Fighter craft command radio now operated in the very high frequencies, using the VHF command set SCR-522. These new radios worked fairly well, within the limitations of the sets (not enough channels and trouble with noise and
interference).70 Allied aircraft were also equipped with IFF, for identification in search radar scopes. But that did not mean identification by troops unaccompanied by radar. Quite the opposite. Identification both up and down was an extremely sore point. United States aircraft attacked American troops all too often, and American troops fired on U. S. aircraft. One armored column in a few short hours was shot up twice by American planes, as well as twice by German craft, losing more men to the American attacks.71 And the Signal Officer, Twelfth Air Force Support Command, reported, “We have lost more planes from our own antiaircraft fire than we have from enemy antiaircraft fire.”72 When the strangely new, twin-fuselage P-38’s first appeared, they were shot at by Allied forces until the Air Support Command radioed to the ground forces that the P-38 did not look like any enemy aircraft, and would the troops please refrain from shooting at them.73 The fact that the Germans had similar troubles hardly made amends. At radar stations, IFF was doing the job intended. Captain Bates, commanding an antiaircraft unit of the 68th Coast Artillery, told McCrary that his men, using the SCR-268, had had no trouble with IFF. “All friendly planes are equipped with IFF and it works quite well as far as we are concerned,” Bates reported.74
Signal Corps Radars Meet the Test of War
American radar met the North African test well and the new American microwave sets presently proved to be as important a new development in combat signals as spiral-four cable and radio relay. Yet American radar in North Africa got off to a bad start. At first radar officers were few and radar in combat was not yet appreciated by the American troops. “Our commanding officers,” subsequently commented one historian of the subject, “seemed not yet aware of the military capabilities of radar.”75 They tended to rely upon the British, possibly because of the Air Forces’ marked preference for English sets and their operators. Yet the Signal Corps sets and their crews soon proved good enough to arouse the respect of the British, who had originally intended to employ only their own radars in North Africa.
“Planning for proper radar coverage caused us some headaches,” General Matejka told members of the Army and Navy Staff College on 19 August 1943. This was because of the geographic split between the groups who planned and staged the invasion. At the start of the TORCH plan, AFHQ in London had decided to use British radar only. But the decision could not stand. Since the Western Task Force was staging in America, American radar would have to accompany it. Radar operations in North Africa, British and American, would have to be coordinated. They were. The combination worked “remarkably well”; so well, indeed, according to Matejka, that “the British in particular were pleasantly surprised at the results.”76 The Signal Corps
was gratified, its faith in its sets and men sustained.
At the invasion, signal aircraft warning battalions had trouble getting ashore and into operation. In fact, they often did not have all their equipment. Weighing tons per set, the radars lay, inaccessible, in the bottoms of the convoy ships, and many were lost in the sinkings off Casablanca in mid-November.77 The 561st Aircraft Warning Battalion had departed from America hastily organized and without having seen its equipment, which was left behind at the Brooklyn Army base.78 When in some rare cases both the radar men and their equipment did get ashore, they sometimes found radar less highly rated than they had hoped. For example, the 560th Signal Aircraft Warning Battalion landed at Port-Lyautey, only to have its men drafted as stevedores. No doubt the need to unload the ships was more desperate than the need for air defense. At least the base commander in drafting the radar specialists made better use of the unit than did at first the commanding officer of Craw Field, who, in the words of the commander of the 560th Signal Aircraft Warning Battalion, “did not and would not understand our mission.” All this so delayed the battalion’s specialized business that not until 16 November, D plus 8, did the men set up their first radar, an American LW, the SCR-602, on a hill overlooking the airport. Not having enough SCR-602’s, the battalion put to use a number of airborne ASV radars, SCR-521’s, which, as might have been expected, proved unsatisfactory as ground search radars.79
Signal Corps ground radars for air defense first came into large-scale combat use in North Africa. Here the Allies encountered an enemy who was relatively well provided with aircraft and who was relatively stronger aloft than would be the case in subsequent campaigns. German Stukas and night bombers sorely harassed the invaders. The Allies at once set about employing radar on a huge scale, commensurate with the long lines they had to defend extending from Casablanca to Tunisia. They concentrated their sets in the eastern area toward Tunis, and the enemy’s airfields there. American radars alone soon numbered in the hundreds, principally the SCR-268’s and the 270’s. By September 1943 there were 283 sets of 268’s and the related 516’s in the theater.80 The SCR-268 won considerable appreciation from Coast Artillery units that used the radar to track aircraft and direct searchlights.81
To the Eastern and Center Task Force landings, the British brought their long-wave radars, COL’s, MRU’s, GCI’s, and LW’s. A few LW’s (SCR-602) and GCI’s (SCR-588B) came from America too. It was the LW type which was needed for the
The SCR-268 Searchlight Control Radar
assault phase—lightweight radars which men could quickly carry ashore and set up to watch for enemy raiders. Next, early warning radars with long range were needed to relieve ship-mounted air search sets. Finally, the GCI was wanted, to spot enemy bombers from the ground, enabling air defense control officers to coach AI-equipped night fighter pilots into positions where they could shoot down the enemy even in blackest night.82 British equipment guarded the eastern sector well. One GCI station at Morris, east of Bône, claimed twenty-three enemy aircraft shot down positively and one probably during the first two weeks of December 1942. The Germans quickly learned to avoid this and any other area which enjoyed the protection afforded by the GCIAI radar combination. In the vicinity of Oran both British and American radars stood guard: nine SCR-270’s, two MRU’s, one COL, one British GCI, three SCR-516’s, and one SCR-588B.83 Presumably it was here that the British made a working acquaintance with American radar and got a much better impression than they had gathered from Watson-Watt’s blistering report after his inspection of American radar on the North American continent some months earlier.
By the end of January 1943 an impressive array of radar sets was operating along the North African coast: British in the Eastern Task Force area; COL’s at Algiers, Cap Gros, Cap Takouch, Ai’n Taya; GCI’s at Souk el Arba, Morris, Tebessa, Djidjelli, Philippeville; MRU’s at La Calle,
Emmapes, Philippeville; LW’s at Cap Corbelin, Philippeville, Souk el Arba, Youks-les-Baines, Setif; also three Royal Navy 271’s, two at Algiers and one at Bône. American Signal Corps sets were spotted over the Center and Western Task Force areas: around Oran, SCR-270’s at Falcon, Carbon, Ivi, Bocchus, Tenes (a number of British sets had at first operated at these sites, but they were being moved out); American LW’s at Figalo and Tenes and an SCR-588 at Fleurus. Around Casablanca were four SCR-270’s: at Bou Selham, Am Saierno, Marchand, and Ben Ahmed; two SCR-516’s, at Mechra Bel Asire and Ben Ahmed. This total of 34 radars in operation by early 1943 was but a small beginning. Another 31 stations were already being erected and more were on the way, especially the new American microwave SCR-582’s.84
Radar coverage of the skies gave troops everywhere considerable relief. A visiting scientist from the National Research and Defense Committee, Dr. Louis N. Ridenour, reported: “One of the chief surprises I had in North Africa was the worth of one piece of radar equipment.” He meant any well-placed, well-maintained, and well-operated radar station. He cited in particular the British GCI set near Bône. Its crew had cooperated with British Beaufighters equipped with AI radar in setting the record of 23 enemy airplanes shot down in less than a fortnight (5-16 December). Their success, Ridenour emphasized, had caused “a very considerable reduction in the scale of night bombing attacks on Algiers and Eastward.” But better radars were needed. The pilots of the Beaufighters, Ridenour added, were handicapped by their old type of long-wave radars, AI Mark IV sets, which could not track an enemy plane at low elevations because of interfering ground reflections. Already the German pilots were learning to fly low in order to evade detection and pursuit. What was sorely wanted now was the American microwave AI radar, the SCR-520, or its improved successor, the SCR-720, which did not suffer from ground reflections. General Eisenhower at once demanded one or two squadrons of planes so equipped. Consequently, the Army Air Forces chief, General Arnold, pressed General Olmstead on 24 February 1943 for quantities of the new microwave AI’s, asking for 35 sets to be delivered in April and for 100 a month thereafter.85
Meanwhile, through the first months of 1943, eulogies were pouring out of North Africa touching the handful of SCR-582’s there, the first American microwave radar sets to see action on the ground in World War II. Their capabilities were winning great favor. They were not intended for air defense but for surveillance and defense of coastal waters. Yet they proved so versatile against low-flying aircraft that they came into demand not only for fixed coastal defense but for mobile air search also. This radar was among the first applications of microwave developments which the Radiation Laboratory in Cambridge had developed under the Office of Scientific Research and Development. It was among the first microwave developments (including the
layer) which the Signal Corps took over for Army ground use. The SCR-582 had been typed as a coastal defense radar, a search radar for use on the ground looking seaward.
Late in the hasty preparations for the North African invasion five sets of SCR-582 had been requested, with Coast Artillery crews.86 They arrived late in January 1943, to become the first microwave radars to receive ground use, nearly a year after microwave ASV and AI radars first began to be employed in aircraft. And just as the airborne sets had at once proved the vast superiority of microwave radar aloft, so would this application prove its superiority on the ground. Though designed for the relatively humble functions of coast defense, the set received immediate attention from the Air Forces and also from those radar sophisticates, the British. Col. D. D. Graves, an AAF officer, said: “The performance of the SCR-582 was regarded very well. A number of British officers, who took a rather poor view of our other radar equipment, admitted that it is a very good set.”87
One of the five sets was moved to Casablanca where its crew mounted it atop a grain elevator. Watching over the ocean, it could track all vessels within its range with great precision and was used chiefly to guide ships into the channel maintained through the mine field at the harbor entrance. The radar crews watched the vessels’ progress on their oscilloscope and coached the skippers by radiotelephone.88 The second 582 served similarly, overlooking the harbor of Oran. The remaining three sets were dispatched eastward toward Tunis, after being mounted in trucks and made mobile in shops of the Royal Navy. They served at Tabarka, Philippeville, and Bône, where they watched for enemy aircraft no less than for vessels. “The principal mission of these sets,” General Matejka reported to General Olmstead, “is defense against minelaying by E-boats and enemy aircraft. A secondary mission is navigational aid for convoys moving in mine swept channels. They are also used to direct fighter planes to convoys which are being attacked by enemy aircraft or E-boats.”89
The brightest feature of their performance was their freedom from ground and sea reflections, which had rendered all previous ground radars blind and helpless against low-flying aircraft. The ten-centimeter microwaves of the SCR-582 could detect airplanes right down to the surface of the earth or sea,90 something which no
long-wave American or British search radar could ever do well, if at all. American microwave radar at last was stripping the enemy’s aircraft of their last concealment, the dodge of flying under the radar beams.
In April 1943 a radar officer serving with the Coast Artillery Corps in North Africa wrote General Olmstead that the SCR-582 “is proving itself as one of the most versatile Radar sets in this Theater,” and he listed some of the applications: detecting surface vessels, providing navigational assistance to ships, detecting low-flying aircraft, and providing GCI possibilities.91 About 30 March one of the sets, located at Philippeville, detected eight enemy torpedo bombers attacking a convoy at night. The radar plots were used to direct rescue vessels to a troopship which had been torpedoed and was sinking. All persons were taken off safely, while eight enemy airplanes were shot down. Similarly, about 10 April, in another night action off Bône, an SCR-582 gave warning of enemy planes which were closing in upon a convoy. Royal Air Force planes at once flew out to drive off the invaders. One British plane was tracked by the radar operators as it crashed into the sea. The radar plot was used to direct a rescue launch to the scene.92
African operations emphasized mobility in ground radars. The SCR-582, developed as a fixed set, had been converted in North Africa to a truck mount. Its crew could put it into operation in an hour after reaching any location to which the truck could make its way. Then there were the LW types, which had mobility built into them from the start. Their designers had intended that they might be quickly assembled, moved about in components which a few men could lift, and set up for air defense in highly mobile warfare. These sets, too, were proving themselves, even in a somewhat indifferently good version copied from the British as SCR-602-T1. At least they were vastly lighter than other ground radars, though at a sacrifice of power and range.
Reports from home indicated that, of several other 602 types under development, the Signal Corps Radar Laboratory had the best set well in hand. It was type 8, which the Signal Corps had adapted from an early lightweight set of its own design, first installed in mid-1942 on a small vessel, the Nordic, for use in offshore air and sea defense. When civilian radar scientists, together with the British and the Air Forces representatives, tried type 8 at the Army Air Forces School of Applied Tactics (AAFSAT), Orlando, Florida, early in 1943, both the scientists and the British agreed that this was the best of the many SCR-602 types competing among the lightweights. Its range, the official report of the Chief Signal Officer announced, exceeded 110 miles and aroused enthusiasm in “even the greatest radar cynics.” But the AAF was evidently less sure since it put in an order for only 200 sets of type 8, while asking for 200 sets of type 3, developed by the Bell Telephone Laboratories, and for 400 sets of type 7, offered by General Electric.
By June the British Air Ministry was
waxing so enthusiastic over Signal Corps’ type 8 that officials wrote General Colton seeking 200 sets, 50 from the 1943 production and 150 from the 1944 output. Congratulating the Signal Corps for devising what they called one of the most important developments in ground radar, they urged early production, adding that they believed the “other sets in the SCR-602 series are of secondary importance by comparison.”93
“This Is a Signals War”
The prolonged North African campaign tested every phase of signal activity. Throughout the winter and spring of 1943 convoys, docking in North African ports, brought in ever more signalmen and more signal equipment, such as construction units94 and huge wire stores to implement the A to H wire plan in order to provide dependable heavy-duty carrier telephone and telegraph between all the Army installations from Casablanca to Algiers and beyond.95 “Beyond” in the last weeks of 1942 had meant Tunisia, which the Allies strained to penetrate ahead of the Germans. Late in November the 829th Signal Battalion was asked to send two SCR-299’s with ten enlisted men and one officer to serve with the Twelfth Air Force. The officer was 2nd Lt. Robert Philips. Subsequently, when he was repairing telephone lines with three enlisted men, two Junkers 88’s attacked. A 100-pound bomb exploded a few feet away, tore off Philips’ right arm and badly wounded the three soldiers. Philips was able to jump into his truck and drive left-handed to a first-aid station six miles away to dispatch an ambulance for his injured men.96
Communications for the American armored units participating in the Allied BLADE force moving against Tunisia were furnished by detachments of the 141st Armored Signal Battalion. Two SCR-299’s maintained contact with Algiers until the movement to the east opened the gap to 300 miles, whereupon they communicated with nearer British headquarters. Though the BLADE force failed to accomplish its objective, communications did not fail, thanks to the 299’s.
Communications were now playing an increasing part in World War II. “This is a signals war,” General Matejka made emphatic, in which “no question of command was ever raised without involving signals,” a revelation which he believed was one of the large lessons learned from Operation TORCH.97 Matejka also emphasized that here for the first time in warfare “There was complete integration of ground, air and
naval action.” The communications equipment which made integrated action possible became as important to the lives of soldiers as their food and weapons. Col. Grant Williams, after becoming Chief of Staff of the II Corps, reported to Col. Arthur A. McCrary in February that many sets had been cut from the 1st Armored Division’s allotment in an economy drive some time earlier. He said, “I would like for the people who eliminated these sets from our T/BA to know that each set cut out has cost several lives and countless dollars in equipment.”98
Commanders began to realize as never before the potentialities of mobile radio, radiotelephone, carrier telephone and teletype, to say nothing of the immense possibilities of radar, radio intelligence, radio Countermeasures, propaganda, and so on. Commanders began to take for granted facilities undreamed of in any previous conflict. They expected to be able to communicate at any time with subordinates, even in moving vehicles widely scattered over a mobile front. They expected to be able to talk with headquarters however distant. In fact, they began to demand facilities not yet developed. The demand went as far down as up. Lt. Col. J. D. Calidonna, Signal Officer, 34th Division, reported in February that the Army needed communications down to the platoon and needed it badly.99 The 536, smallest of the new SCR’s, was not yet widely distributed. But the platoons were already beginning to get them. Captain R. W. Green, communication officer of the 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, reported, also in February, that his men had a few 536’s left over from the landing operation and were using them at platoon level “with excellent results.” He added pointedly, “We never lose a unit we can communicate with.” Battalion commanders also wanted them for communications between battalions and platoons.100 Some surprising signal developments grew out of the battle experience gained in North Africa. For example, armored divisions, which had expected to consume relatively little wire, expecting rather to rely heavily on their numerous radios, actually found themselves using wire in vast quantities, hardly less than the quantity consumed by an infantry division. “We need a lot more wire personnel and equipment within an armored division,” Colonel Williams urged in February, acknowledging that the 19 wire men authorized for an armored division were proving ridiculously few. At the moment, he told Colonel McCrary, “We are actually using 2 officers and 40 men from our own division and have attached from Corps 1 officer and 14 men.”101
During the battle through the first half of February, it proved fortunate that much wire was already in place in southern Tunisia, for Armored Force losses in radio were heavy. When the 141st lost an SCR-299 and two 193’s in battle at Sidi bou Zid, the corps wire team, during the German breakthrough, handled communications for most of the units of the Armored Division on its two switchboards. Wire communications were in at all times except when the command posts were actually moving or when bombs tore out the lines. But these interruptions were brief. Switchboard posts, completely dug in, served to the last moments, maintaining communications and
serving also as information centers covering last-minute developments in the very teeth of German drives at Sbeitla, Feriana, Gafsa, and the Kasserine Pass.102
During the battles at the Kasserine Pass, Combat Command B was linked by radio with the 1st Armored Division headquarters at Haidra by means of SCR-299 teams from the 53rd, working from the Command back to the II Corps. Another 299 connected with the Twelfth Air Force. The 53rd also maintained wire, radio, and messenger service from the II Corps headquarters to numerous points over the battle area. Throughout the Kasserine crisis, the II Corps commander, Lt. Gen. Lloyd R. Fredendall was able at all times to talk over the telephone to all of his key commanders and installations as far down as the combat teams and as far up as the British First Army and the Allied Forces Headquarters Advance Echelon in Constantine.103
In fast-moving situations, all manner of communications were used in all sorts of combinations: wire (telephone, telegraph, teletype), radio, visual means,104 messengers, pigeons. They were often used in parallel, so that if one facility was knocked out, another would be standing by. Pigeons, for example, received considerable use in this theater of war. Before the birds can be used in any situation, their home loft must remain in one place at least a week before they will settle there, having become so familiar with the location that they return to it invariably. Three lofts of the North African Pigeon Platoon, part of the 829th Signal Service Battalion, were located early in 1943 at Constantine, Tebessa, and Sbeitla. Pigeons homing on a loft at Béja in northern Tunisia were employed for a period of seventeen days during campaigns in the vicinity. During this time birds that had been parceled out to front-line units brought back seventy-two important messages and many less urgent ones. In some cases they got the message through first, as upon the retaking of Gafsa in March during the southern Tunisia Campaign. The first complete report of the recapture reached corps headquarters carried by the pigeon “Yank” returning to the home loft near Tebessa, having made the 90-mile flight from Gafsa in 110 minutes. It was the first report to arrive because wire had not yet caught up with the advancing troops and because a radio net had not yet been established. Pigeons could be valuable during the periods of radio silence, especially if at the same time wire lines happened to be incomplete or out of action.105
In the campaign, Signal Corps units performed all manner of functions. The 141st Armored Signal Battalion, serving Armored Combat Commands A and B during the last ten days of January 1943, provided wire circuits to all division units, the usual job, of course, for division signal companies. At the same time the 1st Signal Company served the 16th and 26th Combat Teams. All in turn were linked to the II Corps command post some miles east of Tebessa through small improvised signal centers maintained by the 53rd Signal Battalion at Maktar, Sbeitla, Feriana, and Gafsa, and all were tied together by parallel lines—an open-wire facility and a field wire line.
Men of the 53rd Signal Battalion repaired wire lines (above) and operated Signal communications trucks for II Corps in North Africa (below)
The 53rd had built the open-wire line, some 220 miles, making use of existing French poles. They had also laid, by the first of February, some 360 miles of field wire in cooperation with the Air Support Command Signal Battalion. Attached to the 53rd was a detachment from Company B of the 829th Signal Service Battalion with two SCR-299 crews and trucks serving the II Corps headquarters. Thus, providing communications for the II Corps was a large assignment, especially because of the unprecedented front over 140 miles wide and 90 deep.106 Maneuver problems at home had never contemplated such distances, nor such conglomerations of patch-up facilities. For example, one teletypewriter circuit from the II Corps to a division command post ran for 113 miles over no less than five different wire segments, French, British, and American, open wire and cable.107 Yet it all worked surprisingly well. Communications here in combat were better, said Maj. Gen. Orlando Ward, commanding the 1st Armored Division, than he had ever seen them in maneuvers.108
A glimpse of the busy life of Signal Corps officers in the field flashes from an on-the-spot account by Colonel Tully, II Corps signal officer. “We are in the midst of a very mobile, very fast moving operation with a very fluid front,” he wrote early in 1943. He compared the Corps command post to a quarterback, well behind the line of scrimmage, directing the play on one end of the line and then suddenly shifting the play to the opposite end some dozens of miles away. As Tully dictated his account, it was late in the evening. The corps wire officer was busy shifting the wire circuits by making call after call to key points in order to assure telephone and telegraph service at the other end of the battle front. These services had to be arranged and ready within three hours. The corps radio officer was likewise busy at the phone arranging for emergency radio communications in areas where wire facilities had not yet been completely installed. “Corps radio, wire, teletypewriter and message center teams are moving at this moment,” Tully wrote, “to the other end of the line, to an advance Corps signal center being established there from which we will give more detailed instructions to teams later tonight as the tactical plan unfolds.” The message-center operators were revising their messenger runs. The few open-wire commercial circuits in the area were being reassigned. “By midnight,” Tully wrote on, “we hope to have both ends of the line well in hand.” Success in tactical field communications, Tully believed, was apt to be a “by guess and by gosh” proposition, amid the general lack of advanced information. “Success is due mostly to a thorough anticipation or a damn good guess as to what somebody else will decide later,” he concluded. “I am convinced by this time that successful communications depend upon getting the actual means of communication under way even before the staff has completed its plans. If the Signal Officer waits for the staff’s decision before planning his communications in an operation of this kind over such distances, it might be too late.”109
During the mid-February lull in fighting,
Colonel McCrary, sent to survey the North African theater signal scene, found that the recent weeks of conflict baptizing American troops and equipment in battle had emphasized the need for extreme flexibility. Communication facilities must allow simultaneously the seeming incompatibles of rapid mobility over great distances and of close coordination among ground and ground-air teams. Field manuals had set the frontage of a battalion in full strength in a main attack at 500 to 1,000 yards. But here the yards stretched into miles. Divisions operated on fronts which ran to the tens of miles. The 34th Division front in northern Tunisia in February extended for 24 kilometers at the main line of resistance and for 40 kilometers at the outpost line. In the 1st Armored Division the gap between headquarters and the division’s rear echelon varied from zero to 100 miles. “The situation here has not been like any we were taught at school,” said Captain Green, communication officer of the 18th Infantry.110
Wire proved that it still had a vital place in modern mobile war. It was always used during contact with the enemy and movement under radio silence when, during halts, a line would be rushed from the division to the regiment. When not on the move, a division headquarters generally had one telephone and one telegraph channel by which to reach its regiments. If the situation were sufficiently stable, two telegraph channels would be set up along different routes. The 1st Armored Division put in circuits during nighttime, breaking them of course while an attack was in progress but re-establishing them as soon as possible afterwards.111
Radio proved itself, especially the big SCR-299. Everyone liked it. One British staff officer stated that “using a 299 after using any British R/T set is like driving a private car after handling a three-ton lorry.” Maj. Gen. Charles W. Ryder told McCrary that the SCR-193 was “fine” and the 299 “mighty fine.”112 An odd SCR that became very popular in the North African theater was SCR-625, not a radio at all but a mine detector employing electronic circuits. It was used by everyone, not least by the Signal Corps men working on wire lines along roadsides which the Germans almost invariably mined.113
The Signal Corps men and signalmen proved themselves. Despite the handicaps which resulted from inadequate training and lack of familiarity with new equipment, they nonetheless learned how to make communication systems work, whatever the facilities and despite severe difficulties in supply and repair. They began to win high regard. “A commander and his staff are never niggardly about signal personnel after the first campaign.”114 High casualties sometimes added to the problem of getting enough such men and of getting trained replacements. Colonel Williams, speaking of an extreme case of battle disaster, said to McCrary after the Kasserine engagement, “We are going to have to do something
about our losses of communications personnel. In one battle, the 1st Armored Regiment lost every single communication officer and warrant officer except one, and all company communications officers and technical sergeants.”115
New types of Signal Corps units proved themselves, too. Radio intelligence units, for example, had got off to a bad start at the invasion, having been employed as assault troops. The 128th Radio Intelligence Company was one of the first of its type to meet the test of war. During the Tunisia Campaign the men got busy with their intercept receivers and direction finders (all they had were the older, rather poor SCR-206’s and 255’s) and tracked the Germans “all over the place.” They were the first to discover through their special skills that the Germans were withdrawing from Kasserine and thereafter on several occasions gave advance warning of enemy attacks. In this work and in the work of monitoring the radio procedure of American units and correcting abuses, they proved their worth.116
Combat photography came into its own, covering battle actions for the record, for study, and for publicity, and turning out such valuable training films, made and much used on the spot, as Removing Mines and Booby Traps. From March on the II Corps had a photographic detachment of three officers and fifteen men. Concomitantly with the campaigns ran training programs and in this work training film became extremely valuable. Weary men could hardly be expected to derive much benefit from classroom teaching, but they could relax before a movie screen and learn without exertion. By April a training film library was located in the Atlantic Base Section, Casablanca, and doing a land-office business supplying films. General Matejka wanted four more such units. At the same time, he was urgently seeking more Signal Corps photographers; in particular, he wanted the entire 163rd Signal Photo Company.117
Quite aside from the strategic implications, the North African campaign was important as the first major testing ground for American forces in World War II. To the Signal Corps it was particularly significant because it provided a turning point in the military view of the importance of communications in the modern army. By the time the campaign ended in May 1943, the key part which communications had played in coordinating all the complex elements of the Allied Forces deployed on a wide front had been demonstrated. It had been demonstrated again and again, with forcefulness that drove home to everyone. Army officers who had not been signal-minded before became so now. The Signal Corps itself, after an unsure start, had gained further competence and confidence. These qualities, in the larger campaigns which lay ahead, would pay large dividends.