1940's radio bands?

[Paul Dluehosh]

Bob,

The Secret Wireless War is a great book and it gives some real insight into a segment of the effort to defeat the Axis.

It would make sense that only CW was primarily used since text could be encrypted easily (manually) before transmission, whereas voice encryption was probably not available in an easily transportable package for covert operatives.

Since many nations may have observed enforced radio silence on the ham bands, like the U.S. did, probably most of the traffic on the air was covert transmissions. The only voice transmissions over any distance that I am aware of were cryptic messages from BBC broadcasting at specified times to agents overseas.

You just need to look at some of the surplus equipment that became available to hams after WWII to see the state of the art in receivers at the time, which I don't think was all that bad. Maybe not as sensitive or selective, but it did the job during the war and for hams after the war!

My $0.02.

73,
Paul -- N4PD
Sent from my iPad


> On Jun 16, 2015, at 08:42, Robert Bruninga <bruninga at usna.edu> wrote:
> 
> What did the radio bands sound like in 1940?
>  
> I’m reading the secret wireless war by Geoffrey Pidgeon and that, along with reads about Bletchley Park and another book on spies (cant remember the name) and I just have no clue what one heard when “tuning the bands”.
>  
> I had generally just assumed that everything was CW by the look of things..  And RTTY…. And so far in the book, there is no mention of voice radio other than a limited use short tange FM system for spies to talk up to aircraft..
>  
> My Father in law was a radioman in the battle of the bulge but I didn’t get around to asking till it was too late.
>  
> I guess there is no way to re-create it, so unless there are recordings, I  guess it is gone.
>  
> Apparently SSB was discovered in 1915 and patented in 1923 or so?  It was used by high commands in WWII to mask normal voice, but I haven’t found much about its juse in WWII.
>  
> I guess by WWII, everything had a BFO or the superregens too the CW came out as tones just like today?
>  
> Bob, WB4APR
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