COMMUNICATIONS AFLOAT
By Lieut. Commander Mahlon S. Tisdale, U. S. Navy
Note.—In early May, 1921, a high ranking officer asked me to write him a letter commenting on communications, with special reference to radio, in order that he might incorporate such of my views as he believed sound into the communication organization of the unit under his command. I was at that time a staff communication officer (radio). In an attempt to emphasize the effect of good communications on the efficiency of gunnery—the backbone of any naval offense—and upon our general readiness for war, the letter was written as requested. The following article is a revision of that letter and is published in the hope that some good may result, in that—if in no greater way—it may draw added service thought toward communications.
Why is it almost a service custom to give gunnery precedence in personnel and in schedules? Because gunnery exercises are held in competition. A good gunnery ship is known as a good ship. Her scores are published to the service. She is a success. But what of the rest of the ship? It is probable that a good gunnery ship is a good ship in every way, but not necessarily so. A good ship at S.R.B.P. might be a failure in battle through previous neglect of other equally important coordinate branches in the interest of improving gunnery.
Of what avail is good gunnery, or good engineering, or good communications unless all three are good? These three important branches of the service are interdependent. Guns are of small value unless the engines can place them where they can best be used. Engines are valueless for fighting a successful engagement unless the captain knows where to order his engines to take his guns.
Can our captains now depend upon knowing where the enemy will be? Can our excellent guns render a maximum value? What captain will put his best turret officer in charge of communications? How many will put their worst? How many will spare any turret officer for communications? Yet, one turret officer controls one turret. One communication officer may bring success or failure to all turrets.
Considering the comparative infancy of communications they are good. But we can make them better. Recognition of their importance by the service in general will make them so.
As the human brain is to the body, so is the communication service to the navy. How does one write? The body assumes the proper position. The coordination of brain, hand and eye then causes the written word to appear. If a hand or an eye be gone the body still can succeed. If the brain be gone, all is gone. The communication service is the brain of the ship. The guns are the hands, the engines the feet.
It is doctrine that we must have information. The service admits that communications are vital in war. There is much talk about the lack of scout and battle cruiser types. The fleets must have eyes. But the scouts must also be able to report what they see.
Recently a ship's radio officer was questioned regarding the reason for having an ensign detailed as communication officer on the ship to which he was attached. His answer was that the ship had only five lieutenants and that the others (the officer being questioned was himself a lieutenant (T) (G) were all assigned to the engine room or the battery. How many young ensigns were senior turret officers, do you suppose? Which duty should be the most important? Aside from the fact that the ensign can ill spare protracted relief from watch standing experience the service also suffers. One turret is not of more importance than the ship. Incidentally, the Department recognizes this in that it is not permissible to detail an ensign as communication officer of the ship. Gunnery needs more experienced personnel numerically, but one officer of reasonable experience should be assigned to communications on each battleship.
It is not uncommon for some of the battleships to have ensigns for communication officers; and for others to have a more experienced officer assigned to communications in addition to other duties—a turret perhaps.
It is undesirable that the communication officer should be picked after the other departments have had their choice of the available material. It is hoped that the day will come when communications will be recognized and will be established into an independent department, with a regular departmental head on each ship. If it is as important as its sister branches it should have equal rank with them in the assignment of officers.
The communication officer need not have had previous experience as such. This is, of course, desirable but not necessary. His major function is administrative. He must keep the wheels moving. It is his function to see that his subordinates—his technical assistants—deliver the results. He is, of course, in charge of all forms of communications with the necessary technical assistants in each branch.
Of these assistants the most difficult to train is the radio officer. The signal officer need not be the best signalman on the ship but he must be able to take executive charge of signaling on the bridge at any and all times. This can be learned with a reasonable application. The radio officer cannot be so easily obtained; it must be decided just what will be the limit of his technical knowledge. What, at least, will be the required lower limit. Radio is too much of a science for an officer to master it as a side issue of his line duties. Failing strict specialization the lack of a complete technical knowledge of radio among line officers must be admitted. Radio engineering is a complicated study and cannot be less easily learned than any other science. No officer of the line can afford to give sufficient time to master it. It is a question of years. Such few officers of the line as are taken into the engineering corps with a radio specialty will have to be depended upon, together with the civilian radio engineers, for the design work and for getting out the instructions about the care and use of the material provided. An occasional radio gunner will develop ability along similar lines but this will be the exception rather than the rule.
The gunners can be depended upon for the necessary knowledge to carry out the instructions for the care and operation of the set and for effecting repairs.
The average radio officer—under present conditions of little specialization—cannot be expected to be a material expert. He can be expected to be thoroughly competent to act as a directive head for the gunner and his men. He must be skilled in traffic handling; must make a study of the field in which radio can be used must perfect the details of the ship's radio organization, must conduct a school for operators as well as for the strikers, covering the elements of electricity as well as buzzer instruction; must demand that the gunner and his men get results. He must have a good general knowledge of radio but not necessarily a complete detailed knowledge. The greater his knowledge of radio material the better—providing that he is a line officer—but this is not vital for we cannot expect him to have it. It is better to look the situation in the face than to try to hold him for something which he has no means of knowing.
The new communication regulations when finally issued will no doubt state in detail the duties of a radio officer. This is important. The midshipmen at the Naval Academy are now using a pamphlet covering these duties. This would be a help to the service at large were it made a part of all ships' libraries. It is hard for a young ensign to be called up and told "you are radio officer, go to it." He usually spends much of his time playing with a buzzer because he does not know what else to do to qualify himself for these strange duties. Unless there is a former radio officer on the ship he does not know where to turn to find out what he is supposed to do. This lack of knowledge of his duties is not confined to the radio officer. Many of the older officers do not know what to expect of him for, due to the comparative infancy of radio, many of them do not know what a radio officer is supposed to do other than to get the message through. Of course this is the ultimate mission of radio but there are many preliminary steps in the organization of an efficient force for getting the message through 100 per cent of the time. The opinion is not infrequent that the radio officer is available for odd jobs because "he doesn't do anything anyhow." So few of the older officers have been radio officers themselves that many have a perfectly plausible lack of knowledge of the dimensions of a radio officer's duties. Not what he must do but what he should do. The outstanding radio ship is almost always one which has a captain who is "behind" his radio officer.
It is to be hoped that the new communication regulations will cover in detail the duties of each of the various officers in the communication department in addition to the radio officer. In this way an officer can break in, in a much shorter time than at present obtains. The navy regulations cover the duties of the navigator and the doctor and the supply officer, etc., but are neglectful of the communication branch. This can be easily rectified in the communication regulations. (Unofficial correspondence with the Department subsequent to the writing of this article has brought out the fact that the Department intends to cover the general duties, but that it is impracticable to cover the duties in detail, in view of possible omissions. This general outline will doubtless be entirely satisfactory from the point of view of the communication personnel afloat.)
The radio gunner should be an expert radio repair man and will, of course, be an operator. The radio officer should be detailed for the duty for not less than one year, and if he is informed in advance that he is to be assigned to the duty he can easily learn 10 operate before he takes over the job. With these two officer operators on each capital ship it will be a simple matter to arrange officer discrepancy watches. That is the major reason why officers should be operators. It should be a rare case when a gunner is ordered as radio officer of a ship. They, through no fault of their own, have been denied the training given a line officer and hence cannot be expected to be as well qualified for administrative work as a trained line officer. Then, too, they are specialists. It is unfortunate but true that specialization in any branch sometimes tends toward a narrowness of vision. The trained executive, not a specialist, is much more likely to see the ship as a whole and determine the particular mission which radio and communications must fulfill in relation to the other branches.
For a staff afloat it is believed that a slight modification should be effected in the existing organization. For a fleet staff it is believed better for the communication officer to have no other duties. This would not be necessary for the subordinate staffs of the fleet inasmuch as the fleet staff is responsible for the greater part of the organization work. When the fleet is together, as is usually the case, the subordinate staffs are more in the nature of executives for the fleet staff, in carrying out policies, schedules, and drills. Under the present organization it has been the custom to consider all forms of communication as communications, this includes mail. The flag secretary is ex officio staff communication officer. This plan was worked out by one of the ablest communication men the Atlantic fleet has ever had; but it is doubtful if that same officer were now in his old position whether or not he, too, would not agree that the enormous increase in traffic since his incumbency would not warrant a separation of dispatches from mail. There is no question that a letter is a "communication." Yet it lacks the one factor which tends so much to make or break the efficiency of dispatch communications—speed. For efficient communications, speed is vital. The flag secretary is usually the one officer on the staff most confined by detail work. He has less spare time than any of the other officers, excepting, of course, the chief of staff. In addition to the mass of confining correspondence which must be handled he is given the additional duty of being called communication officer. As a result it is quite common for the radio officer to do much of the planning for general communications. Or if the radio officer does not usurp this function of the communication officer it is sometimes not done at all. A flag secretary has no time for planning or organizing beyond his own job, or, if he has, or if he takes the time it is unfair to him. The present division of work of the staff is a little out of balance. The radio officer should not be communication officer. He will quite naturally favor his own branch to the possible detriment of the others.
The best solution of the problem would call for a fleet communication officer with no duty, except in that branch. Some staff assignments are now allowed for duties much less important than communications. The fleet communication officer should be an experienced communication man. He can be drawn from the subordinate staffs after a period of instruction there or he can be drawn from the shore communication service. He should have sufficient rank to be senior to the force, division and ship radio officers, flag lieutenants and communica.ion officers. An admiral has no time to go into the intricacies of radio. He is apt to judge the efficiency of his communication personnel solely by results. As a result much of the technical work is done directly between the unit technicists. For this reason it is important that the various technicists scale down the line of seniority according to the seniority of their admirals. It is not the best organization for a force radio officer, or communication officer, or flag lieutenant to be senior to his opposite number on the fleet staff. So fine a distinction might be impracticable but this scaling should obtain for communication officers at least. The fleet staff make many of their decisions after conference with the subordinate unit staffs. It is an awkward situation and does not make for efficiency. The junior man carries the responsibility for the decision and this may mean that he will decide against the advice of the more experienced officer. Result? The senior officer will offer no more advice from his greater fund of experience and his services will be partially wasted. This situation is no more pleasant for the junior than for the senior. He dislikes going against the advice of the senior yet he is carrying the responsibility and must use his own judgment.
Due to the increase in size of the fleets there has gradually come to be a need for a fleet tactical officer. The old flag lieutenant was usually only moderately senior. His duties as an aid are not of a type to make senior officers want the combined jobs. The duty has slowly divided itself until now it is quite customary for the fleet tactics to be handled by one officer while the aid's duties are handled by a much younger officer. The fleet communication officer should be an officer of experience and he could if specially selected well handle the duties of fleet tactical officer as well. The flag lieutenant could handle the duties of aid and fleet signal officer, without difficulty and his moderate rank would fit him for this. Subordinate flag lieutenants should be junior to the fleet communication officer and if so not necessarily junior to the fleet flag lieutenant. The greater number of difficulties which must be adjusted will be questions of interpretation of the standing orders or of the signal book and these can be straightened out by the communication officers of the units.
It is believed that the flag secretary should be subordinated to the fleet communication officer for sending and receiving mail as this is one form of communications just as it always has been.
The question of the authority of staff communication personnel on a flagship should be definitely decided. The preliminary issues of a portion of the new regulations say that the staff radio officer shall have charge of the radio installation on the flagship. H this means that there shall be no ship's radio officer, it is not believed that this is a good organization. There should be a complete ship's organization upon which the staff organization can be superimposed. It is not infrequent for a staff to change flagships. If they have had entire charge of the bridge and the radio what sort of an organization will remain after the transfer? Will this ship be as efficient for war as her sister ships that have not had the staff removed? There is another side to this same question. The staff are, through their admiral, responsible for the bridge and radio of all the ships of the unit. It is only human nature to want the flagship to be better than the others if they are personally responsible for the efficiency of the flagship. This will warp the point of view of the staff and will increase dissension with the consequent reduction in efficiency of the remainder of the unit. The staff technicist can have the necessary authority without having direct charge of the installation. It is immaterial whether the radio officer of a flagship tells a supervisor verbally that he can or cannot clear a message or whether he does this by radio or bridge. If the radio officer sends a "Q" to some ship other than the flag is not this similar to telling the operator on the flagship verbally to "wait"? The staff personnel is of course under the discipline of the captain but they are not under his command for work. The arrangement whereby the staff assumes direct charge of the radio or bridge is unfair to the captain, the ship, the remainder of the unit, and the service. This requirement is mentioned in the Naval Regulations 786 (7). The Communication Regulations, at present, do not cover it. The commander-in-chief, Atlantic fleet, in an order once issued stated as follows:
Flagships. On board -flagships the ship's communication officer is to coordinate with and be subordinate to the flag officer's organization in regard to despatch work. He must insure, however, that the ship's communication organization remains intact and capable of carrying on, in the event of transfer of the flag. The flag officer's organization should be considered as superposed upon that of the ship.
Another thing which would be of immense help to the inexperienced personnel breaking into the Communication Department, especially radio, would be a bureau pamphlet descriptive of the standard radio installation, with complete instructions for the care and operation of the set. At present new personnel is in a quandary unless there is an experienced chief or gunner available for explaining the installation. Now that the battleship installation is standard it should be practicable to get out a pamphlet of this nature. It would be valuable to the service. I have seen radio personnel, in an attempt to "make the set work" proceed on the trial and error basis. This was done because, apparently, they lacked complete knowledge of the installation and the various reasons why it is connected as it is. Blue prints are never as satisfactory as a manual containing more or less description, especially for use by inexperienced personnel.
Coding drill should be encouraged in the fleet. Not that coding or decoding should be a daily occurrence but at least one drill each week should be continued. Nothing will bring efficiency in the use of the code books except familiarity and only experience and practice will bring familiarity. This is especially applicable to our present signal books. Familiarity with the contents and the manner in which they are made up will do much to increase the speed of the officers using them. Familiarity with the method of making up the books is as essential for officers writing messages as for those actually coding and decoding.
Only officers of recognized standing should have access to the code books in peace time.
It would be better if the radio schools ashore could turn out all of the operators. It is doubtful if a system whereby certain recruits are allowed to go to the school is the best. The requirements for maintaining a sufficient number of radio strikers—certainly one for each vacancy in complement of radiomen—should be rigidly adhered to. The strikers should be hand picked for their previous schooling. No man should be allowed to join the radio force who is not educationally potential material for an operator. There are some strikers who have insufficient knowledge to ever become more than third-class operators—if that. This is unfair to the service and is unfair to the man. He might be making good in some branch where schooling is not a requirement and the service might in his place be training a potential chief radioman or gunner. If the strikers were carefully selected—and few branches demand as much elementary education as radio—then the apt ones sent to school ashore there would be no occasion for the usually unsatisfactory radio school on the ship. Something is likely to interfere. There is bag inspection or early liberty, or watches or general drills. All in all the radio schools on board ship are not efficient. The inapt strikers should be dropped from the radio force as soon as they have been shown to be such. No use carrying them as "dead heads." The service, especially the operators, pays too much attention to operating ability. Traffic can be handled very efficiently at not over 25 words a minute. Yet every operator has an ambition to reach 30 words. The last 5 words come slowly. It means hours of practice over a considerable period of time. They could be better spending the time studying the elements of radio. A first-class radioman once confessed to me that he knew "nothing about the set." He could operate and there he stopped. That is not efficiency. There are many smaller ships having no chiefs. A first-class man should be able to care for a set and make routine repairs. The 30 words are desirable but not at the expense of elementary practical work. In the absence of the system of schooling mentioned above it is necessary that the school be continued on the ship. School in the afternoon is subject to continual interference. School should be held in the morning, or even better require a certain number of hours per day (2 to 3 hours in part) and let the ships vary their time of holding school as necessary to get in the required number of hours. It is allowable now to send strikers to the Great Lakes for Schooling. This should be carried out. The two-year enlistment has played havoc with this scheme. The Great Lakes School (or the Bureau of Navigation) would help by getting out an outline of work for ships schools and sending it out to the service as an outline of work to be followed in schools in the Navy Yards during overhaul. This school could be in the nature of post graduate work for the Great Lakes graduates. All men should be graduates of the Great Lakes schools if practicable. The navy yard school could carry one section for strikers qualifying for the Great Lakes course. Officers should conduct the school. If there is a practical section run by a Gunner or a chief—and there should be—still a radio officer should be there in charge of the instruction.
In radio drills instruction ought not be subordinated to competition. Procedure drills are not for the purpose of training strikers to read radio messages. But they should be for the purpose of increasing the knowledge of the already qualified operators and strikers. No man will be placed on watch of course until he is competent to send and receive. But this does not necessarily mean that he is a thoroughly qualified traffic man. It should be so, but that is impracticable under the present method of obtaining operators. Our mission to be furthered by the drills is to take an operator already qualified to send and receive and by the drill to make him a thoroughly qualified traffic man. This will not be done under a system where competition is the major feature. Radio from its nature is, for drill purposes, a one or two man proposition. One good radio operator can stand the ship first in competition thus gaining for the ship a reputation and a credit to which it may not be entitled by the actual average radio excellence of the ship. And no one man can receive all the messages for war. We are training for war not for drill. There should be a scheme whereby the man actually on watch receives the drill messages and no expert may listen in with the operators to catch the missed parts. Strikers should listen in for experience. The man actually receiving the message should be a better operator than any of the other listening in on his set, except of course the officers. A recapitulation should be made at the end of the month and ships should be rated according to the number of errors and the number of operators taking the drill. For example, a ship having 15 operators should not be rated first unless each of these men had received at least one drill. A simple way to work it out would be to figure the standing as is customary based simply on errors and then reduce this standing by applying a penalty for each operator who had not taken at least one message. The ship which shows the best average number of messages per operator should get a bonus. In this way you can get away from the ship which puts her leading men on for drill regardless of the efficiency of the remainder of her radio force. The average operator is lacking in knowledge of the new procedure and he will gain this knowledge only through drill of the right kind, or through long experience on watch.
When the fleet is at sea radio drills in conjunction with flag hoist as provided in radio instructions should be held. It is customary for the flags to be hoisted well ahead of the radio. As a result it is not long before the radio gang begins to lose interest. True, in battle the flags will be up first if they can be seen but there may be times when dependence will have to be placed on the radio. For that reason it would be a good plan, sometimes, to send the radio messages in advance and answer them with flags before executing. This is done—but infrequently. In this way the morale of the radio operators will be kept up
Ships not now so fitted but having loud blowers should have a hood or a small head booth built over the voice tube outlet (from flag plot) in main radio. At present the noise of the blowers makes communication from flag plot difficult. The only I.C. telephone jack in main radio on some ships is a JX, There is no JX in flag plot. There is a JX in auxiliary radio. Either a JX should be put in flag plot (a take off from the one on the bridge) or some separate circuit should be put in. If JX is to be used for communications the other departments ought to get off of it. If a division were to maneuver by radio the Admiral commanding could save a great deal of time by being in telephonic communication with the sending operator. There is a buzzer system installed from flag plot to the various radio rooms. Their use is feasible but is slow compared to an efficient telephone system. The buzzers would do well for a secondary. Buzzers on loud speakers sound all over the bridge and the radio officer or an operator reads them wherever he may be on the bridge. An objection to this is that the additional noise is unnecessary for efficiency. Few captains and fewer admirals like noise on the bridge. With a telephone for primary and with the voice tube and the buzzer for secondary, communication should last as long as the rest of the ship does. The pneumatic tubes are necessary for confirmations and for handling long messages. It is of course preferable to send all messages through the tube in writing if time permits.
Talkers should be especially selected on all ships and trained in procedure so that when a conventional signal comes over the tube they will know its meaning. Communication yeomen or radio personnel should be used for this purpose.
In port it is thought desirable to keep additional watches on depending on the number of operators available. The only watch usually ordered is on Auxiliary on ships so equipped. This gives an operator too few watches to keep him in training. With a possible reduction in fuel allowances for 1921-22 this lack will be enhanced.
The radio gang should not get watch-standers liberty (1.00 p.m.) unless they are standing not more than a watch in five. The plan of keeping one watch on and letting the rest go ashore as watch standers is faulty. There is plenty for them to learn about radio. They are lacking, as a force, in the knowledge of radio material. They can operate, usually, but are frequently deficient in material knowledge.
In my experience the average radio force needs discipline. Being exempt from ordinary work on deck and from discipline teaching drills they on some ships are allowed to slack down. If this condition obtains it would be well to require some form of infantry for them daily. Operators should not smoke on watch; ventilation of the lower deck radio rooms is none too good normally.
When the fleet returned from Panama the Pacific fleet radio officer got out a suggestion concerning the method of using radio in harbor in order that the men would not go stale. He in accordance with the gist of his suggestion wrote to the Pacific coast communication superintendent and obtained permission to use the radio sets in harbor under certain restrictions. For cause it has never been placed in effect. Some such plan should be adopted if the men are to actually learn radio. One scheme, is to have the regular guard ship act as radio guard ship for auxiliary radio, and for main spark. The first relief guard ship acts as arc sending ship and the second relief as arc receiving ship. This would have to be worked out according to the shore station schedules for the locality in which the fleet is based. If a part of the ships are out at sea in the vicinity of the harbor the guard schedules remain unchanged. A few miles makes no difference in their ability to handle the traffic. If they are out of range the guard ships fleet up according to their regular sequence on the list (Fleet Regs.) upon order from S.O.P. This system is automatic and is easy to remember.
It would be better that neither the fleet radio officer nor the force radio officer should have to worry about anything but his own organization and plans. A staff radio officer can be a very busy man if he has a chance. He should have no additional duties.
The fleet radio officer should make up a definite set of requirements for rating of operators. It might be necessary to have these approved by the Bureau of Navigation. A fleet examining board should examine all candidates unless ships are on detached duty, for protracted periods. Under the present system the examining board may know less radio than the candidate. As a result incompetent men are, sometimes, rated to the detriment of communications. Some first-class men cannot do anything in radio except operate. This is manifestly wrong.
Some check up system on the speed of handling traffic (as used on the Wyoming) should be required. The times between ships are good—perhaps satisfactory—but the time lost within the ships is often excessive. The slowness of communications is not so much in actual transmission as in the internal routing and red tape on the ship. Too much red tape and not enough speed.
The interest among the older officers in communications is on the increase. If they, at the helm of the service, will believe in the necessity for an added efficiency in communications it will come. And with it will come better gunnery, better navigation; in short, a better navy.