TANK CONTROL

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 166, 16 July 1942, Page 4

TANK CONTROL

NERVE CENTRES

SIGNALS ORGANISATION

(By E. K. GREEN)

From the desert areas of the Middle East come the reports: "A terrific tank battle is proceeding." You have the picture. Over miles of battlefront steel monsters are attacking and counter-attacking, guns belching death and destruction. It seems like every tank for itself; but it isn't, except in part. Those tanks are working to plan, and they are fighting under central control. And the medium of that control is radio.

Take the communications organisation of the New Zealand Tank Brigade as an example. The Brigade Signals Squadron, which is allied with the New Zealand Corps of Signals, which in its turn is allied with the Royal Corps, is the foundation of that organisation, and it extends right out to the individual tank, the regimental signals. From H.Q. to Tanks

The Brigade headquarters communicates with the battalion headquarters, manned also by the Signals Squadron, and these, in turn, communicate with the regimental signallers in the troops, who direct the operations of the individual tanks forming those troops. Inside those tanks, again, as I have pointed out in a previous article, there is radio communication among the various members of the crew, referred to as "1.C."

Back of all that organisation is the signals maintenance —the workshop section, which is as highly important as any other section. Nerve centre of the brigade in action is the armoured command vehicle—a big armoured car, which is part of the Signals Squadron equipment. It is equipped with two wireless sets and a crew of signallers. In this vehicle, when action is imminent, the brigadier takes up his headquarters, accompanied by the brigade major, the intelligence officer, and the signals officer, and from there the general operation of the tanks is controlled. Contact officers between brigade and the battalions, equipped with fast, armoured scout cars, also help to maintain communications.

It seems strange to think of a fighting soldier going into battle with earphones on and a microphone in his hand-—but that is how it is in the tanks. They fight their war with instruments, just as the navy and the air force do, and it is a highly technical business demanding complete alertness, skill, initiative and disciplined co-ordination.

The tank crew must work as a team and that spirit must carry right back to headquarters. The New Zealand Army Tank Brigade has that spirit, inculcated through long months of training and fostered by the enthusiasm and comradeship that permeates all ranks. Equipment is Good The radio equipment, through which that team spirit pulses, is good—and more than good. It is also amazingly compact. Gone are the days when transmitting and receiving sets were great cumbersome objects. Without going into technical detail it can be stated that each. tank carries two transmitters and" two receivers, mounted on one chassis which measures only 15 inches by 8 inches. Yet, fitted to the right type of aerial, those sets are capable of communicating with Australia! You may have noticed that each tank carries two aerials. The taller, thin one—which'is capable of still further extension—is the one capable of the most general use, though its limitations restrict the transmitting and receiving to a radius of a number of miles. The shorter, thicker aerial has a special purpose. It is connected to the ultra-high frequency section of the set.

"U.H.F." has some relation to the principle of television. They talk of it, loosely, as "staticless broadcast . It Isn't quite that, but it is very nearly. Clear reception can be obtained on ultra-high frequency when ordinary broadcast is almost jammed with static and noise. It has its severe limitation, however. Its range is only as far as one can see from the tank, and if a building or a hill or any other object blocks the vision it also effectively blocks the U.H.F. transmission and reception!

Such is the arrangement of the set in the tank that the commander can listen in to orders from headquarters or his immediate commander and at the same time converse with members of his tank crew on "1.e."

With all this use of radio it can be readily understood that there is urgent necessity for radio discipline. There can be no loose talk on the air. It has to be kept as free as possible in order that urgent operational messages can be given and received among the units. Efficient Servicing

Workshops mounted in trucks and at brigade and base headquarters are the servicing background to all this radio activity. These are manned by experts. I was told that not one of the servicemen in the New Zealand Brigade instrument mechanics' workshops has had less than six years' experience in radio servicing work In addition to that they have had a thorough training in the requirements of the job they are now undertaking.

That workshop can make the prcud boast that no repair job has yet "stumped them" for more than eight hours! That means something when you look at the intricate makeup of those compact sets—each with its 15 tubes, and each tube with ten component parts, this in addition to the numerous other minor points where breakdown might occur. Every set in use in the tanks is checked daily and weekly by the tank radio operators, and once a month every set is checked bv the instrument mechanics. Radio communication has a highly important function in modern war-fare—-and nowhere more important than in tank operation.