H.M.S. “Vanguard” Has a Maze Of Radio Equipment

Grey River Argus, 24 November 1948, Page 3

H.M.S. “Vanguard” Has a Maze Of Radio Equipment

As Britain’s newest battleship, the “Vanguard” is a model of modern radio equipment. Five separate compartments house the intricate radio apparatus. It makes H.M.S. Vanguard” a unique ship in the field oi wireless communications. Her signals system, skilfully designed to dispose and manoeuvre a fleet in wartime, is equally adaptable to the task of providing all the links that are needed with Whitehall and the world while the battleship carries the King and Queen and Princess Margaret to New Zealand andl Australia. An extensive remote control system allows sets in the three transmitter rooms to be controlled from the bridge, the operations room or from any receiving position. Three 40-kilowatt alternators, widely spaced in the ship to prevent an interruption to supply through damage in action, provide power for all the apparatus. The radio organisation of a fleet includes many separate, communications channels. There are external services for transmitting and receiving messages in morse between the flagship and the Admiralty, shore authorities and warships of other commands. ~ , x , , There are, too, internal links that use both morse and telephony for manoeuvring ships in company, for radar-reporting, for gunnery control and for liaison with, and direction of, aircraft. There must be radio equipment. for each of these channels. Five or six systems may be working simultaneously. WORLD-WIDE BROADCASTS

In the forward superstructure. of the battleship, the bridge receiving room contains nearly a dozen radio receivers covering the low, medium, high and very-high frequency bands. Here operators can tune to the worldwide morse broadcasts that come from Rugby on 16 kilocycles, or carry on radio-telephone conversations with patrolling aircraft using the 100-150 megacycle band. There is also a medium frequency direction-finding set that is used to aid nagivation, and a 50-watt high-frequency transmitter and receiver which, in emergency, can be operated from battei’ies. The very-high frequency radiotelephone transmitters are in a small compartment at the back of the bridge itself. Other groups of equipment are in the lower transmitter room, which is sited well below decks for protection against bomb hits and shell lire, the upper transmitter room, in the after superstructure, and the lower transmitting room. This last compartment also contains the perforators, undulators and relays that are needed for high-speed morse transmission. One of the major problems faced in designing the maze of wireless equipment for the “Vanguard” was to provide aerial space for so many radio and radar systems and to site them so as to reduce interference. A system has been developed enabling up to four transmitters to work on a single-rod dipole aerial, and a number of flexible whip aerials, similar to those used for motorcar radio receivers, are mounted on the decks, superstructure and funnels.