with my interest in cw renewed, again. A thought came to me to get a key that my great uncle would have used in ww2. He never mentioned the war much except once, the last time i saw him before he died(of cancer) we went to see him in Halifax after all D Day survivors got the Legion D’honor from France. He was totally blind by then, he had 1 eye before the war! He used to take his fake one out to get some home leave apparently. He was a radio operator with the Royal Core of signals and moved around a lot as they used to move the radio ops around as the Germans could recognise their accents on the key. On D-Day he had a jeep and a driver who was geordie(he deserted not long after d day) the radio ops were the map readers and so took the troops places. it took him 6 months to pass his signals course. He was with mostly Scottish during D-Day, they had been to Dunkirk and Uncle Stan being young had been one of the guys filling in the gaps from that. He got to Paris on his Birthday and on day of surrender was shipped to Burma for they wanted a radio operator with Urdu language skills. When he got there they got a shock that all he could speak was Yorkshire! so he then got an interprator!
He was also in Egypt with Monties Army and went there from Liverpool on the ship called the Durban Castle
Anyhow i was wondering if anyone would know what morse key he would have used on his travels during ww2?
Another one of my great uncles was on HMS hood, he couldnt swim either!
I’m not an expert, but as a starting point, I’d guess he almost certainly used one of these at some point “Key WT 8 Amp”.
They were produced in huge numbers with lots of variants from the 1920’s and through the 1940’s I think.
In my youth, the junk yards and surplus shops were awash with them, but I only have one now, stamped “AM” (Air Ministry) for similar nostalgic reasons!
Yes, I paid a few bob for one at a MARS rally about that time, there were hundreds of them in a large cardboard box! I’ve still got it, I suspect the contact is silver, it oxidises rapidly and needs regular cleaning…not that I use it, of course!
PS I saw one advertised by ML&S recently, the price they wanted for it would have bought the whole box and a booze-up on the change!
ive been talking to chatgpt and with some other details i have noted down for when i spoke to him chatgpt says from d day to Hamburg Germany where he would have ended up when germany surrendered he would have used:
“ Wireless Set No. 19 in a jeep, the Key WT 8 Amp No. 2 or No. 9 (a small rectangular brass key on a bakelite base) would have been bolted to the wireless table or a small tray so it wouldn’t slide while the jeep moved.
”
The 19 set in a jeep sounds very likely to me - plenty of photos of similar set-ups. The key is likely, too, though w/ops tended to do a bit of bartering to get gear they liked, or so I have been told.
That’s interesting, the “19 Set”. The American version we had when I was in the service was the “AN/GRC-19”, which was a separate transmitter/receiver set, the T-195 and the R-392 receiver. I still see for sale ads for stuff like that.
K6YK
From what I’ve read, the AN/GRC-19 dates to the 1950s, post-WWII.I’m not an expert, but a Google search on the phrase “WW2 jeep radio” identifies some radios of the era.
When I was at university, we had a Wireless Set No. 19 on the shelf in the amateur radio club shack. At the time, none of us knew the history of the No. 19 so it was just a curiosity with its dual language English and Russian labeling. This was during the Cold War, after all, and in the US anything labeled in Russian was extremely unusual. Alas, we did not have the accompanying power supply and nobody ever tried to get it on the air.
I actually was more interested in the other World War II artifact we had next to it on the shelf, an AN/CRT-3, a.k.a. SCR-578, “Gibson Girl” emergency rescue transmitter originally used on large World War II aircraft. The radio was intact, including its spool of antenna wire, but we were missing the kite, the hydrogen balloon, and the accompanying hydrogen generator that would have been used to loft the antenna. Probably a good thing. I did test the “girl” once, in a thick-walled building without flying the antenna to prevent signal radiation, and verified that it still worked. I can attest it was a taxing chore to turn the crank that both powered the radio’s on-board generator and sent its mechanically-generated SOS signal, a fact that led Gordon Elliott White, in his column on military surplus radio in CQ Magazine, to wonder how long a downed airman could continue to crank the beast. A nice description of the radio is available here.
That was more than 50 years ago; wonder whatever happened to those treasures?
The American AN/GRC-19 was indeed from 1951 GRC-19_Rebuild again its a big beast of a thing. Good job technology has advanced so the QMX can do way more than that and fits in the size of your hand!
Yes, the AN/GRC-19 was a beast, all right. I operated one and it was not a pleasure.
Very noisy fan in the transmitter. I don’t know what the weight of the whole setup was,
but it was HEAVY. The receiver was good, sort of similar to the Collins R-390 but with less bells and whistles. The transmitter was auto-tune like the ART-13, 100 watts of
CW or AM. The thing ran on 24 volts, and when we used it in a fixed location the power supply for it was about the size of a washing machine!
K6YK
so he then got an interprator!
. yeah its not 100% believeable source of fact but a starting point to help in validation or rejection of facts.