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Radio Communications In The Indian Ocean - 1974
My job as a Cryptologic Tech (Maintenance) in the Navy (CTM2) had me going out on destroyers for a few months at a time in the early 70's. Based in Rota, Spain, we would install an equipment shelter (called a QUIC Van) on a ship while they were in the Mediterranean, and eventually had one on a destroyer in the Indian Ocean. Our gear inside was almost all receivers (VLF thru UHF) and a team of CT operators would monitor whatever/whoever there was in the area. We usually had 2 CTR (Morse Code), 2 CTI (Linguists), 2 CTO (TTY Comm circuit ops) and CTT (ESM and other specialized systems) people on the team.
This was called DIRSUP (Direct Support) because the CT's on a ship were there to provide direct support to the operations of the ship, using intelligence that the ship would otherwise not have access to.
The CTR's
worked port and starboard watches 24 hrs a day, usually copying Russian
ships, or CW signals from local countries in Africa, some were police
nets on CW. Being a ham that only used CW, I sometimes helped them by sitting
their posit to give the ops breaks on the mid-watch (midnight shift), once they taught me the format they
used for copying all the signals on a mill (an all upper-case typewriter).
For our own communications to the rest of the Navy we
tied into the ship URC-32 1 KW output HF transceivers for our encrypted teletype (TTY)
transmissions to a Navy shore station, using the other sideband of the
URC-32 switched to DSB. The ships used a UCC-1 frequency-division multiplex system to put sixteen 85Hz wide tone channels on each sideband. Some channels were set aside for the NavSecGru to use.
The Indian Ocean was a radio dead zone. The I.O. wasn't a very strategic area for the Navy and the big shore stations (Rota and Guam) didn't have rhombic antennas aimed there.
Our CTOs (the CT teletype and comm circuit ops) would type up punch tapes of signal report messages to send to NSA and they would pile up for days at a time while the ship had no circuit with any shore station. I went to the radio room to see what the Radiomen could do and was shocked to find them using a frequency list and just trying each freq, going up the list with no regard for time of day or propagation. Trying to get a signal to Spain or Guam from the middle of the I.O. using 4 Mhz in daytime, or 19 Mhz at night, at the bottom of the sunspot cycle! I tried to explain what bands would work but they had to go by some Navy procedure. We would go for a week at a time with no communications to the rest of the Navy. We were intercepting lots of new signals but couldn't send reports...
Photo of CTO at Model 28 ASR, with two Mod 28 UGC-20 receive-only printers to his right.
It
was spooky being on a ship that far out and not having any 2-way
communications. I could copy hams on the various CW ham bands 24 hrs a day but
the ship couldn't get a teletype circuit up. It was amazing and very frustrating.
On one TAD trip the ops woke me up early one morning at Oh-dark-thirty and said the Fleet broadcast TTY printer quit working. I went into the van and there was a distinct shoe-print on the front of the UGC-25 gray cabinet (read-only teletype printer mounted in a rack 4 feet high). The E-3 O-brancher (CTO) got mad at it when the KWR-37 crypto receiver kept dropping out of sync because of the weak signals on HF shortwave. I had to splice the wiring at the rear that the motor fan had cut when he dislodged the cabinet with his foot. It was so nice working with professionals :-( He was one of them sent out with the team as punishment for screwing up back in Rota.
For more detailed descriptions of DIRSUP and QUIC Vans see the link below:
https://stationhypo.com/2021/04/20/quic-vans-guest-post/
A nice description of my job as a CTM3 on trips with the van:
"One of the most challenging Quic van positions was that of the CTM. Typically filled by a single CTM3/CTM2 on his first enlistment, the mat man needed familiarity with 15-20 different pieces of equipment – receivers, crypto gear, teletype equipment, and auxiliary equipment such as tape recorders, typewriters and air conditioners. In addition to being a CTM, he also worked with ship’s interior communications technicians (IC) and electricians (EM) to ensure van connectivity. Some assistance could also be provided by ship’s Radiomen (RM) and Electronics Technicians (ET), but in the end the repairs fell onto the shoulders of the mat man, since those other ratings were not cleared for van operations."
As the Maintenance Tech (a Navy E-4 rank) I was responsible for the van while transporting it to and from a ship, sometimes from Spain to Naples, Italy and other times to Athens, Greece, always on a C-130 cargo plane. To get a van on a ship in the Indian Ocean, we flew it to Bahrain (in the Persian Gulf) and it was installed on the destroyer USS Brumby there. I was assigned to stay with the van on the ship. After about 6 weeks the Brumby was leaving the Indian Ocean so the van had to be removed by crane in the port of Mombasa, Kenya, and installed on another destroyer that was coming into the area. The van and I sat on the dock most of the day with the door locked by a padlock with all the team's classified material inside. The OIC (Officer In Charge) of the CT Team left me there while they all went to lunch, bar hopping, and souvenir hunting for the day. I couldn't leave the van and waited for the other destroyer (the USS Paul) to come into port so I could arrange for a crane to load the van on the new ship. Late in the day, no ship in sight, the OIC came back to the dock and apologized for leaving me there. I won't mention his name here but I have not forgotten it. Amazingly, 2 months later back in Rota, Spain, he requested ME as the CTM to go out with him on another team! Fortunately I was a few months away from transferring to Edzell, Scotland and I didn't have enough time left at Rota to go out with his team again.
Three years later when my enlistment was up I was told that if I stayed in the Navy I would get another DIRSUP job because I did it well and had gotten good recommendations from the Officers I worked for. That alone was enough to make me get out of the Navy at that point.
Glenn AE0Q