It’s hard to imagine what military communications were like before the radio, which in turn was derived from the electric telegraph – which in turn had its origins in the earlier optical semaphore systems. Such optical signal systems have been in existence in one form or another for centuries and were faster than the physical transfer of messages by horse-rider or runner. The distance thry could bridge was however limited by geography and weather; thus, in practical use, most optical semaphore systems used lines of relay stations to bridge longer distances. The first comprehensive non-electric optical semaphore telegraph system was invented by Claude Chappe for the French military in 1794. This system was visual and used semaphore, a flag-based alphabet, depended on a line of sight for communication and was widely adopted across Europe for both commercial and military use. They succeeded in covering France with a network of 556 stations stretching a total distance of 4,800 kilometres which was used for military and national communications until the 1850s.
Sweden was the second country in the world, after France, to introduce an optical sempahore network. The Swedish network was restricted to the archipelagoes of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Karlskrona. Like its French counterpart, it was mainly used for military purposes. In the UK, Lord George Murray, stimulated by reports of the Chappe semaphore, proposed a system of visual telegraphy to the British Admiralty in 1795. A Rev. Mr Gamble also proposed two alternative systems in the same year. The British Admiralty accepted Murray's system in September 1795, and the first system was the 15 site chain from London to Deal. Messages passed from London to Deal in about sixty seconds (a distance of 68 miles), and sixty-five sites were in use by 1808. Once it had proved its success, the optical semaphore system was imitated in many other countries, especially after it was used by Napoleon to coordinate his empire and army. In most of these countries, the postal authorities operated the semaphore lines.
In Canada, the first semaphore line in North America was in operation by 1800, running between the city of Halifax and the town of Annapolis in Nova Scotia, and across the Bay of Fundy to Saint John and Fredericton in New Brunswick. In 1801, the Danish post office installed a semaphore line across the Great Belt strait, Storebæltstelegrafen, between the islands Funen and Zealand with stations at Nyborg on Funen, on the small island Sprogø in the middle of the strait, and at Korsør on Zealand. It was in use until 1865. The Kingdom of Prussia began with a line 750 kilometres long between Berlin and Coblenz in 1833, and in Russia, Tsar Nicolas I inaugurated the line between Moscow and Warsaw (1200 km) in 1833; this needed 220 stations manned by 1320 operators. In the United States the first semaphore system was a 104-kilometre line connecting Martha's Vineyard with Boston, and its purpose was to transmit news about shipping. One of the principal hills in San Francisco, California is also named "Telegraph Hill", after the semaphore telegraph which was established there in 1849 to signal the arrival of ships into San Francisco Bay.
The semaphores were successful enough that Samuel Morse failed to sell the electrical telegraph to the French government. However, France finally committed to replace semaphores with electric telegraphs in 1846. The last stationary semaphore link in regular service was in Sweden, connecting an island to a mainland telegraph line. It finally went out of service in 1880. In general terms, the old sempahore systems were quickly superceded by electric telegraph systems after these became commercially viable. While today the electric telegraph is a virtually forgotten and outdated communication system that transmitted electric signals over wires from location to location that translated into a message, 130 years ago it was as revolutionary as the Internet is today and was the direct ancestor of both the telephone and the radio – two devices that revolutionsed military communications.
While the electric telegraph itself had its origins some 250 years ago (in 1746 the French scientist, Abbé Jean-Antoine Nollet, gathered about two hundred monks into a circle about a mile (1.6 km) in circumference, with pieces of iron wire connecting them. He then discharged a battery of Leyden jars through the human chain and observed that each man reacted at substantially the same time to the electric shock, showing that the speed of electricity's propagation was very high) and there were many intermediate steps along the way, it only became a commercially practical means of communication in the 1840’s. Knowledge and commercial application of the telegraph percolated quickly throughout North America and Europe, and development of the technology was rapid. In the UK, the electric telegraph entered commercial use on the Great Western Railway over the 13 miles (21 km) from Paddington station to West Drayton on 9 April 1839 while in the USA, the first commercial telegraph line in the United States ran along a railroad right-of-way between Lancaster and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1845. Dispatching trains by telegraph started in the USA in 1851, the same year Western Union began business. On 24 October 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph system was established. Spanning North America, an existing network in the eastern United States was connected to the small network in California by a link between Omaha and Carson City via Salt Lake City.
Experiments with a transatlantic telegraph cable began in 1857 and 1858, but these failed after only a few days or weeks – but by 1866 a working transatlantic telegraph cable was successfully in operation. Within 29 years of its first commercial introduction, the telegraph network connected every continent in the world except Antarctica, making instant global communication possible for the first time. The telegraph thus liberated information transfer from transportation.
World Map of Undersea Cables from 1901
Early military utilization of the Electric Telegraph
Military organizations were quick to see the utility of the electric telegraph, with the first such recorded use in war being during the Crimean War between Russia, Britain and France. A combined British and French force landed in the Crimea and began a long-term siege of the city and naval base of Sebastopol. Britian, the home of the “Industrial Revolution” put its industrial skills to use in warfare through a series of different applications of engineering knowhow - the railway contractor Morton Peto and his partner Thomas Brassey created a Railway Construction Corps from their own army of labourers and built a full-scale railway from the base port at Balaklava to the front line. The mining industry in Leeds contributed two steam engines to work it. Joseph Paxton, architect of the Crystal Palace, organised an Army Works Corps to erect a township of wooden huts to protect the troops in the bitter winter. I K Brunel, the railway engineer, designed and had built a huge hospital from prefabricated components. William Fairbairn, the ironmaster and shipbuilder, constructed a pair of floating workshops to undertake all manner of repair and maintenance tasks for the besieging army.
The telegraph companies and their suppliers joined in with this war euphoria. In late 1854, the government in London created a military Telegraph Detachment for the Army commanded by an officer of the Royal Engineers. It was to comprise twenty-five men from the Royal Corps of Sappers & Miners, a cadre of which were trained by the Electric Telegraph Company to construct and work the first Field Electric Telegraph, as it was called.
The Electric Telegraph Company’s War Wagon 1854: The outfit for the first war telegraph, usually hauled by three pair of horses, even had a gutta percha boat inverted on the top. The sketch shows a heavy cavalry trooper riding postillion rather than a sapper.
The Telegraph Detachment’s lines allowed Lord Raglan (the C-in-C) to communicate within a few minutes with his generals at any time and the Telegraph Detachment eventually possessed eight Field Electric Telegraph stations, 24 miles of line around Sebastopol, connecting the Headquarters, Kazach, the Monastery, the Engineer Park, the Right Attack, the Light Division, Kadikoi and Balaklava.. A temporary 310 mile long submarine cable also connected British headquarters in Balaklava to Varna in Turkish Bulgaria. This connected to the European circuits via a French Army-built land line to existing Austrian circuits at Bucharest, hence to London and Paris in autumn 1855. A cable for the British government was also run from Varna direct to Constantinople, the Turkish capital, where another land circuit existed to Vienna and the European capitals.
After the Crimea, the British Army rapidly adopted the electrical telegraph for internal communication in its fortresses at Malta and then at Gibraltar, then elsewhere in the late 1850s. Three years after the Crimean War, in the Indian Mutiny, the newly established telegraph, which was controlled by the British, was a deciding factor. The Royal Engineers also despatched telegraph detachments, similar to those assembled for the Crimea, with the expeditions to China in 1859 and Hazara in Afghanistan during 1868. The French Empire had learned from observing their allies in the British Army during the Crimea war and for their brief and bloody campaign in northern Italy against Austria in 1859 they organised a “service télégraphiques” which laid 400 kilometres of line and created thirty-five telegraph stations along the advance to keep the army in touch with metropolitan France. It was claimed that at the decisive battle of Solferino on June 24, 1859 “the movement of the whole army was known and regulated like clockwork” by telegraph.
Between October 1859 and April 1860 Spain was at war with Morocco, with an army under General Leopoldo O’Donnell based from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. The Royal government in Madrid commissioned a war telegraph, the largest element of which was a 25 mile underwater cable linking the mainland at Tarifa, near Algeciras, across the Mediterranean to Ceuta on the Moroccan coast. Use was also made of Field Telegraph detachments.
(please note that most of the above military telegraph information was sourced from http://distantwriting.co.uk/default.aspx, “A History of the Telegraph Companies in Britain between 1838 and 1868 by Robert Stevens – the site has a vast amount of really interested information on the Electric Telegraph in Britain)
In the American Civil War (1861–65), wide use was made of the electric telegraph. In addition to its employment in spanning long distances under the civilian-manned military telegraph organization, a mobile field service was provided in the Union army by wagon trains equipped with insulated wire and lightweight poles for the rapid laying of telegraph lines. Immediately before and during the Civil War visual signaling also received added impetus through the development of a system applying the Morse code of dots and dashes that spelled out messages with flags by day and lights or torches by night. Another development for light signaling placed a movable shutter, controlled by a key, in front of a strong light. An operator, opening and closing the shutter, could produce short and long flashes to spell out messages in Morse code.
Simultaneously, the Prussian and French armies also organized mobile telegraph trains. During the short, decisive Prussian campaign against Austria in 1866, field telegraphs enabled Count Helmuth von Moltke, the Prussian commander, to exercise command over his distant armies. Soon afterward the British organized their first permanent field telegraph units in the Royal Engineers. Until 1877, all rapid long-distance communication depended upon the telegraph. That year, a rival technology developed that would again change the face of communication -- the telephone. The invention of the telephone in 1876 was not followed immediately by its adoption and adaptation for military use. This was probably due to the fact that the compelling stimulation of war was not present and to the fact that the development of reliable long-distance telephone communication was not achieved for many years. The telephone was used by the U.S. Army in the Spanish-American War, by the British in the South African (Boer) War, and by the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War. This military use was not extensive, and it made little material contribution to the development of voice telephony. Before the outbreak of World War I, military adaptation of the telephone did take place, but its period of growth had not yet arrived.
Near the close of the 19th century, a new means of military signal communication made its appearance—the wireless telegraph, or radio. The major powers throughout the world were quick to see the wonderful possibilities for military and naval signaling. Development was rapid and continuous, and, by 1914, it was adopted and in extensive use by all the armies and navies of the world. It soon became apparent that wireless telegraphy was not an unmixed blessing to armies and navies, because it lacked secrecy and messages could be heard by the enemy as well as by friendly forces. This led to the development of extensive and complicated codes and ciphers as necessary adjuncts to military signaling. The struggle between the cryptographer and the cryptanalyst expanded greatly with the adoption of radio and continued to be a major factor affecting its military use.
Military usage and evolution of telephone and radios in WW1
The onset of World War I found the opposing armies equipped to a varying degree with modern means of signal communication but with little appreciation of the enormous load that signal systems must carry to maintain control of the huge forces that were set in motion. The organization and efficiency of the armies varied greatly. At one end of the scale was Great Britain, with a small but highly developed signal service; and at the other end stood Russia, with a signal service inferior to that of the Union Army at the close of the American Civil War. The fact that commanders could not control, coordinate, and direct huge modern armies without efficient signal communication quickly became apparent to both the Allies and the Central Powers. The Germans, despite years of concentration on the Schlieffen Plan, failed to provide adequately for communication between higher headquarters and the rapidly marching armies of the right wing driving through Belgium and northern France. This resulted in a lack of coordination between these armies, which caused a miscarriage of the plan, a forced halt in the German advance, and the subsequent withdrawal north of the Marne. On the Allied side, the debacle of the Russian forces in East Prussia — a crushing defeat of the Starist Russian Army at the hands of General Paul von Hindenburg in the Battle of Tannenberg — was in large part due to an almost total lack of effective signals communication by the Russian forces.
As the war progressed there was a growing appreciation of the need for improved electrical communications of much greater capacity for the larger units and of the need within regiments for electrical communications, which had heretofore been regarded as unessential and impractical. Field telephones and switchboards were soon developed, and those already in existence were improved. An intricate system of telephone lines involving thousands of miles of wire soon appeared on each side. Pole lines with many crossarms and circuits came into being in the rear of the opposing armies, and buried cables and wires were laid in the elaborate trench systems leading to the forwardmost outposts. The main arteries running from the rear to the forward trenches were crossed by lateral cable routes roughly parallel to the front. Thus, there grew an immense gridwork of deep buried cables, particularly on the German side and in the British sectors of the Allied side, with underground junction boxes and test points every few hundred yards. The French used deep buried cable to some extent but generally preferred to string their telephone lines on wooden supports set against the walls of deep open trenches. Thus electrical communication in the form of the telephone and telegraph gradually extended to the smaller units until front-line platoons were frequently kept in touch with their company headquarters through these mediums.
Radio Equipment in a WW1 Dugout
Marconi Trench Set
Marconi Motorcycle Set
Marconi Pack Set
Marconi Wireless Pack Set
Marconi Horse Set
Despite efforts to protect the wire lines, they were frequently cut at critical times as the result of the intense artillery fire. This led all the belligerents to develop and use radio (wireless) as an alternate means of communication. Prewar radio sets were too heavy and bulky to be taken into the trenches, and they also required large and highly visible aerials. Radio engineers of the belligerent nations soon developed smaller and more portable sets powered by storage batteries and using low, inconspicuous aerials. Although radio equipment came to be issued to the headquarters of all units, including battalions, the ease of enemy interception, the requirements for cryptographing or encoding messages, and the inherent unreliability of these early systems caused them to be regarded as strictly auxiliary to the wire system and reserved for emergency use when the wire lines were cut. Visual signaling returned to the battlefield in World War I with the use of electric signal lamps. Pyrotechnics, rockets, Very pistols, and flares had a wide use for transmitting prearranged signals. Messenger service came to be highly developed, and motorcycle, bicycle, and automobile messenger service was employed. Homing pigeons were used extensively as one-way messengers from front to rear and acquitted themselves extremely well. Dogs were also used as messengers and, in the German army, reached a high degree of efficiency.
A new element in warfare, the airplane, introduced in World War I, immediately posed a problem in communication. During most of the war, communication between ground and air was difficult and elementary. To make his reports the pilot had to land or drop messages, and he received instructions while in the air from strips of white and black cloth called “panels” laid out in an open field according to prearranged designs. Extensive efforts were made to use radiotelegraph and radiotelephone between the airplanes and ground headquarters. The closing stages of the war saw many planes equipped with radio, but the service was never entirely satisfactory or reliable and had little influence on military operations. During World War I however, wireless telegraph (radio) communication was employed extensively by the navies of the world and had a major influence on the character of naval warfare. High-powered shore and ship stations made wireless communication over long distances possible. One of the war lessons learned by most of the major nations was the compelling need for scientific research and development of radio equipment and techniques for military purposes.
An over-view of Inter-war Developments.
Although the amount of funds devoted to military development during the period from World War I to World War II was relatively small, the modest expenditures served to establish a bond between industry, science, and the armed forces of the major nations. Of great importance in postwar radio communication was the pioneering by amateurs and by industry and science in the use of very high frequencies. These developments opened up to the armed services the possibilities of portable short-range equipment for mobile and portable tactical use by armies, navies, and air forces. Military work in these fields was carried out actively in Germany, Great Britain and the United States among others. Of the major powers, Germany as early as 1938 had completed the design and manufacture of a complete line of portable and mobile radio equipment for its army and air force.
Between World Wars I and II the printing telegraph, commonly known as the teleprinter or teletypewriter machine, came into civilian use and was incorporated in military wire-communication systems, but military networks were not extensive. Before World War II, military radioteleprinter circuits were nonexistent. Another major communication advance that had its origin and early growth during the period between World Wars I and II was frequency-modulated (FM) radio. Developed during the late 1920s and early 1930s by Edwin H. Armstrong, an inventor and a major in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War I, this new method of modulation offered heretofore unattainable reduction of the effect of ignition and other noises encountered in radios used in vehicles. It was first adapted for military use by the U.S. Army, which, prior to World War II, had under development tank, vehicular, and man-pack frequency-modulated radio transmitters and receivers. The British Army had also conducted a series of combined arms exercises with radios which, while largely ignored by the British Army, were assessed and analysed by others - such as the Germans (and the Finns, as we will see).
On the eve of World War II, all nations employed generally similar methods for military signaling. The messenger systems included foot, mounted, motorcycle, automobile, airplane, homing pigeon, and the messenger dog. Visual agencies included flags, lights, panels for signaling airplanes, and pyrotechnics. The electrical agencies embraced wire systems providing telephone and telegraph service, including the printing telegraph. Both radiotelephony and radiotelegraphy were in wide use, but radio-telephony had not as yet proved reliable and satisfactory for tactical military communication. The navies of the world entered World War II with highly developed radio communication systems, both telegraph and telephone, and with development under way of many electronic navigational aids. Blinker-light signaling was still used. The use of telephone systems and loud-speaking voice amplifiers on naval vessels had also come into common use. Air forces employed wire and radio communication to link up their bases and landing fields and had developed airborne long-range, medium-range, and short-range radio equipment for air-to-ground and air-to-air communication.
Suomen Maavoimat Signals and Radio
Please note that the content of this and subsequent Posts as far as OTL Finnish Army Radio and Signal’s equipment (and photos) is concerned is largely sourced from Antero Tanninen’s wonderfully detailed website, http://personal.inet.fi/koti/antero.tanninen/ - and more specifically, http://personal.inet.fi/koti/antero.tan ... ulukko.htm - and is reused with Antero’s permission. If you’re interested in Finnish Radio equipment, Antero’s site goes into this subject in far greater detail than I’ve used – the content is primarily in Finnish but if you use Google Translate, you’ll get a pretty good idea of what it’s all about.
Suomen Maavoimat Signals units in the 1920’s
Within the Suomen Maavoimat, Signals units largely originated from the experience of the Finnish Jaeger movement within the German Army, as the Tsarist Russian Army allowed only infantry units for the military of the Grand Duchy of Finland, with no technical branches authorised. Consequently, there was no passing down of the Russian military expertise and experience with military communications, such as it was, into the Army of the nacent Finnish Republic on its formation. On independance from the Russian Empire, the ex-Tsarist Army Finnish officers largely came from the Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery branches only, while the Maavoimat’s technical branches were largely established by former Jaegers based on their German training and knowledge. Suomen Maavoimat Signals units were as a consequence primarily based on the experience and training of the Communications Section of the Finnish 27th Jaeger Battalion of the WWI German Army. The Jaegers returned to Finland in February 1918 and formed the Jaeger Kenttälennätinpataljoona (Field Telegraph Battalion) to meet Finnish Civil War needs. Initially, a significant part of their activities consisted of establish Field Telegraph stations (Kenttälennätinasemat) and running cables to connect field telephones.
WWI Field Telephone Team
The Communication Section of the 27th Jaeger Battalion, commanded by Lars Homén and Eric Heimbürger (we will see more of Eric Heimbürger during the Winter War).
Eric Alexander Amandus Heimbürger (1888 - 1954):
Eric Alexander Amandus Heimbürger (Espoo, June 16, 1888 - February 1, 1954) was a Finnish Jaeger Colonel. His parents were the ownera of a manor, Nicolai Heimbürger and Therese von Jessen. Heimbürger completed matriculation at the Nya Svenska Läroverket in Helsinki in 1908 and then joined the Uusimaa Students' Association. He studied at the University Law Faculty in 1908-1909 and then at the University of Technology mechanical engineering department from 1909-1912, followed by a further year at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Heimbürger joined one of the first groups of volunteers whose goal was to go to Germany for military training purposes and then fight for Finnish independance. He enrolled on 25 March 1915 and trained in northern Germany in the Lockstedter Lager training area. Initially he was placed in 1 Komppaniaan of the Prussian Jaeger Battalion 2. On 2 October 1917, he was transferred from the 1st Komppaniaan, together with 53 other men, to the battalion's Signals unit, where he served as the Finnish unit commander. He took part in a number of battles on the German Eastern Front, including Misse River, the Gulf of Riga and the Aa River. In the Spring of 1917, Heimbürger ran courses at Libau on Signals and was later moved to Commander of the Battalion’s Radio unit.
Heimbürger arrived in Finland (Vaasa), with the main group of Jaeger troops and was promoted to the rank of Senior Lieutenant on 25 February 1918. During the Civil War, ge was assigned commander of the 15th Jaeger Battalion 1st Company, after which he was transferred on 6 April 1918 to Headquarters as the Signals Commander. On 5 June 1918 he was moved to the General Staff and appointed Signals Force Commander. He worked as the supervisor of Signals courses, which in July 1918 were implemented in Helsinki. He taught Officer courses in 1920 and was a teacher on Signals at the Cadet School from 1919 to 1926. On 22 March 1920 he was ttransferred to military forces headquarters and placed in charge of Signals and on 8 December 1920 he was made Inspector of Technical Staff.
Heimbürger was the armed forces representative on the Telegraph Committee in 1919 and was a member of the Radio Committee in 1920 and also a member of the Committee responsible for planning the number and strength of bicycle troops in 1922. In 1923 he was a member of the Committee which drew up the proposals for the strength of the Telephone / Signals Troops and was Signals Troops honor court chairman in 1921. He was married in 1924, to Aune Emilia-Rekolan. Heimbürger was also posted to Lithuania in the 1924 period. In addition, he completed the General Staff course over 1927-1929. In April 1927 he was the Senior Staff teacher for Signals at the Military Academy. On 31 October 1927 he was appointed head of the Separate Signals Company (Kenttälennätin Komppanian, later the Independent Signals Battalion, where he was again Commanding Officer).
From 1 July 1933 he was appopinted to Army Corps headquarters, where he was Pioneer and Signals Commander. He also carryied out Chief of Staff duties in 1925. Over the Winter War, Heimbürger was Signals Commander for one of the Army Corps, then was appointed to Military Headquarters, during which time he made several trips abroad. He held this position until 1947, when he resigned from active service. He is buried in the Hietaniemi Cemetery, Helsinki.
The establishment of the Light Field Radio Department
In April 1918 a Field Radio Department was established and took over the radio stations in Helsinki and Suomenlinna from the Russian garrison troops. The unit also restored the former Santahamina fixed radio station which had been used by the Russian Baltic Fleet. The radio-type taken over from the Russians was a Telefunken with a 10W power level and a range which stretched from the Baltic Sea region to as far as Austria. Also during the Finnish Civil War, Suojeluskuntas Signals units were setup at Santahamina where radio stations were assembled. Their first commander was Jaeger Lieutenant Karl Edvard Nyström who in June 1918 formed the Field Radio Department (which later that year was changed to Field Radio Division).
Karl Edvard Nyström (born July 8 1894, Kokkola - March 1, 1964, Helsinki) was the child of copper smith Solomon Fredrik Nyström, and Edla Amanda Sandstrom. He received his early education at the Swedish School in Kokkola, then worked as a Telegrapher before travelling to Germany and joining the Finnish 27th Jaeger Battalion (2 Company). In December 1915 he was transferred to the Battalion’s Signals unit, going on to take part in battles on the Misse River , the Gulf of Riga and the Aa River over 1916, where he had his baptism of fire. In 1917 he organized special courses at Libau, before returning to Finland in December 1917 on the second trip of the S/S Equity, which carried many of the members of Jääkäripataljoona 27 from Germany back to Finland. On arrival in Finland, he traveled to Vaasa, where he trained Suojeluskuntas men from the the local and surrounding area in Signals work.
He participated in the civil war as Column Deputy Director for the seizing of Vaasa. After the takeover of Vaasa, he was assigned to the Vaasa Radio and Telegraph station on 7 February 1918. On 24 April 1918, he was transferred to Headquarters at Mikkeli. From Mikkeli, he was transferred to Viipuri as the station manager on 2 May 1918. In the post-Civil War period Nyström continued to serve as the Viipuri station manager, until 1 August 1918 when he was appointed Signals Company Commander, and then on 1 September 1921 temporary commander of the Signals Battalion. He was married in 1924 to Sigrid Maria Adelia Johanssonin and went on to complete further military educational courses in 1925. Nyström resigned from the army on 28 May 1926, having reached the rank of Major.
After leaving the Army, Nyström worked for Reko Ltd from 1927 to 1928. He later worked in a number of positions, including as a warehouse manager (from 1934 to 1935). During the Winter War, Nyström served in IV Corps Headquarters, later moving to Coastal Battalion 4 and then to a position as deputy CO of the Signals School. Following the Winter War, he served as an officer in the home office staff of the Army and was released from military service in 1942, after which he worked at a Machinery company and then as a businessman in Helsinki. He died in 1964 and was buried in Helsinki.
...To be continued......
