The Navy Goes Wireless

By DAVID F. WINKLER

Dr. David F. Winkler is a historian with the Naval Historical Foundation.

During the summer of 1903, the battleships Texas, Massachusetts, and Indiana, and three destroyers, were directed to a point 500 miles east of Cape Cod with further orders to proceed to seize and hold "mined" waters between the Cape and Eastport, Maine. Other ships of the North Atlantic Fleet--including the battleships Kearsarge, Illinois, and Alabama, and the famed cruiser Olympia--sortied to block the maneuver.

What made the exercise unique was that all of the ships in the opposing forces were equipped with radios. Installation of the recently acquired electronic equipment, and the training of Sailors to be radio operators, fell on the shoulders of Chief Electrician's Mate John Scanlin. Although they were unfamiliar with the new devices, signalmen--because they had experience in transmitting coded messages by blinking light--were selected to serve as radio operators. Besides taking charge of the installation and training, Scanlin oversaw various aspects of the exercise. For the two opposing forces, he created simple contact report codes. Scanlin incorporated the names of flowers into the code he issued to the attacking force, and the names of metals into the code used by the defenders. Scanlin also added a twist by instructing the radio operators on the attacking ships to hold down on their keys should they hear any messages coming across with "metallic" code words.

After deploying from Frenchman's Bay off Bar Harbor, Maine, on 5 August, the defending force experienced a frustrating three days trying to locate the enemy in weather consisting mostly of rain, fog, and heavy mist. Finally, in the predawn hours of 8 August, Olympia spotted the six-ship opposing force 25 miles off the Maine coastline. Immediately, Olympia's duty signalman tapped out a contact report.

On Texas, the signalman on watch heard the transmission going out, but made no attempt to jam the signal. After receiving and decoding Olympia's sighting report, other defending ships rushed to the scene. Surrounded, the attacking force was compelled to surrender. Rear Adm. Albert S. Barker, who had served as the umpire, wrote: "The maneuvers, particularly those connected with the search problem, had demonstrated to my satisfaction that wireless, which many people has considered a foolish try, had come to stay."

Scanlin, puzzled about why there was no jamming attempt, visited the Texas after the exercise's conclusion, and found that the signalman he had trained was in the ship's brig. Scanlin asked him why he was there. The signalman's answer: "I heard the message begin, and the first three letters were G, O, and L, so I knew it was going to be gold and that it was from the other side. I reached for the key but the flag lieutenant, who was with me, said, 'Don't do that, I want to get the entire message.' When the message ended, the lieutenant said, 'make interference,' and I said, 'Sir, it's no use now.' ... So here I am on bread and water."

After more senior officers learned of the flag lieutenant's harsh action, he was given a short suspension from active duty.

However, in part because there had been other successful demonstrations of jamming, there remained skepticism about the emerging technology. In 1904, Commodore Bradley A. Fiske said in the Naval Institute Proceedings that radio had "no military usefulness whatsoever." In 1912, Rear Adm. Hugo Osterhaus still insisted on maneuvering his Atlantic Fleet ships only by flaghoist.

When Rear Adm. Charles J. Badger relieved Osterhaus a year later, he decided to exercise his battleship divisions using radio alone. His foresight in conducting these flagless maneuvers paid immediate dividends a week later when he led a 16-ship formation up Chesapeake Bay to Annapolis and was hit by a blinding squall. All signals were passed via radio; when the storm lifted, all of the ships were still in their assigned stations. The Navy then embraced the revolutionary wireless technology and would become a leader in its further development in what later would be called "the Golden Age of Radio."

Sources: L. S. Howeth, History of Communications-Electronics in the United States Navy (Bureau of Ships and Office of Naval History, 1963); Susan J. Douglas, "The Navy Adapts the Radio," in Military Enterprise and Technological Change, Merritt Roe Smith, editor (MIT Press, 1985).