The Wireless War at Sea
Unlike the other armed services at the start of the First World War all the main navies involved had relatively good wireless services and equipment. The Royal Navy had been installing Marconi equipment since 1899 and by 1905 they had 105 ships fully equipped. Likewise the German Navy were equipped with Siemens equipment, and the French and Russian Navies with Ducretet built systems, all of them based on Marconi's designs.
In 1914 the sea-going equipment was still simple, but the system was practical, reliable, trusted and would soon be battle tested. Most of the equipment was still based around spark transmitters and crystal sets using the Low frequency and Medium frequency bands, but the Royal Navy already had 15 years experience and had developed tactics and operations based around it use.
Wireless Operator Training
At the outbreak of war, despite having much equipment installed, the Royal Navy was in reality desperately short of trained wireless operators. In 1914, as merchant ships reached port, the civilian Marconi wireless operators were taken off and transferred to the Royal Navy. But this, while providing experienced men for the Fleet, in turn created a critical shortage in the Merchant Navy. The deficit was made all the more acute by the need to provide a much greater number of ships with wireless apparatus, as until 1914 only ships of more than 1,600 tons carried wireless and these for the most part had only one operator who could not maintain 24-hour operation and cover.
Trained wireless operators were now in great demand. For some time Marconi’s had been stimulating the interest of wireless amateurs by offering prizes for competitors in Morse code examinations and by making Morse practice sets available. The Marconi Company's head of training was seconded to the War Office to organise an army wireless school at Crystal Palace, but the company was also expected to provide all the forces and branches of supply with the operators and instructors required.
Now the Company’s offices opened day and night, enrolling new recruits, instructing them on the art of wireless and examining them in Morse code. At the start of the war the Company undertook to find a further 2,000 operators to augment the 3,000 already serving on merchant ships. Purpose built class-rooms at King’s College and Birkbeck College were made available to ease the overload of trainees from Marconi House in London.
So great was the demand, that some of the pupils and enrolled scholars were as young as sixteen. The staff at Marconi House 'worked to the limits of their power and to the last ounce of their energy to meet the great emergency'.
Marconi House, The Strand. Trainee Wireless Operators (MWT)
Radio Direction Finding
In the early days of the struggle, a new radio based science, known as wireless direction-finding (D/F) had been developed.
Towards the end of 1914, a small convoy was sent across the Channel from Britain to France. It consisted of two lorries and a car, loaded with special Marconi equipment: two 70 foot (21 metre) masts; two receivers, each consisting of a crystal detector and a soft-valve audio frequency amplifier designed by H.J. Round, a senior Marconi company engineer seconded to the War Office; and two Bellini-Tosi direction finders, similar to apparatus the company had first fitted two years earlier to the great Cunard liner SS Mauretania.
By 6th December, the first two wartime direction-finding (D/F) stations were being tested on the Western Front. On 1st January 1915, the first weekly maps based on D/F information were drawn for Military Intelligence. Initially, these showed German wireless positions; soon they would also indicate movement of trench wireless units and therefore troops, of Zeppelin dirigibles and other enemy aircraft.
Marconi Bellini-Tosi Direction Finder, by Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Co. Ltd, c. 1916. Designed for detecting the positions of enemy wireless stations, it was used by the Royal Navy and British Army to trace the position of German submarines, surface naval vessels and Zeppelin airships. (MWT)
The following month, all the army crystal sets used for message interception were superseded by new valve receivers. The low-cost R-type valve extended the coverage of allied D/F activity and Marconi equipment so increased its accuracy that 11 German spotter aircraft were shot down in one week.
This new direction-finding equipment used a ‘soft’ ‘C’ type thermionic valve and was actually a modified version of the earlier Bellini-Tosi directional system. It had been developed by H.J. Round, a senior engineer with the Marconi Company just before the war. Round had joined the Marconi Company in 1902 and was widely considered to be a brilliant engineer, whose ideas were far ahead of the times he lived in.
Marconi 'C' valve (MWT)
Captain H.J. Round. (MWT)
At the outbreak of war H.J. Round’s work had quickly come to the notice of the War Office, and he was soon seconded from Marconi's to Military Intelligence and was ordered to provide an initial two D/F stations for service in France. This was speedily done and following their success a large network, covering the entire Western Front, soon evolved.
The D/F stations in France proved to be so successful that he was instructed by the Admiralty to set up a second chain of stations in England, with the object of obtaining bearings on transmissions from enemy submarines. It was not long before similar networks were being built to maintain watch, not only for submarines but also for Zeppelins and German surface naval vessels. By 1916 the coastlines of Britain were covered by networks of Direction Finding wireless stations. Naval vessels were also fitted experimentally with D/F equipment that now included another one of H.J. Round’s inventions; a sophisticated error corrector.
In May 1916 the stations were monitoring transmissions from the German Navy that had been at anchor at Wilhelmshaven. On 30th May they reported a 1.5 degree change in the direction of the signals being picked up from the German fleet along with an increase in activity. The information was reported to the Admiralty who reasoned that the German fleet had put to sea. Accordingly the Admiralty ordered the British Fleet to put to sea to intercept the Germans, and the following day the Battle of Jutland was fought. It was the largest sea battle of all time. In it the British fleet lost seven ships and about 6,000 men, whilst the Germans only lost three ships (several others were seriously damaged) and around 2,500 men. While the British suffered greater losses, the battle of Jutland is considered a strategic victory for the British. While the British had not destroyed the German fleet and had lost more ships than their enemy, the Germans had retreated to harbour and at the end of the battle the British were in command of the area. Apart from two small and abortive operations the German High Seas Fleet was unwilling to risk another encounter with the British fleet and confined its activities to the Baltic Sea for the remainder of the war. Jutland thus ended the German challenge to British naval supremacy.
By the end of the war, D/F was considered sufficiently critical for each of the five allied armies to have its own chain of stations for military intelligence.
For all his services during the war, Round was awarded the Military Cross but as a non-combatant he refused to accept it in uniform.