Dust on the Sea by Edward L. Beach

Author:Edward L. Beach [ Beach, Edward L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612515458
Publisher: Naval Institute Press

-8-

“Here, Nelson,” said Keith, handing the tall chief radioman an encoded message. “See if you can wake up the boys at NPM with this one.”

Nelson grinned as he took the paper. “There’s about twenty boats trying to wake up Radio Pearl every night,” he said. “It’s not their sleepiness that bothers us. It’s the competition.”

Keith returned the humorous look. “You radio girls all stick together. Anyway, this one ought to give them a little fun back there in ComSubPac.” He took the spare set of ear phones which Nelson, in anticipation of a message to be sent after surfacing that evening, had already plugged in for him. Instantly his mind was catapulted out of the surfaced submarine into a suddenly expanded geography covering the entire Pacific Ocean. Somewhere—the signal was so clear it was perhaps only a few hundred miles away—another submarine was sending a long varying note as it tuned up its transmitter. The radioman made a grimace of disparagement. Swiftly, as Keith looked approvingly, Nelson completed a few last-minute adjustments to Eel’s transmitter, finally looked over to Keith for permission to make a test transmission. Keith nodded. A few swift taps on the tuning key—Nelson was well aware of the danger from Japanese direction-finding stations—he nodded readiness.

The other boat was transmitting, using a coded call sign: “NPM v W3AU K—NPM v W3AU K.” Keith had developed sufficient familiarity with Morse code to be able to understand the repeated short message. Nelson waited, his hand poised over his own transmitter key. Much farther away, another boat was calling NPM and, sounding as though it must be at least a thousand miles away, the dim crackle of a distant transmitter could barely be heard: a fourth submarine calling Radio Pearl.

Nelson was gently fingering his receiver tuning control. Faintly, Keith could hear through the welter a dim but precise note. “W3AU v NPM 3,” it said. Radio Pearl had answered the unknown submarine whose coded call sign was W3AU, telling it that it was third in line for receipt of a message.

Keith motioned to Nelson, but Nelson had already begun tapping out, in the smooth, effortless rhythm of a practiced radioman, Eel’s own call-up. “NPM V 68TC OP K,” he repeated several times.

Radio Pearl seemed suddenly to have a surge of strength. “68TC V NPM K,” said the signal. Keith and Nelson grinned at each other. The Japanese radio station would have to use far better techniques than this to masquerade as Radio Pearl. A sub not alert to the ploy might transmit its message at a time when Pearl Harbor could not receive it, get a routine-sounding receipt from the Japanese station, and secure its transmission thinking its message had been delivered when in fact it had not. This was the simplest of electronic warfare techniques. Once, hearing a boat being taken in, a smart NPM operator disrupted his own orderly procedure to copy the unwary submarine’s message and thus foiled the Japanese station’s attempt at interference. But one could not be sure of this sort of good luck.

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