Control Outfits

©RN Radio and Radar

  A COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM is the sum of its parts, some obvious, some less so. The SYSTEM starts at the USER position and finishes at the aerial for Transmission, and from the aerial to the USER position for reception. For this to be efficient, there must be a way in which the SYSTEM can be joined together so that ALL USERS, remote and local (W/T Office environment) can have access to the RADIO COMMUNICATIONS FIT of a warship.

  From the earliest of days (1896 onwards) right up to and including the mid 1930's, the W/T Branch personnel were the only crew members required to use W/T equipment. The introduction of the Central Control W/T System (CCS) and the Centralised W/T System (CWS) brought flexibility and versatility to the W/T Branch (and a few outlaying stations) and that brought simplicity and efficiency to what was a cumbersome system of controlling individual pieces of kit sited in different parts of the ship. WW2 changed all that with the need for non-communicators to have access to radio communications at their fighting positions, in OPS ROOMS, the BRIDGE, the COMPASS PLATFORM etc, especially as WW2 heralded the increased use of R/T in naval transmitters at sea.

  In this section, we will look at the various stages of the use of Control Outfits for both the W/T Branch users and the Command and Control users.

  The first move towards the management of W/T equipment from a central position, came in the 1930's with the introduction of CCS (Central Control W/T System) for details of the CCS fit.