tactical FM radio of US Army World War II combat armies

Tactical advantages
FM crystal-controlled sets elevated radio usage, making FM radio the equivalent of wire telephone communications — reliable, easy to use, usually easy to understand. Then, upon applying FM radio to radio-relay techniques, the inherently short range of VHF FM was extended, in 30-mile hops, to whatever distance circuits might be desired. This was done by relays of truck-mounted equipment, able to provide in a matter of hours long-distance, highly reliable multichannel circuits — much faster, much easier and less costly than erecting miles of wire lines.

Furthermore, all this superlative radio communications could be, and eventually was, interconnected into wire-line systems. As a result, wire and radio became married; their circuits were integrated, providing high-quality communications irrespective of whether signals traveled by wire or by radio, and alternatively over links of each.

The tactical FM radio of American armies became the envy of all nations in World War II combat — in tank warfare and in amphibious assaults, too, where the Navy and Marines eagerly sought the FM sets and relay, and also for ship-to-shore use. FM radio relay, AN/TRC-l, -3 and 4 (commonly called antrac in Europe and VHF in the Pacific), alone kept communications operating all the way forward during Gen. George Patton's 3d Army dash deep into France in 1944 after the St. Lo breakout.

The fast long-distance penetrations of the tank forces operated on a shoestring for days — the shoestring was the slender but vital radio-relay circuits which BG E.F. Hammond, Patton's signal officer, provided by employing 28 radio-relay truck units. These antracs and their operators kept Patton's headquarters, "Lucky Forward," in complete communications throughout the daily giant strides of Third Army combat forces.

In tactical combat, armored-force and artillery operators (also infantrymen using the walkie-talkie SCR-300) could talk and clearly hear over their FM sets, which remained free of the static and interference that bedeviled the other combatants' AM radios.

One American veteran of Siegfried Line combat wrote, "I know the fighting would have lasted longer if we hadn't had FM on our side. We were able to shoot fast and effectively because we could get information quickly and accurately by voice on FM."

He added, "FM saved lives and won battles because it speeded our communications and enabled us to move more quickly than the Germans, who had to depend upon AM."

Likewise, Col. Grant Williams, signal office of 1st U.S. Army, commented, "I feel every soldier who lived through the war with an armored unit owes a debt he does not even realize to General Colton." For it was Colton who had made the risky decision to commit Army tactical radio to FM and crystal control at a time when there was uncertainty if effective FM radio could be mass produced, if quartz crystal could be found in sufficient quantity, and if precise fabrication of the frequency-control crystal units could be converted to mass production.