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"Thomas M. Rösner"
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Datum: Mon, 15 Oct 2012 11:29:42 -0400
Von: Terry Krueger <tocobaga4xxxxxgmail.com>
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Betreff: [dxld] Navy radio facility slips into history
Story and photos at:
http://keysnews.com/node/42850 Saturday, October 13, 2012
Navy radio facility slips into history
From Morse code to broadband, station was link for 107 years
BY ADAM LINHARDT Citizen Staff
alinhardt@keysnews.com
When Hurricane Andrew tore through Homestead in 1992 it severed nearly
every communication line between the Florida Keys and the mainland -- save
one.
Tucked away on Boca Chica Key at Naval Air Station Key West and on the
northern edge of the Saddlebunch Keys are two plain, whitewashed buildings
that for the better part of the past century have been quietly providing
high-frequency radio communications between naval vessels at sea and their
shore-side counterparts. [MIKE HENTZ/The Citizen]
The Naval Computer and Telecommunications Station Jacksonville Detachment
Key West -- call sign NAR -- was about to embark on one of its busiest
missions in its 107-year existence shortly after the hurricane made
landfall.
"We had hunkered down and were riding out the storm," said Director David
Flight. "It began to dawn on us that no one had communications, no phone
service, but we were quite capable out at the transmitter site."
And so Flight and his crew of "Conch communicators" -- some of whom also
set up ham radio stations -- opened their often-clandestine mission to Navy
families, the Red Cross and civilian Keys residents, all needing to send
word to the mainland.
"In the first four days we sent 18,000 messages out to families," Flight
said.
Flight came to the Keys in 1973 as part of the now-defunct Air Force 671st
Radar Squadron. He moved over to the Naval Computer and Telecommunications
Station in 1979.
Last month, the Navy began the process of closing the long-running radio
communications center. Improvements to high-frequency broadcasting require
fewer stations.
By November, the Key West service will be consolidated with Air Force
assets in Puerto Rico and Maryland. The station was officially
decommissioned on Sept. 21.
The station's mission began in 1905 at what is now Truman Annex, when it
was called the Naval Wireless Telegraph Station.
The operators formed a link in a chain of Morse code stations in what was
then known as the Coastal Signal Service of the Navy, said Naval Air
Station Key West spokeswoman Trice Denny. The chain extended from Maine to
New Orleans, La., and included Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the
Isthmus of Panama.
In those days, many of the messages included non-classified information,
like weather reports, Denny said.
"The hardware in those days wasn't the best, so carrier pigeons were kept
as well to ensure messages were deli [Photo courtesy of Navy|Senior
officers inspect receiver site equipment at Boca Chica.] vered between here
and the fleet, as well as other stations," she said.
"In the mid-1930s the Navy reduced its mission here with the radio station,
becoming the only mission left," Flight said. "For a time, the officer over
the radio station had a duel role as commander of the base as well."
World War II changed that, and the Navy dramatically expanded the radio
station's role as new voice communications went online. By the mid-1940s,
new Teletype and encryption technologies were on the rise.
"In essence, the Navy began broadcasting Morse code at an extremely fast
rate," Flight said.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, when
naval assets in Key West cemented the city's role as the "Gibraltar of the
Gulf," as Commodore David Porter said a hundred years earlier. The radio
station's role provided vital communication between military branches that
had massed in the Southernmost City. The military buildup led to the
expansion of the station as it swelled to 19 officers, 268 enlisted
personnel and 31 civilians, Denny said. In 1965, the Navy bought more than
600 acres of land in the Saddlebunch Keys to build the transmitter site.
From that time to the present, more changes -- most notably the advent of
satellite and Internet communications -- were made as technology improved,
and it finally became a civilian-operated facility. By 2000, the formerly
named Navy Wireless Telegraph Station became the Naval Computer and
Telecommunications Station Jacksonville Detachment Key West. [Photo
courtesy of Navy|Radioman 3rd Class Bayne operates the Mode 1 Univac
computer, which was located in the message center.]
Military high-frequency broadcasts will continue as backup communications
for the military, but the time has come to "close up shop" and turn the
buildings over to NAS Key West commander Capt. Pat Lefere, Flight said.
Naval Command Telecommunications Station Jacksonville Cmdr. Matthew Lear
called those who manned the station a "cast of characters," and told them
at the decommissioning ceremony last month that the history of the station
will live on.
"That is the nature of classified communications," Flight said, reflecting
on his 30-year mission. "We were never out there in the limelight for
obvious reasons. Radar and communications are always the first target of
the enemy, so we kept a low profile over the years."
alinhardt@keysnews.com
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