XA from the UK Royal Signals
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The development of the overall Signals Organisation in the CMF (Central Mediterranean Force)

by William V.Barbone, OBE

Bill operating XAKM, aged 21 in 1945.- Note the RCA AR77 RX. Marchianese	Bill's QSL in Caserta	Carditello *	Sgt. Barbone in Padua, wearing the insignia of 13 Corps
The top floor with the little windows was were we slept! One can see the pole and the gantry carrying the 600 ohm transmission lines from the US site, over our roof to the rhombic behind the building. I know it is a US antenna because one can see that it is a pine telegraph pole as used by the Signal Corps. They did not have the benefit of the Marconi portable 120ft steel masts! To the right just behind the gantry one can see the thinner lines of one of our steel masts.

In order to look at the origins of the post war Armed services Ham Radio activity in Italy, one perhaps needs to look at the development of the overall Signals Organisation in the CMF (Central Mediterranean Force).
In November 1942, Operation Torch, the invasion of the British and American armies in North Africa, was the first major operation in which massive forces were beginning operations in countries in which they had no permanent bases.
They therefore had to plan to have available all the facilities that a modern force requires. Not the least important was the need for Signals communication with their home bases in London, Washington, and adjacent theatres of operation such as Cairo and West Africa.
The Signals Plan therefore incorporated the inclusion of teams of highly skilled signal experts in both US Signal Corps and the UK Royal Signals.
It is historically interesting to note that the British forces with the background of the need for Empire communications had a greater range of professional equipment available for their use than the US forces.
The UK had developed the Marconi/Cable and Wireless Short Wave Beam High Speed wireless communication network and a range of production professional equipment was available for their use.
In the US case the main Short Wave developments had been in Broadcasting, mostly by the RCA company, but also in the development by companies such as Hallifcrafters of lower power SW transmitters for Amateur Radio use.
I believe that much of the planning for the UK Signals set up was carried out by a Royal Signals Officer with a background in Ham Radio, sadly I can no longer remember his name, but I do recall that his work was written up in the post war Ham Radio journals.
The UK Signals Regiment responsible for the major UK controlled communication networks for AFHQ was 2 GHQ Signals, a Regiment that I joined early in 1944. They were equipped with two Marconi 10KW transmitters type SWB11 and two 4 KW transmitters type SWB8, the receivers were Marconi Type RC67, as developed for the pre-war world wide high speed wireless networks, or for the mobile sections, the Marconi CR100.
The SWB8 transmitters were installed in semi-articulated trailers and were fully mobile whereas the SWB11's were intended for permanent installation in a TX station.
They were provided with 120ft high masts, capable of being erected with a derrick, much as a modern yacht's masts can now be installed. The antennae normally used were three wire wide band rhombics. The circuits were operated at 90-100wpm, depending on conditions. The RX were operated in dual or triple diversity.
Each section had a complement of around 30 wireless operators together with radio mechanics, diesel fitters, drivers and of course cooks! There were also a number of so-called Heavy Wireless sections, these operated manual morse links internally in the theatre. They were equipped with 400 watt BC610 transmitters and all the relevant RX and antenna for shorter distance links.
All the Wireless operators were trained to a very high standard at the 4th Wireless Group in Egham, Surrey, a unit that I myself joined in October 1943 after my initial infantry training and a basic 3 month course as a wireless operator, taking morse up to 15wpm and basic operating procedures, map reading etc.
Operators were trained to touch type on both typewriters and Kleinschmidt tape perforators, together with the ability to read morse from an Undulator tape. Operators were also expected to reach 25wpm CW capability, taken directly on a typewriter. In essence they were trained as fully professional telegraphists.
Very soon after the commencement of Operation Torch, Algiers was occupied and AFHQ was established in the Hotel St George, on the hillside overlooking Algiers This was not without incident however. As I learned later, the ships unloading in the harbour were bombed several times and several were sunk, including one carrying one of the SWB11 TX's. Fortunately it was well packed and crated for export conditions and it was recovered and put into service.
The Main Transmitter station for both UK and US signals was established at Beni Messous, a few kilometres south of Algiers, this was a not insignificant installation with the rhombic antennae spreading for half a km around the site. It included a 300ft mast for the Navy's LW Tx . The US Signal Corps had a number of RCA 20KW Broadcast TX's, converted for CW and also I remember they had a FAX circuit to Washington.
As far as I can recall the RX station was a little further out at Blida.
After completing my training at the 4th Wireless Group in Jan 1944 I found myself posted overseas with 30 other operators, and after a brief leave I joined a US Navy auxiliary, the USS Lyon which was a mother ship for assault Landing Craft. We were relieved to find that were not to be landed on a beach somewhere but later realised that she was going to the Mediterranean theatre to support the landings at Anzio.
Although we were not supposed to know where we were destined for, we found that although the ships maintained radio silence, we could easily read the morse signal lamps, so that we could follow the progress of the convoy, including the frantic messages when we were attacked by submarines and were surrounded by Corvettes dropping depth charges all round us.
We landed at Oran in N Africa and proceed by very slow train to Algiers (in cattle trucks which were the normal transport for soldiers - 40 men or 8 horses!).
The encampment at Beni Messous was centred around the buildings and barns of an old French French N. African Colonial farm complex. Despite the high-technology of our work, we lived pretty simply in tents, sleeping on the ground on ground sheets, in fact in all the 6 months I was in N Africa, I did not once sleep in a bed! We did however have the occasional day out in the Casbah in Algiers!
We set to work in the Hotel St George, working round the clock in 8 hour shifts. I first worked in the Cable and Wireless Cable office, operating on the Sub-cable circuits to Gibralter , Malta and Alexandria.
These circuits were synchronised high speed morse systems, but used a morse code using reversed polarity on the cable so that the dots were the same length as the dashes- a new technique to learn.
After the invasion of Italy and the fall of Naples in early 1944, AFHQ started to move to Italy and was established in The Royal Palace in Caserta, around 15 Km north of Naples.
The Transmitter station was established at Carditello, some 10km from Caserta at the site of the King of Naples Country Estate, somewhat dilapadated I recall.
Co-located were UK signals, US signal Corps, RAF, Navy and for a while Cables and Wireless press circuits which used the same SWB8 trailers that we were equipped with. Each group was located in a corner of the range of buildings. ( If you look up Carditello on the Internet you will find plans of the whole site which has now been renovated.)
The equivalent receiver site was at Marchianese, near Maddaloni, just south of Caserta at the side of the then main Naples road. This site was manned by the US Signal Corps and the UK Signals occupied several huts on the site: the US provided the Administration which we liked, as their food was much better than ours! The US Signal Corps Lt in charge was Ed Gaul, W6PXQ who became a good friend when I moved there later.
Royal Signals operated circuits to London, call sign JAJA (we were JJJJ), to Cairo, West Africa, links to the Partisans in Yugoslavia and links to forward units.
Our manual wireless links used the US BC610 which was a wartime version of the Hallicrafters HT4 a pre war Ham Tx which I remember was advertised in the back of the ARRL handbook.
So the picture that I have tried to build up is that there was a massive signal structure in the area. As an example of the planning detail, we even had Great Circle maps centred on Algiers and Caserta to aid in antenna bearing determination.

XA getting started in Italy

Arriving in Italy in July 1944 I worked for the first few months in Italy in the Cable Office in Naples before moving to the TX site at Carditello when I dropped my Operator role and became a Radio Mechanic for 40 High Speed Wireless Troop.
At the end of the campaign in 1945, the Allied Command decided to move AFHQ to Rome and I went with an advance party to begin to set up the transmitter installations, just outside Rome, next to the old Ital -Cable SW station on the road to Frascati.
Many of the personnel in both US and UK signals were recruited from the pre-war Ham Radio fraternity, as indeed I was myself. By Sept 1945, after the end of the Campaign in Italy the Hams in the Signals Command were pressing for permission to start up Ham activities. I believe that my Company Commander Major Jim Kirk, G6ZO was one of the instigators.
It was agreed at the level of the Chief Signals Officer that the Hams who had a pre-war licence could be permitted to go on the air in the 7, 14 and 28 Mc/s bands. There was no very formal arrangement - you just had to get your CO to register your operation with signals command and you were required to use a call sign prefixed with XA: most Hams just added this on to a version of their pre-war calls. Ostensibly this was for the purpose of furthering operating skills amongst signals personnel.
As far as I can recall the whole thing was pretty informal!
At the age of 14 in 1939 I had gained an Artificial Aerial licence, call sign 2HKM, this allowed me to build and experiment with TX equipment, but not to connect to a radiating aerial - this had to wait till I was 18 yrs old. So in 1945 I could not at first go on the air in my own right as I only had an AA licence,. I applied to the GPO, the licencing body in the UK, and on producing evidence that I was a qualified operator, I was granted a licence. In the meantime I shared a license with Ron Cumberlidge, my section Sgt who was G3CK and we used the call sign XACK. The rather neat writing on the first page of the XACK log book <below> is in Ron's (Ron Cumberlidge G3CK/XACK) writing.

XACK Log Book (cover)	XACK Log Book (First page)	Biill Barbone*
* Bill Barbone, G2HKM & Gordon Blair, G8VU standing by the 30kWatt TX they helped to build in the 1960s ¹

I had moved up to Rome with the advance party and was billeted in the Italian Ministry of Air building in the centre of Rome. My own commanding Officer, Major Jim Kirk G6ZO one of the instigators of the move into Ham activity , found a suitcase radio, a B set, as used by the behind the lines spy people. I used this set from my barrack room, a few metres of wire flung out of the window, to get on to the air on CW. In fact I worked a regular sked with Jim every day whilst I was in Rome.
However the move to Rome was abandoned as the Allies signed a peace treaty with the Italian Gov. So I moved back to Marchianese, the receiver site, where I proceeded to build myself a little rig in the workshop. A 6V6 Xtal osc, 807 and 807 PP final, working in the 7, 14 and 28 m/cs bands. As there was plenty of space around the site I had the luxury of access to spare masts for antennae and I built a 28mc/s Multi-element Sterba array as well as a number of dipoles for lower bands.
Crystal control was normal as the US Signal Corps seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of Xtls with harmonics in the Ham Bands. As the Campaign was ended a lot of equipment was being declared surplus and we used to go on search parties looking for sources of suitable components for rig building! Jim Kirk found me a surplus RCA AR77 RX to complete my setup.
By this time the GPO in England had issued me with a full licence, G2HKM so I went on the air in my own right as XAKM. I mostly operated CW at first but later added a grid modulator to the rig as I found that local hams in my home town, Liverpool in England were able to arrange for my family to join in nightly QSO's. Remember that many of us had been overseas for as much as three years in some cases.
Early in 1946 a sort of agreement was reached with Signals Command for Hams to use their own calls, suffixed by /I, so I became G2HKM/I and Jim Kirk G6ZO/I etc.
We were much in demand on all bands and I have a collection of some 150 QSL cards covering world wide contacts.
By this time we had introduced the first Army RTTY FSK TELETYPE circuit to London to replace the high speed morse circuits. This was the first Radio use of the Murray five unit code in conjunction with US Teletypes or Creed 7B teleprinters making message handling much easier, and possibly less skilled. The system was designed at the School of Signals in Catterick, in England and we conducted a number of tests with them before the RTTY was made operational on the London circuit.
I operated from Marchianese until mid 1946, I when the terms of the Italian treaty required the Allied Armies to withdraw from Italy, with the exception of the Free Zone in Trieste.
So I set about moving the UK RTTY circuit to 13 Corps Signals located in Padova. By this time I was the Sgt in charge and I set up the whole installation in the countryside near Padova, whilst continuing with my Ham activities as G2HKM/I.
Whilst in Padova I made the acquaintance of a number of Italian hams, including a particular friend Mario Lunel, I1MG, they were working in particularly difficult conditions as a result of the devastation and shortages caused by the war. I remember in particular his antenna feed through insulators which were made from beer bottles with a hole drilled through the bottom!
I believe that similar arrangement for ham activity were made in Germany by the Signals Command, evidence of this is in the QSL card collection. I do not think that there were any French XA calls as there was no Army of occupation in France - but there was one station in Zeltweg, Austria.
I finished my service in Italy in March 1947 when my final job was to go up to Trieste to layout the antenna sites ready for a move of 13 Corps to that city which was to be the final place to be occupied by the British Army, 24th Guards Brigade in fact.
I had to leave my ham rig behind but would note that for the last couple of months of operation Signals Command vetoed the use of personal Calls and I reverted to XAKM for my last few QSO's. My rig was taken over by another, who continued to operate it for a few months before being demobbed.
I believe that XA ended in Italy when the armies pulled out.

As a postcript, I finished the last three months of my five years service at the UK War Office Transmitting station near Guildford, where as well as the SWB11's, I found myself in charge of a couple of those RCA 20 Kw converted broadcast TX's I had seen in use by the Signal Corps in Africa and Italy.
In the ensuing years, I kept in touch with Jim Kirk who had joined Standard and cables as a Transmitter Installation Engineer, he remained an active CW ham operator all his life. I found the post war years as a TX Development Engineer living in lodging not very conducive to ham activity and I became inactive until 40 years later when I re-activated G2HKM for a brief period.

Bill (W.V.Barbone OBE) 21/05/2002

<Editor's note: Bill joined the Marconi Company after demob, first as a Transmitter Development Engineer and was involved in the development of the post war range of single-sideband HF transmitters, followed by Troposphere UHF TX.s. He became head of the Communication TX laboratory and then Chief Engineer of the pioneering Space Communications Division, finishing as a Divisional Director of the Communications company. He was Chairman of the UK Space Industry comittee and was appointed on the Science research council board of Planetary Science and Astronomy, later as consultant to the EEC DG13 in Luxembourg. Bill retired in 1987 and began to cultivate his garden.>

Bill Barbone's Picture Gallery

Erecting antenna 29/09/1944		Bus Bars, Carditello, 1944
Receiver building, Marchianese 05/08/1944		Transmitter hall, Carditello, SWBS & RCA, 1944 *	"Digger" Higgins operating Bus Key, 25/11/1944 *
* "I'm pretty certain "Digger" Higgins wasn't a ham and think he may have been operating one of the manual morse circuits (using the land lines to the BC610 400 watt tx's shown on the Carditell photo). There were one or two bug keys around, mostly acquired from the US guys, I had one myself, you can see it in the photo of XAKM (on top of the page).-- The shot with the RCA transmitter on the right in the transmitter room is interesting as I'm sure that I installed it with Jack Lambert, probably in late 1945?. I remember it particularly, it was a 1KW used for two tone teleprinter nets." (Bill Barbone) ²

Notes about XA operators

Message 20/03/1943	Ron Cumberlidge XACK, Nov 1945	Lee R. HaasXADW ³

Ron Cumberlidge G3CK at XACK. I did not met Ron till mid 1945 when I had been at the transmitter station at Carditello for most of the year and we were formed into the advance team to set up the facilities in Rome. This was in fact aborted as the Peace Treaty with Italy was signed and the allies qgreed to evacuate the armies from Italy. As far as I know he spent a lot of time at the receiver site at Marchianese just outside Caserta. This was the control centre for the major radio links from AFHQ to the outside world. I can guess that Ron came out to N Africa in the original landings because in the photo <below> he has a medal ribbon which is most likely the Africa Star. At that time in Nov 1945, the Italian campaign medal had not yet been issued and the rest of us in the photo do not have any medal ribbons In the unit, 2GHQ signals, there were quite a lot of fellows from Liverpool who had been in the pre-war signals TA. I know that some of them had been in West Africa in the Dakar debacle. They were all highly qualified telegraphists and the War Office used them for important circuits. There was a very extensive fax photograph lab at the receiver site which was run by the US signal Corps. I used the facilities a great deal to develop and print my photos. It is possible that Ron used these facilities, he may well have taken the photos that I put on this Web site, and I come to the conclusion that Ron must have given me copies, I cannot think of anyone else who might have done so.
<Bill (W.V.Barbone OBE) 23/01/2003>

My father died in 1983 from Parkinson's disease but his wife is still alive and now 76 years old. I still live in Moreton Wirral where his parents lived at the time my father served in Italy in the Royal Signals during and after WW II.
<Steve Cumberlidge G7BBF 23/01/2003>

Major Lee R. Haas, XADW - Caption: "XADW, operated by Major Lee R. Haas (Signal Corps) is located in the center of Rome which, according to the Major, is one of the world's worst receiving spots. The equipment consists of a BC-610 transmitter, RCA 88 and SX-28 receivers. An Italian 10-tube superhet fills in the gaps. On 28 Mc. the antenna is a 5-element ground-plane job and on 14 Mc. a three-element wide-spaced beam." <QST, September 1947>

Major I. McANsh, XABU - "XABU now MD5BU, via Major I. McAnsh, c/o Communications Board G.H.Q. M.E.L.F." (QST, August 1947, p49). -- "MD5BU (XABU) has gone home for leave and will use his father's outfit ZL4IC for a while. The major expects to return to Europe for another juicy call assignment."
<QST, Dezember 1947, p53>.


Credits: Bill Barbone, ¹John, G8DET; ² Eight pictures taken by Ron Cumberlidge G3CK/XACK, courtesy of Steve Cumberlidge G7BBF; ³ QST, September 1947