Innovation in Combat – WW1 Wireless and Telegraph blog

Peter Laing 15mm British Colonial or WW1 infantry with comms team ancient and modern  – a bugler and a heliograph operator.

Interesting WW1 signalling and comms innovation  blogpost with archive  photographs and many interesting articles.

In some game scenarios, failure of interception in comms and orders may have a big or random effect on  the game scenario outcome.

Your carrier pigeon or messenger dog is killed, your telephone lines are broken by shellfire, your advance orders are read by the opposing player, no signal to reinforce or retire is received so your troops fight on in the same position through counter attack after counter attack. All these are interesting random events that might affect a scenario outcome. All these were likely or real problems in WW1 communications such as at Passchendaele.

At last a use for all those wiring party troops, carrier pigeon troops and flag signallers in Airfix WW1 OO/HO infantry boxes.

Passchendaele article on written by Dr Elizabeth Bruton http://blogs.mhs.ox.ac.uk/innovatingincombat/category/wireless-telegraph/

Royal Navy naval comms and SigInt in early WW1

http://blogs.mhs.ox.ac.uk/innovatingincombat/guest-post-by-len-barnett-learning-to-use-signals-intelligence-in-the-royal-navy-1914-1915/

Brief mention of the formative experience for J R R Tolkien of being a WW1 signals officer on the Western Front https://percyswar.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/more-communication-fullerphone/

A subject explored more in John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle Earth, 2005. Historical events and historical figure gaming meets Fantasy!

Naval Raiding Party Gaming Scenario

An exciting WW1 naval raiding party scenario could be formed out of this interesting piece on Wireless Interception in WW1 based around coastal listening stations such as Hippisley Hut in Hunstanton Norfolk. Just what Marines are for!

http://blogs.mhs.ox.ac.uk/innovatingincombat/hippisley-hut-hunstanton-wireless-interception-world-war-one/

A scenario with a chance to use my recently scrap built desert or coastal telegraph station or in fact any lighthouse model that you happen to have lying around:

https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2017/05/17/by-heliograph-and-semaphore

An improvised coastal setting for my wireless telegraph station with 54mm lead or hollowcast  Royal Navy crew. The old unclimbable ‘felt cloth over books’ cliffs may be a slight gaming problem …

Anyway an interesting WWI website to read and ponder.

https://content.historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/first-world-war-wireless-stations-england/first-world-war-wireless-stations-in-england.pdf/

For the dedicated researcher of WW1 SigInt and Naval Signals you can now stay in Hippisley Hut http://www.norfolkcoastholidaycottages.co.uk/hippisley-hut-hunstanton

Blogposted by Mark, Man of TIN, October 2017