Chapter 10 



VOICE COMMUNICATIONS: PERSONNEL AND PHRASEOLOGY 



M. H. ABRAMS 



Cornell University 



I. The Problem of Communicating in a Noisy 

 Environment 



The spoken word is still the basic medium 

 for coordinating the operation of a subma- 

 rine. The aim of submarine communica- 

 tions is to pass the word with the maximum 

 speed and the minimum error. Its principal 

 hazard is the presence of interfering noises 

 made by other talkers, by various pieces of 

 submarine equipment, and above all, by the 

 diesel engines. 



During the last war the conditions on 

 board a submarine were particularly favor- 

 able for voice communication. The stand- 

 ard approach and attack was made under 

 water, on battery power, and this mode of 

 propulsion is relatively quiet. Even under 

 these favorable circumstances, however, sub- 

 marine commanders returning from war pa- 

 trols testified that errors and confusion in 

 communications cost them targets and jeop- 

 ardized the safety of their ships. Record- 

 ings made from battle circuits dramatically 

 confirmed this testimony. These records 

 show that some messages had to be repeated 

 several times; others were misunderstood 

 without detection of the error; some never 

 got through at all.^ In an attempt to rem- 

 edy these failures, NDRC personnel, in 1944, 

 assisted ComSubsLant in improvising a pro- 

 gram for selecting and training communica- 

 tions personnel, and for standardizing voice 

 procedures. The results of this project will 

 be discussed below. 



It must be anticipated that from now on 



' One of these recordings was processed for use 

 in talker-training courses under the title "Tele- 

 phone Talking over a Submarine Battle Circuit 

 During Actual Operations" (24, p. 22). 



the difficulty of passing the word quickly and 

 accurately will become even more acute. 

 Development of the "snorkel" apparently 

 will make it possible to carry out a sub- 

 merged attack using the diesel engines for 

 motive power. Submarine diesels make a 

 great deal of noise, a noise comparable in 

 intensity, in some compartments, to the din 

 in airplanes and tanks (see Fig. 1). Com- 

 munication in these vehicles proved to be 

 very diflScult in the last war, but the prob- 

 lem on board a submarine will be more 

 critical still. In planes, for example, mes- 

 sages are spoken over communication cir- 

 cuits which have relatively faithful frequency 

 characteristics, utilize an external source of 

 power for amplification, and terminate in 

 earphones which help seal off ambient noise 

 and pass the word directly into the ear of the 

 listener. In a submarine, on the other hand, 

 interior communications take place either 

 through loudspeakers or over sound-powered 

 phones. Loudspeakers are usually distant 

 from the ear of the listener, and cannot be 

 sealed off from interference. They are 

 therefore extremely vulnerable to ambient 

 noise, and are also subject to feedback — a 

 phenomenon equally annoying to the listener 

 and hazardous to intelligibility. Sound- 

 powered phones depend on the voice as their 

 only source of energy, and pass only a very 

 narrow band of frequencies. What the lis- 

 tener hears is therefore both weak and dis- 

 torted, and readily drowned out by compet- 

 ing noises. 



But even if high-fidelity communication 

 equipment is substituted for these inferior 

 types, experience with communications in 

 airplanes serves warning that it will remain 



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