History

5th AACS Wing

1807th AACS Wing

EAME Area
CENEUR Comm Region
Northern Italy
Southern Italy
Spanish Comm Region
U.K. Comm Region
2140th Comm Sq
TUSLOG Dets

Eur Comm Area

2nd Comm Gp

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During the 1950's, AACS was retailored to meet the growth of Air Force responsibilities. Operations needed to be centrally coordinated for strategic control. Air Force personnel were deployed in 73 foreign geographic areas. The increase in Air Force strength, revised war planning, the vast increase in the number of aircraft flights, and the greater amount of intelligence and weather information required all served to overload the existing point-to-point and air/ground communications systems.

Air Force missions and operations, particularly after Korea, shifted away from the theater commander concept where joint operations and functions were centralized under a single commander. Instead, they now were under functional commands which exercised vertical control. The result was that each of the major commands, such as the Strategic Air Command, had their own communications networks tying their command headquarters in the United States to their activities around the world. This allowed them complete and instantaneous control of their components in a precise time frame, whether it was scheduling in-flight refueling, providing weather information, or conducting airlift operations. This was to change somewhat during the 1950s with the establishment of the Global Communications System (GLOBECOM). This system, which was to play a critical and important part in the Air Force Communications Network, was a project in which AACS played a key role.

Until 1947, AACS's pattern of operations for point-to-point communications was based upon the World War II-organized Army Command and Administrative Network. This system, called ACAN, utilized single-channel voice, teletype links, and torn-tape relays which were carried over both low and high frequency radio as well as wire. This system, outdated by its slowness and low volume of traffic it could carry, was replaced by GLOBECOM in 1951.

GLOBECOM was originally a modest program calling for the installation of a globe-encircling system of high power trunk circuits and modernization of the major AACS point-to-point circuits. Planning, which began in 1946, continued into 1950. The Korean War led to the expansion of the plan and caused Congress to free the monies needed for construction.

Construction began in 1951 with no agreement on the proper organization or management of the system. Nor was such an agreement reached even after GLOBECOM'S completion. AACS wanted it operated as a system under centralized control of one command to satisfy the long-line communications needs of all Air Force commands and activities. This could not be realized if the relay stations were operated by several different agencies. The fixed, or relay, stations were not to serve, by themselves, any specific airbase or command headquarters.

AACS was made responsible for installing, maintaining, and operating GLOBECOM, thereby fixing responsibility and ensuring uniformity in methods and procedures. It operated the system in the same manner that American Telephone and Telegraph's Long Lines Department serviced the entire Bell System. Therefore, it did not infringe upon the prerogatives of the various commands.

GLOBECOM was basically a radio system and was the first integrated communications system to span the world. It was an extension of the Air Force Communications Network which was primarily a continental wire system. Larger than any commercial system in the world, its cost of a quarter of a billion dollars by 1953 made it already about eight times the worth of the Radio Corporation of America and slightly more than that of Western Union. It came to represent one-half of AACS's effort and one-third of the Air Force's entire communications manpower resources.

It was an integrated and engineered system of interconnected Air Force radio stations, together with other leased commercial or allocated Army and Navy long-haul wire and radio channels, the necessary terminal equipment, relay facilities, communications centers, and cryptographic facilities. The facilities were all permanent and similar to civilian commercial systems. Internal, tactical, and special purpose communications systems of the various commands, used to accomplish specific missions within their organizations, were excluded.

Its central nervous system consisted of seven main or "beltline" stations, which were interconnected by high-power, multi-channel radio circuits. Each station had spare mufti-channel transmitting equipment to ensure reliability. Voice, teletype, and facsimile circuits, along with torn tape relay and offline encryption, were used on four-channel low and high frequency radio and landline circuits that employed semi-automatic switching. Linear amplifiers, boosting transmitter power to 50-kilowatts, were installed on special circuits to offset the effects of jamming and overcome adverse atmospheric conditions prevalent over the Atlantic Ocean. These beltline stations served 36 other stations.

Each GLOBECOM station had four separate facilities; a relay or message center and a technical control facility serviced by remotely located transmitter and receiver plants. The last two were placed far apart to avoid being affected by local noise or transmitters. Microwave connected them all because cable was expensive and difficult to protect in overseas areas.

AACS was designated as the responsible agency for engineering and the installation of all GLOBECOM facilities, except for those portions done under civilian contract. It operated all stations with the exception of several key stations in Europe and some in the United States which were operated jointly with other agencies. Those major commands that used the system were responsible for organizational and field level maintenance.

Each major command wanted individual ownership of all its own communications and support. But the quantum jump in the volume of communications and the sheer size of the networks they required, plus the skyrocketing costs, served to curb independent ownership of all command-needed communications.

Air-to-ground capability, added in 1952, allowed commanders to talk to aircraft up to 3,000 miles away. The system was renamed AIRCOM, which stood for the Air Force Communications Complex, in 1955. (See the AIRCOMNET section for more.)

"AF 2503, understand your position is 43º00'N and 06º30'E, cruising 9500' on an IFR clearance from Wiesbaden to Wheelus, Tripoli, Estimate Wheelus at 1245Z. Wheelus standing by."

"Wheelus, this is AF 2508 that is Roger. Request you relay our position report to Hq AACS, Washington, 1808th AACS Wing at Tokyo and 1807th AACS Wing at Wiesbaden."

"AF 2503, this is Wheelus, Understand. Will relay your message."

"Wheelus, this Is AF 2503. Roger. Out."

The airman then hands the position report to the adjacent comm center for processing. A radio teletype perforated tape is cut and in a matter of seconds the report is beamed over the desert via the Middle East to Tokyo, and westward over Tunisia and Algeria to French Morocco and further relay to the U.S. and Germany. Within minutes all three addressees will have received the report.

This is a typical test message that could be transmitted by any U.S. military aircraft to the four corners of the globe. Tripoli to Middle East, Middle East to Far East, Far East to the Pacific, Pacific to Pentagon, Pentagon to Morocco, Morocco to Europe. Europe to Tripoli.

"Globecom," which stands for global communications, is responsible for the operation. Global communications is a new idea in the Air Force, put into practice about a year-and-a-half ago after seven years in the planning stage. The idea of talking around the world is probably an old one, an H. G. Wells, Tom Swift, Jules Verne fancy. Many pilots to this day are said to be unaware that globecom is now a fact. Until six months ago, the system was classified hush-hush, according to officers in the 1807th Airways and Air Communications Service Wing at Wiesbaden overseeing globecom development in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

The global communications system is simply a high-power trunk broadcasting and teletype network encircling the globe, run by the Air Force. Because polar aurora act to absorb and nullify high frequency radio waves, the belt of relay stations is located as far as practically possible from the auroral zone, namely, through North Africa and the Middle East.

In Globecom, it is theoretically possible to hear yourself talk around the world, possible to direct and control aircraft anywhere on the face of the globe, possible for pilots instead of using da-da-dit messages to talk from plane to ground to any place in the world.

The Global Communications system is a world of tape relays, switchboards with blinking green lights, 10,000 teletype keys pounding at once, banks of vacuum tubes feeding rhombic antennae with 240 words a minute of weather data, scrambled code, aircraft movement.

Globecom airmen talk about "patching," "twixes," "telecoms," "VHF," "microwaves," "multiplexes," "tribbing," and "mixing" — in Globecom language.

It's in North Africa on the celebrated shores of Tripoli, where you can see the AF's globecom program budding into its most advanced and complex stags of development.

Just off the Mussolini-built autostrada, uniting the two capitals of Libya, Tripoli and Bengazi, where it is customary to point out the fact that Rommel's caravan of steel faltered not so long ago and that 2,000 years before him the Romans were building their empire, the 1807th's $1,000,000 transmitter is going up, scheduled to be finished in July. With an output of 3 kilowatts, it will be able to beam its messages to Sidi Slimane, in French Morocco, whose 10-kw sender will relay them on to the Pentagon, or other points in the Europe area.

Directly responsible for the new building here are the 1950th AACS Sq and the Middle East Corps of Engineers, along with a New York firm supervising the architecture.

CWO Dean W. Perry, of Santa Monica, Calif., 1950th's liaison man with Italian subcontractors and Libyan Arabs, gazing at the incredibly rich blue Mediterranean here and seeing only water meet red sand, said he felt as if he were out in Pumpkin Center, But it isn't the kind of Pumpkin Center most airman know. The new transmitter building, like other AACS globecom installations at Wheelus, is to be self-contained, with air-conditioned living quarters, wardrobe closets, dining room, sun porch, recreation room and all the amenities that might compensate for having to persevere the sometime 110-degree heat of the desert.

According to Maj James J. Keith. 38-year-old Texan, CO of the 1950th, the receiving, transmitting, and relay triad represent the first permanent, fully-operating AACS globecom unit outside the U.S. This one center at Tripoli is costing an estimated $3,500,000.

In the Globecom linkup, Tripoli itself will be a major East-West relay center between French Morocco and the Middle East. Just how the system works was explained by Brig Gen A. T. Wilson, Jr., 44-year-old Californian who commands the1807th.

To a layman, entering the major tape relay room of the center brings him into the heart of globecom's electronic world. Wilson, on an inspection tour, picked up a pencil and, amid tiers of amplifiers, receiving sets, and other devices, above which reads a sign "This equipment cost $140,000, Your taxes helped pay for it. Treat it accordingly," diagrammed the setup.

"In this major communications network. which will support the Air Force an a global basin no matter where it goes, there are to be about seven worldwide 'beltline stations.' From these stations you have major relay centers, like here in Tripoli, feeding them."

Sounding more like a radio engineer then a general, he continued: "In a station like here at Wheelus, the transmitter is about seven or eight miles away from the relay center — high-powered stuff with its antenna farm linked to the station using micro-wave or VHF (very high frequency), any 'short haul' system taking it to the transmitter, to be sent by 'long haul.'

"Another important thing is that this station can 'patch' a transmitted signal from a faraway station to connect two people not directly communicable, and then carry on a 'telecom,' (a teletype conference) six to eight thousand miles away. We call this point-to-point.

"Another function also is long range air-to-ground contact, working the same way, so that any plane in radius of a station can receive messages and transmit them, and by passing them on a relay and patching them, can have contact with great distances around the world."

In the European area. relay stations are located at Lajes in the Azores, in England as well as Tripoli and Sidi Slimane. Other relay stations are a desert station in the Middle East, a remote island in the Pacific, a point on the Pacific Coast and Washington, D.C.

When some of the stations are not "reading 5x5," or are blanked out because of an atmospheric "freak," another tributary will be able to take over.

For example, last year, three aircraft over England couldn't reach London because of a radio blackout. Tripoli, monitoring the Air Force standardized frequencies, picked up the message and passed it on to London Airport.

When the Air Force not long ago flew planeloads of Arabs from Beirut to Jidda airfield, en route to Mecca, in "Operation Pilgrim" on very short notice, there was no time to figure out plane to base communications. In order to coordinate the whole thing. The 1950th Sq, using AF and Navy circuits, was able to lead the airlift home by signals coming almost 2,000 miles away.

1) Yashmak — an Arab veil.
Marabout — a Mohammedan religious figure.
Barracana — white outer toga seen on Arab women in Tripoli.
Ghibil — a hot wind that blows across the Libyan desert.
Uaddan — a type of gaselle in North Africa.

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Det 20, 2140th Comm Gp
Mt. Pateras (15H) was linked to five locations:
Levkas (14B) via AN/FRC-96
Mt. Edheri (24D) via AN/FRC-97 1KW tropospheric scatter radio
Yamanlar (16D) via AN/FRC-96
Mt. Parnis via AN/FRC-127
Elefsis (a USAREUR site) via AN/FRC-127.

From Mt. Parnis, communications went to northern Greece, Nea Makri, and Hellinikon AB (Athens). Mt Pateras also had the 490L AUTOVON Switch for Greece. The Switch building is the closest building in the picture on the cover of the Feb 1969 Airman on your web page.

The conversion of the Defense Communications System's European wide-band communication system to an all-digital communication scheme started with the installation in 1975 of the Frankfurt-Koenigstuhl-Vaihingen (FKV) microwave links that carried a digital baseband signal on frequency-modulated analog radio equipment. The next step in the conversion was the installation of the Digital European Backbone, Phase I (DEB-I), that used the same technology. Current plans are to convert the entire European wide-band system to digital transmission over the next several years.

The planning and development of these first two digital microwave systems indicated that an improvement in system effectiveness and a decrease in operating costs could be realized by reexamining the traditional methods of communication system control. In the past, each radio site in a system had a number of people assigned to operate the site 24 hours a day. This practice was recognized as being wasteful of both money and trained personnel. Furthermore, modern communication equipment is reliable enough that continuity of service can be assured by installing redundant electronic equipment with automatic switching. This makes reduction or complete elimination of the personnel at repeater sites practical. As a consequence, both the FKV and DEB-I systems were commissioned with certain relay sites that were not staffed. Maintenance and restoral at these sites were to be performed by dispatch of trained, skilled maintenance personnel from one or more central locations. In order to permit system operators to know the status of the equipment at these unstaffed sites, an alarm monitoring system was installed to report site conditions to the location of the responsible system operator.

The initial alarm remoting equipment was a wired-logic, poll-response type system. A master unit requested information from the remote sensing unit and displayed the conditions of the remote radio site as an array of alarm and status indicator lights at the master location.

In order to make the remote site information more complete and accessible to the human operators, the Air Force system engineers decided to use a minicomputer to do some data processing and put the information in a more useful format for presentation to the operators. The development of this improved alarm remoting system, called the Enhanced Fault Alarm System, or EFAS, was begun in 1977.

The EFAS development consisted of preparing hardware and software to allow the minicomputer to replace a master fault alarm terminal. The computer sent poll messages to the remote units and received and decoded the responses. The information in the responses was analyzed and used to generate displays on a CRT terminal. These displays presented the alarm, status, and parameter data gathered from the remote sites in English text designed to show site and entire system conditions on easily understood displays.

The deployment of the minicomputer master units of the Enhanced Fault Alarm System was done in parallel with the DEB-I installations in southern Germany and northern Italy during early 1979. The DEB-I EFAS consisted of 13 remote data acquisition units and 3 minicomputer-based master units. Each communication site, even those where a master unit was located, was equipped with one of the remote data acquisition units.

I was stationed at Mt Corna RRL OL-K in Italy and we used the following MW radios  (1972-1975). Siemens/Halske EM 120/400  it was a 132 voice channel analog MW radio using the 400 mhz band 

This was the main radios at
Zugpitze to Cima Gallina to Paganella to Mt. Corna
Mt Corna to Mt Venda to Aviano
Mt Corna to Mt Cimone to Coltano

Mt Corna had a fourth radio shot to Ghedi Torre (Italian AFB with AF det).  It was a Siemens/Halske FM 12/800,  a 12 channel 800 mhz radio.

I first went to Germany in 1972 TDY to assist in the MUX installations (UCC4) from Patrick AFB, FLA assigned to the 1836 E&I Sq at Ramstein. They sent me and my crew to Feldberg for 2 months and transferred us to LKF until my PCS to Mt Corna RRL.

I went PCS to Mt Corna in DEC/1972 and during my time there I went TDY to support sites all along the 486L system. I spent 3 yrs at Keesler (slow student ha ha) as KAFB school maintenance. I was repairing every radio in the AF MW inventory and even a few that were not. I was even TDY to a few sites on the tropo sys from Turkey back to Italy via Greece. I even flew to Det 94 in Turkey to work on a tropo system at the direction of HQ DCA Commander. They sent his jet down to Ghedi Torre IAFB base and fly me to the site and back. They were doing real time intercepts from the USSR and sending back to Langley AFB and the network was DOWN hard.

I do know that we had 3 digital systems and what seamed to be 3 or 4 old analog systems, Siemens-Halske 800 MHZ.

Up until about a month ago, there was a site named CommTroop.net that was primarily made up of postings from Air Force Communicators and most were part of the DEB system, and primarily in Europe, although, some were state side, Alaska, and the Pacific area. There were literally hundreds of photographs of all of these sites and many of the troops assigned to them. Unfortunately, the site closed down, don't know why, maybe lack of funding or participation, but all the data is no longer available.

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