Communications during Operation Grapple

From May 1958 until May 1959, WO2 (Foreman of Signals) Pat Soward served with 2 (Special) Air Formation Signal Troop on Christmas Island. In this article, Pat recalls the technical challenges his unit had to overcome to provide communications for the Grapple Z test series. 

A Signal Troop of 20 men took the scenic route to Christmas Island, arriving in June 1957 after a journey by air from London to Fiji (via New York, San Francisco and Honolulu) and by sea aboard the good ship Devonshire which already stowed an Engineer Field Squadron from the Far East. What happened next is vividly recorded in our Corps magazine, The Wire: 

“The Devonshire anchored a mile off shore. Two ungainly copra barges, towed by an old launch, the White Swan, bore load after load of sweating, close packed troops, ashore through the narrow channels in the reef. On landing, beach communications were established using cable and telephones held by the Engineer Squadron!”

The Signal Troop had at least three names during the operation, but for our purposes it was 2 (Special) Air Formation Signal Troop. It was unit of soldiers under RAF operational command, primarily tasked to establish the operational and administrative telephone and telegraph circuits needs for the RAF Airfield and main camp, though it also tended to the communication needs of Naval, Army and AWRE units on the island. 

The Troop had two main tasks: to install and maintain three larger and more permanent telephone exchanges as soon as air conditioned buildings could be built for them; and to create the extensive cable network for junctions between exchanges, lines to individual telephone instruments and point-to-point operational circuits. 

Initially two-pair (quad) field cables were erected on light poles but it did not take long for supplies of armoured cable to be laid underground. A grader was ‘acquired’ and, driven by Cpl Ferguson from Jamaica. It was used to create ‘V’ shaped trenches up to 25 miles long, into which cables were laid by a three-ton lorry towing a cable trailer. The lengths (about 1/2 mile) of  14-pair cable were jointed using blow-torches and soldering irons, together with tools better known to plumbers who worked on lead pipes!

There was a 50 watt BFBS Radio station serving the forces on the island, but we also tuned in to broadcasts from Honolulu. During my tour, the Americans exploded a high altitude nuclear weapon over the Johnston Atoll. This disrupted the radio wave deflecting properties of the ionosphere and nothing was heard from Radio Honolulu for four weeks afterwards.

The normal tour for members of the unit was one year, but this was flexible and it consequently varied in size from the initial to 20 to some 65 at its peak. I arrived in May 1958 as WO2 (Foreman of Signals) and enjoyed a hectic tour. My tour was in a lull between weapon tests and we were able to train our team of Linemen, Cable Jointers and Drivers to install the new telephone exchanges – luckily of a type which I knew quite well. We made specialist lacing tools and worked shifts to complete the three installations in time for the next series of tests.

In the meantime the Royal Engineers were building roads and a new airfield at B Site (Aeon Field). We kept a close working relationship with them and, if necessary, installed ducting under places where there would be a road crossing. But we had no ducting and time was short! The Americans came to our aid. Whilst building the Second World War airfield, they had created a tank farm for aviation fuel in the coconut plantations some three miles from the airfield. They were connected to the airfield by four-inch diameter steel pipes, cut into 18 ft lengths. They were ideal for our purposes. 

There was a bonus, too. Some of these pipes still held wartime aviation fuel! 

It could not be allowed to go to waste and was found to work wonders for our Land Rovers which developed new ‘urge’ and a phenomenal mileage per gallon – as well as a propensity to shed silencers!

The last two weapon explosions were by weapons raised by balloons on the tip of the island at B Site. Cables had to be laid in the hard coral and the best we could do was to bury them in slits some two-three inches deep. After the explosions, it was noted that cables still in the ground were unharmed but those which the force of the explosion had lifted to the surface and been reduced to bare copper wires.

By April 1961, the total military strength on the island was down to some 350 of which three were Royal Signals. These were probably found from 19th (Air Formation) Signal Regiment in Singapore who sent soldiers for care-and-maintenance purposes for several years afterwards. One last point: if we were No 2 (Special) Signal Troop, was there a No 1? Yes. It was on Gann Island that also came, eventually, under 19th Signal Regiment’s umbrella.

Photo Pat Soward © Royal Signals Museum