Morse Question 012 – Additional Information
This one may challenge a few. Click Play to Listen
- Change the callsigns and address groups in the following message to plain language. ii P ii 120400z SEP 55 ii FM ZMSF ii TO BGDJ INFO EUIQ = Sailed Wellington. ZMXC and ZMXG in company = k
A. P 120400Z SEP 55 FM HMNZS Bellona TO Comauck INFO NZDEF Navy = Sailed Wellington. Taupo and Kaniere in company = K
Bit of History – as a result of the above question.
The New Zealand Naval Board was constituted by Order in Council of 14 March 1921, with the Minister of Defence as chairman, the Commodore as First Naval Member, and the Chief Staff Officer as Second Naval Member. The secretary to the commodore acted as Naval Secretary to the Board. In 1926 he was appointed permanent head of Navy Office, but was not then a member of the Board. The secretariat at first was not organised on departmental lines but was drawn from the staff of the Department of Internal Affairs. Control of expenditure was exercised by the appointment to Navy Office of an officer directly responsible to the Treasury.
It was found difficult to administer the naval forces effectively while the first naval member of the board had also to carry out his duties as commanding officer of a cruiser. An effort to remedy this was made in 1936 by the appointment of a flag captain to the commodore in order to free the latter to attend meetings of the Naval Board. In 1938 the administration was reorganised and Navy Office was constituted a Department of State – NO Wellington was taken over by NZNB in 1954. The Naval Board now consisted of the Minister of Defence as chairman, a Commodore, Second Class, as First Naval Member and Chief of Naval Staff, a Captain RN as Second Naval Member, and a Paymaster Commander RN as member and Naval Secretary.
The NZNB changed to NZDEF Navy in 1971.
The Commodore Auckland was originally Naval Officer In Charge Auckland changing to Commodore Auckland 1 January 1961.
Ships’ prefixes in signals:
1968 – the first use of HMNZS in signal traffic. HMNZS Endeavour whilst en passage and return from San Francisco, used the broadcast and ship/shore facilities at Esquimalt (CKN). There was also a Canadian navy ship called CNAV Endeavour (a research and projects ship). These two ships names caused some confusion and CANMARPAC requested that the prefixes HMNZS and CNAV be used for all signal traffic by Canadian and New Zealand addresses including traffic originated from the two ships.
Ships prefixes became the norm by all allied navies sometime in the 70’s (exact year not known).
Routeing Indicators on CW and RATT ship/shore:
Exact date not known but also introduced by all allied navies either mid to late 70’s or early 80’s. As ships started to work more and more with US Naval Units and Communications Stations, it became the norm to put RI’s in to the address component of signals. Otago 1976 springs to mind working into NCS San Miguel and USS Enterprise.
1968 – Whilst on hand message organisation at Treasure Island, San Francisco and later at Naval Weapon Station Alameda, Endeavour also supplied routeing indicators on messages for the convenience of the Communications Stations ashore and again in Pearl Harbor a few weeks later.