Who had the most effective radio technology during World War II?


 The Second World War and there is a big misconception which I've seen a lot online. People are always saying that German engineering was the best. Now, it is true that all of their tanks had radios early on and these were very advanced for the time. But if you actually talk to the men who were there those German radios were a nightmare to use. They were fussy machines-indeed quite fussy machines. You had to be an expert just to tune them and the AM signal was usually drowned out by the roar of the tank engine.

From all I've read and researched, it was the Americans that got it right. They didn't try and be fancy, they tried and be practical. A man at Motorola named Paul Galvin understood that a scared 19-year-old boy in a dirt ditch can't be fooling with complicated dials while people are shooting at him.


The U.S. switched to FM signals, which were then much better. But their real genius was to make use of those little quartz crystals. They made it so that a soldier could just 'plug' a frequency in and it worked instantly. No searching for a signal. They also provided radios with the small-squads. While a German soldier was risking his life running a hand-written note across a field, the American corporal just pressed a button. In war, some things that don't break are always preferable to fancy things that break.

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