Themes

Peter Wheen on how the Op Con has helped the communications within the Royal Navy to be more efficient, especially in times of war. (RNM)

Transcript: “When I first went to Northwood we were beginning to build up our ships in the Gulf and with only the 100 words per minute, we were getting swamped! There were far more signals wanting to go out than there was capacity to send them. Indeed, we were having to send a lot of messages out by aircraft and hand-deliver them – and that in the late 20th Century was appalling. However, we put this system into ships, and we could be going at high speeds. And we got round one of the big problems in the Falklands; we had the capacity to pass the information to sea.”

Return to article