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German radio, 1939–45

Four doors into the same subject: field sets and power, high-command cipher, tactical cipher, and air / fighter control.

This section is not a history of the war, and it is not a complete survey of every German wireless set. It is the German material in one collection, arranged so that a leaflet, a radio and a cipher attachment can point at one another.

The four doors below are separate on purpose. A 1943 army equipment list does not explain Lorenz. Lorenz does not explain Enigma. A FuG airborne receiver is not a Tornister pack set. They belong on the same landing page because they were used by the same services, often in the same months, and because the documents and objects in this collection sit across all four.

1. Field signals and powerHub: Merkblatt 48 b/20 (10 July 1943). Accumulators, generating sets, rotary converters, rectifiers, dummy antennas and test gear, and the army sets they were issued with. This is the first tree being written up. The leaflet is the trunk; the radios and power units in the store are the leaves.

Hub page to follow as the remaining Blätter are transcribed.

2. High-command teleprinter cipherHub: the Lorenz SZ42 (Allied name: Tunny). An in-line cipher attachment between a standard teleprinter and the line. Used for traffic between OKW and senior commanders. Essay, photographs and a patent cross-reference are on this site now.

The Lorenz SZ42 · Patent index

3. Tactical cipherEnigma — a different machine, a different traffic and a different literature. A page will be added when there is an object or a document in the collection that is worth a record of its own. Until then it is named here so it is not silently folded into Lorenz or the Merkblatt.
4. Air and fighter controlAirborne sets (FuG families), ground radar and control links. The EZ6 receiver from the FuG 10 already sits in the collection and belongs here, not under the Merkblatt. Further pages as photographs and handbooks are attached.

How these doors meet

The Merkblatt tells you which set, which converter and which battery went into the field. The SZ42 tells you how the highest-level teleprinter traffic was enciphered before it went on the radio. Enigma belongs to tactical Morse. Fighter control belongs to the air picture. They meet at the transmitter and at the command net, not in the same handbook.

If you have come looking for “German radio in the Second World War” as one story, start here and pick the door that matches the object in your hand. If you already know the leaflet or the machine, use the library and work back.

What is on the site today

  • Lorenz SZ42 (Tunny) — origins, Grimsen, how the attachment worked, and how it sits in this collection.
  • SZ42 patent cross-reference — twenty-one Lorenz AG patents mapped onto the mechanism.
  • Merkblatt 48 b/20 — tables for batteries, generating sets, converters, rectifiers, antennas and test gear have been transcribed into English; the public hub page will follow the same pattern as the SZ42 pages.
Nothing in this section is offered for sale. Pages are written so that a set can be identified and a document matched to it. Corrections from people who have handled the machines are welcome via the contact page.

 

A personal collection of historic radios. Photographs, sets and the documents that belong with them.
thehistoryofradio.co.uk