Sword of Light: Humanoid Self-Propelled Artillery

Chapter 286 The Role of Walkie-Talkies
The walkie-talkie that Wang Gensheng handed to Battalion Commander Yang was naturally captured from the US army. It was called the SCR-300 walkie-talkie, which was the ancestor of the SCR-636 handheld walkie-talkie, because the SCR-636 was actually a weakened and smaller version of the SCR-300.

The smoke of World War II had spread across the globe. While the battlefields of Europe and Asia were engulfed in flames, the United States, on the other side of the ocean, remained complacent in its role as an "arms supplier." However, a telegram from Pearl Harbor, announcing "Tora! Tora! Tora!", plunged the United States into a full-scale war against the Axis powers.

The U.S. military was well aware of the importance of real-time battlefield communications, and therefore decided that this problem must be solved before entering the war.

After all, traditional wire-based and Morse code methods have many drawbacks, such as being easily damaged, inefficient, and requiring translation.

The US military desired a more convenient and efficient means of communication. To this end, they approached Motorola, a world-leading communications technology company, hoping to develop a two-way radio specifically designed for the battlefield. After a series of communications and negotiations, the military ultimately approved the design proposed by Noble's team and signed a development contract.

The walkie-talkie developed by Motorola was actually a low-power radio equipped with an adjustable frequency and a frequency-modulated receiver, making it well-suited for the battlefield environment. It featured automatic frequency tuning, enabling instant communication without the need for pre-adjustment of the signal.

In addition, to meet the mobility needs of the troops, Motorola followed the military's instructions and designed the equipment to be both compact and lightweight. After a year of unremitting efforts by the Noble team, the prototype SCR-300 walkie-talkie was finally born.

During the military's acceptance tests, the equipment demonstrated excellent communication stability, ease of operation, and outstanding durability, winning high recognition from the military, which plans to quickly deploy it to the battlefield.

The first batch of SCR-300 walkie-talkies was quickly put into production and transported by air to the front lines of the European theater, where they made their debut in the Italian campaign in September 1943.

Its outstanding performance led to the widespread use of the SCR-300 walkie-talkie in both the European and Pacific theaters. Throughout World War II, approximately 5 SCR-300 walkie-talkies were manufactured and deployed, making a significant contribution to the Allied victory.

Motorola, as the manufacturer of this device, was thus hailed as a paragon of high-quality radio communication. After World War II, Motorola did not ignore the impact of this temporary order; instead, it foresaw its vast future potential.

Of course, despite the SCR-300's excellent performance in World War II, it was not without its flaws. Although its communication range could exceed fourteen kilometers, its weight of sixteen kilograms limited its long-term use.

Furthermore, operating this walkie-talkie required two people: one to carry the equipment and the other to make the call, which somewhat affected its efficiency. However, Motorola did not stop there.

Building on the advantages of the SCR-300, they further developed the SCR-636 handheld walkie-talkie, which is a mobile phone-style walkie-talkie.

The model's weight has been reduced to four kilograms, but the communication range has also been shortened, with a maximum range of only 1.5 kilometers. Even so, in jungle or urban environments, its communication range may be further reduced to around 300 meters.

This demonstrates that the technology available at the time, while prioritizing portability, struggled to meet the demands of long-distance transmission. Nevertheless, the SCR-636 still played a crucial role in subsequent battles such as the Sino-Japanese War and the Sino-Lambongan War.

With the end of World War II, orders for walkie-talkies naturally shrank significantly. Motorola's efforts to commercialize walkie-talkies led to the development of car phones, an innovative technology that combined walkie-talkies with in-vehicle systems. This technology flourished between 1950 and 1970, becoming an indispensable communication tool for Americans.

Even in old movies, one can glimpse the heyday of car phones. Although car phones were initially considered the exclusive domain of the wealthy due to their high price and service fees, and failed to achieve widespread adoption for nearly thirty years, their emergence undoubtedly laid a solid foundation for later mobile communication technologies. Car phones were all the rage in the United States. This type of phone was not merely a simple upgrade from the SCR walkie-talkie; it brought two significant advancements: breaking through the limitations of walkie-talkies and enabling communication with public telephone networks and landline phones, making communication much more convenient.

Its information transmission method also differs from traditional walkie-talkies, employing a model where the car phone goes from the base station to another point, a model that is key to enabling car phones to connect with public telephones and landline phones. At this point, car phones have begun to show similarities to mobile phone calls.

When engineers were designing the communication system and network for car phones, they discovered an efficient way to arrange base stations: arranging them in a hexagonal, or cellular, pattern, which allows for the widest communication range with the fewest base stations.

Later, the base station layout of the 5G era borrowed from this car phone communication model. This is why mobile phones are also called cellular mobile phones, and of course, why car phones are affectionately known as zero-G mobile communication.

Of course, what Wang Gensheng was doing at this moment could be called "airplane phone call," because Wang Gensheng was now piloting the H5 helicopter, flying thousands of meters in the air. Of course, there was another person on the helicopter at this time, and that person was Li Xiu, who was watching the impact point of the shells with binoculars. After all, only Li Xiu could see things thousands of meters away at night.

Boom! A shell landed one kilometer from Hagaru-ri Airport, without even penetrating the airport's defensive perimeter.

At this moment, Li Xiu immediately called out on the walkie-talkie:
"Battalion Commander Yang, the shells landed about one kilometer to the left of the airfield!"

As soon as Li Xiu reported the location, Battalion Commander Yang, who was at an artillery position more than ten kilometers away, immediately ordered his men to calibrate and fire again.

The first shell missed the runway by 200 meters, so the firing was calibrated and fired again. The third shell landed squarely on the roof of the Pershing tank that was leveling the runway.

Although the shell was only a high-explosive shell, it was still a 155mm high-explosive shell, and it hit the vehicle from the roof downwards.

Therefore, the thin armor on the roof of the Pershing tank could not withstand the impact of the 155mm howitzer, which immediately smashed into the tank and exploded.

The force of the explosion immediately detonated the ammunition inside the tank, causing a secondary explosion that also blew the entire tank turret off.

At this point, the 155mm howitzer was finally calibrated. After the first howitzer was calibrated, the calibration of the remaining seven howitzers became much easier.

Since they are all the same type of howitzer, we only need to set the muzzle angle and muzzle direction of the first howitzer onto the other seven howitzers.

(End of this chapter)