"Doug Miller" wrote in message
. ..
"Stormin Mormon" wrote in
news:zuo6r.6441
:

I've recently seen a movie, entitled Red Tails. About the Negro
air men who fought over Italy.

What makes me wonder. The fighters and the bombers did
not appear to be able to talk with each other on the two way
radios. I'm curious what kind of radios they had. Tube sets? Was
that before transistors?

First transistor wasn't made until 5 years after the war ended.

Would the fighters and bombers be on
different frequencies?

Apparently. Different chain of command, you know.

The bomber radios were difficult to tune to another frequency.
http://www.qsl.net/ve2gce/index.html

This suggests that fighter radios were pre-tuned on the ground and the
pilot could only switch between two preset frequencies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/ARC-5
"The two transmitters would be fixed-tuned before take-off, with the
pilot able to select the desired transmitter and control the mode
(Voice, MCW, CW) at the transmitter control box."
and
"Such receivers were not remotely tuned by the pilot, but were instead
lock-tuned to the associated transmitter's frequency before take-off."

jsw