IN A FAR AWAY country of yashmaks, marabouts and barracanas where the ghibils blow and the uaddan* play, an airman sits in a sound-proofed, air-conditioned room, presses a button and plugs in on a global party line.

"AF 2503, understand your position is 43º00'N and 06º30'E, cruising 9500' on an IFR clearance from Wiesbaden to Wheelus, Tripoli, Estimate Wheelus at 1245Z. Wheelus standing by."

"Wheelus, this is AF 2508 that is Roger. Request you relay our position report to Hq AACS, Washington, 1808th AACS Wing at Tokyo and 1807th AACS Wing at Wiesbaden."

"AF 2503, this is Wheelus, Understand. Will relay your message."

"Wheelus, this Is AF 2503. Roger. Out."

The airman then hands the position report to the adjacent comm center for processing. A radio teletype perforated tape is cut and in a matter of seconds the report is beamed over the desert via the Middle East to Tokyo, and westward over Tunisia and Algeria to French Morocco and further relay to the U.S. and Germany. Within minutes all three addressees will have received the report.

This is a typical test message that could be transmitted by any U.S. military aircraft to the four corners of the globe. Tripoli to Middle East, Middle East to Far East, Far East to the Pacific, Pacific to Pentagon, Pentagon to Morocco, Morocco to Europe. Europe to Tripoli.

"Globecom," which stands for global communications, is responsible for the operation. Global communications is a new idea in the Air Force, put into practice about a year-and-a-half ago after seven years in the planning stage. The idea of talking around the world is probably an old one, an H. G. Wells, Tom Swift, Jules Verne fancy. Many pilots to this day are said to be unaware that globecom is now a fact. Until six months ago, the system was classified hush-hush, according to officers in the 1807th Airways and Air Communications Service Wing at Wiesbaden overseeing globecom development in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

The global communications system is simply a high-power trunk broadcasting and teletype network encircling the globe, run by the Air Force. Because polar aurora act to absorb and nullify high frequency radio waves, the belt of relay stations is located as far as practically possible from the auroral zone, namely, through North Africa and the Middle East.

In globecom, it is theoretically possible to hear yourself talk around the world, possible to direct and control aircraft anywhere on the face of the globe, possible for pilots instead of using da-da-dit messages to talk from plane to ground to any place in the world.

The global communications system is a world of tape relays, switchboards with blinking green lights, 10,000 teletype keys pounding at once, banks of vacuum tubes feeding rhombic antennae with 240 words a minute of weather data, scrambled code, aircraft movement.

Globecom airmen talk about "patching," "twixes," "telecoms," "VHF," "microwaves," "multiplexes," "tribbing," and "mixing" — in globecom language.

It's in North Africa on the celebrated shores of Tripoli, where you can see the AF's globecom program budding into its most advanced and complex stags of development.

Just off the Mussolini-built autostrada, uniting the two capitals of Libya, Tripoli and Bengazi, where it is customary to point out the fact that Rommel's caravan of steel faltered not so long ago and that 2,000 years before him the Romans were building their empire, the 1807th's $1,000,000 transmitter is going up, scheduled to be finished in July. With an output of 3 kilowatts, it will be able to beam its messages to Sidi Slimane, in French Morocco, whose 10-kw sender will relay them on to the Pentagon, or other points in the Europe area.

Directly responsible for the new building here are the 1950th AACS Sq and the Middle East Corps of Engineers, along with a New York firm supervising the architecture.

CWO Dean W. Perry, of Santa Monica, Calif., 1950th's liaison man with Italian subcontractors and Libyan Arabs, gazing at the incredibly rich blue Mediterranean here and seeing only water meet red sand, said he felt as if he were out in Pumpkin Center, But it isn't the kind of Pumpkin Center most airman know. The new transmitter building, like other AACS globecom installations at Wheelus, is to be self-contained, with air-conditioned living quarters, wardrobe closets, dining room, sun porch, recreation room and all the amenities that might compensate for having to persevere the sometime 110-degree heat of the desert.

According to Maj James J. Keith. 38-year-old Texan, CO of the 1950th, the receiving, transmitting, and relay triad represent the first permanent, fully-operating AACS globecom unit outside the U.S. This one center at Tripoli is costing an estimated $3,500,000.

In the globecom linkup, Tripoli itself will be a major East-West relay center between French Morocco and the Middle East. Just how the system works was explained by Brig Gen A. T. Wilson, Jr., 44-year-old Californian who commands the1807th.

To a layman, entering the major tape relay room of the center brings him into the heart of globecom's electronic world. Wilson, on an inspection tour, picked up a pencil and, amid tiers of amplifiers, receiving sets, and other devices, above which reads a sign "This equipment cost $140,000, Your taxes helped pay for it. Treat it accordingly," diagrammed the setup.

"In this major communications network. which will support the Air Force an a global basin no matter where it goes, there are to be about seven worldwide 'beltline stations.' From these stations you have major relay centers, like here in Tripoli, feeding them."

Sounding more like a radio engineer then a general, he continued: "In a station like here at Wheelus, the transmitter is about seven or eight miles away from the relay center — high-powered stuff with its antenna farm linked to the station using micro-wave or VHF (very high frequency), any 'short haul' system taking it to the transmitter, to be sent by 'long haul.'

"Another important thing is that this station can 'patch' a transmitted signal from a faraway station to connect two people not directly communicable, and then carry on a 'telecom,' (a teletype conference) six to eight thousand miles away. We call this point-to-point.

"Another function also is long range air-to-ground contact, working the same way, so that any plane in radius of a station can receive messages and transmit them, and by passing them on a relay and patching them, can have contact with great distances around the world."

In the European area. relay stations are located at Lajes in the Azores, in England as well as Tripoli and Sidi Slimane. Other relay stations are a desert station in the Middle East, a remote island in the Pacific, a point on the Pacific Coast and Washington, D.C.

When some of the stations are not "reading 5x5," or are blanked out because of an atmospheric "freak," another tributary will be able to take over.

For example, last year, three aircraft over England couldn't reach London because of a radio blackout. Tripoli, monitoring the Air Force standardized frequencies, picked up the message and passed it on to London Airport.

When the Air Force not long ago flew planeloads of Arabs from Beirut to Jidda airfield, en route to Mecca, in "Operation Pilgrim" on very short notice, there was no time to figure out plane to base communications. In order to coordinate the whole thing. The 1950th Sq, using AF and Navy circuits, was able to lead the airlift home by signals coming almost 2,000 miles away.

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