It would not surpise me if your friend wasn't correct as this would be conceptually the same as a Ocean Liner Radio room typing in morse messages to a typewriter for passing to passengers.
In the early 1980s I had the privilege of watching the Maritime Operators at BT Portishead transferring morse in their headsets onto teletype machines in real time, as most of these messages were in Shipping Company Code, what was being typed made no sense to the operator, but apparently mistakes were rare. So for a Radio Operator on a Clipper, principle would be the same and subject to reception quality, slightly easier as the message would probably be plain language.
Uppercase only Typewriters (as against Teletype) have a long history and were issued to Station Masters at GWR Stations early in the Company's History, at a guess with the purpose the resulting message could be hand carried to a telegraph office, but were also used to reply to customer complaints and letters (Sorry trivial thread drift).
Back on thread, I remember the late Jim Jordan (BUA/BCAL Radio Workshops) telling me that BUA experimented with Radio Teletype installed on the VC10s for passing Passenger Messages. I think whilst technically a success, Passengers didn't make use of the service and they were removed after a very short time.
Last edited by Opssys; 21st Aug 2008 at 18:25.
Reason: Updated