Danny
The vast topic of signals . . one of which I know SFA. . . . is riddled with anecdotes. The speed at which a signaller could work his lamp or make his morse key dance stuns the imagination. How warships could semaphore crucial messages in the heat of battle with the speed of summer lightning !
Those wartime B & W J Arthur Rank movies with battleships moving into position as the signallers winked to each other at speed.!
About ten years ago an Australian TV channel organised a speed test between a Second World War RAAF vet sigs man and a sixteen year old who was incredibly fast on the keyboard. Each had the same two hundred word simple message to send for the exercise. The old hand on the morse key finished ten seconds in front of the youngster .
There were stories current once of POWs locked in cells with a common masonry wall. By tapping on the wall with a boot heel or anything else to hand for the purpose . .. if the two prisoners were skilled morse men they could communicate.
It was also said that if you had the touch and the ear you could get the 'accent' of the man transmitting and hence twig to his identity.