Our readers enjoy perusing old issues of Popular Mechanics and other magazines, so we understand the excitement of U.S. Marine M/Sgt. Elmer C. Bender in finding the magazine’s August 1947 issue. The flyer, stationed at Tsingtao, China, took off the morning of October 1948 to get in some hours in a training flight.

Due to a faulty fuel gauge, he and Navy Electrician’s Mate William C. Smith were forced to land on a beach only 15 miles from their base, where they were quickly surrounded by Chinese Communists who surmised that they were spies. They were held for over a year until their eventual release.

The two men reported that they weren’t mistreated, but were taken from village to village. Their main problem was boredom, but the Lieutenant charged with their custody would occasionally bring English reading material. The highlight of their stay was when he showed up with the magazine, which both men devoured. Bender reports, in the magazine’s August 1950 issue, that he was especially interested in the issue’s feature on how to solder. When the men were eventually released, the Communist Lieutenant, noting their enthusiasm for the magazine, asked them to send him some more copies upon their return to the U.S.

While there’s no evidence that either man became a ham, it’s likely that they passed many hours reading about the 5-band AM-CW transmitter shown here. When their families got an FM radio, they probably both instinctively knew the trick of placing a folded dipole antenna under a carpet, as shown in the magazine.