Category Archives: Harry S Truman

Harry Truman’s Hallicrafters

We recently had the privilege of visiting the Harry S Truman Library and Museum in Independence, MO., which included this recreation of the White House Oval Office as it appeared during President Truman’s time in office. Most of the objects in the room, such as the artwork, were the originals.

If you’re reading this as it’s posted, you’re probably aware that the Kansas City area is completely snowed in by a blizzard, which was preceded by freezing rain. The museum closed early in anticipation, and will remain closed through Monday, January 6. We were aware the storm was coming, but were confident that we would be out of the area in time, and we were indeed. We hit the Iowa state line about an hour before the museum closed. We had severe clear conditions all the way home, and the only sign of winter was the cold. But about the same time, Interstate 35 was closed near Kansas City because of a crash caused by the ice. Had we waited a few more hours to leave, we would still be there.

Of course, for most readers of this site, upon seeing the photo at the top, your eyes were immediately drawn to the object directly behind the desk. And, of course, it’s the first thing we noticed. It is a Hallicrafters SX-28 “Super Skyrider”. The 15-tube set covered 550 kHz through 44 MHz, and was a top-of-the line receiver, as would be expected from a set in such a place of honor.

If I were the Leader of the Free World, I would also want to have a shortwave receiver at my desk. And when Truman met at the White House with former President Herbert Hoover, we have little doubt that Hoover approved of the inclusion of this useful device. But I’ve been unable to find much reference to it. I would like to know how often Truman had it turned on, his thought process in getting it, and how exactly he used it. Unfortunately, because of the weather, I didn’t have time to ask the library staff.

The library website shows that there is a file pertaining to Hallicrafters in Truman’s personal files. If I had more time, I would have gone over to the reading room to look at this file, but it classification indicates that the receiver was Truman’s personal property, as opposed to government property. The next time I’m in Kansas City, I’ll probably make an appointment to view that file. In the meantime, if any of our readers would be interested in inspecting that file, please let us know.

I did find this thread at QRZ.com where W6OGC had written to the museum asking about the receiver. This is the reply he received:

Recently you asked about the short wave radio that is displayed behind President Truman’s desk in the Library’s replica of the Oval Office.

This is a Hallicrafters SX-28 “Super Skyrider” short wave radio receiver, along with its speaker, a Hallicrafters model PM-23. These units are not the actual short wave sets used in the Oval Office, but they are units the Truman Library purchased in 1995 to closely duplicate those that were in the Oval Office when President Truman occupied it.

Photographic evidence of President Truman’s Oval Office as it appeared in the summer of 1950 indicates that there was a Hallicrafters receiver behind his desk, the left side of which resembled a Hallicrafters SX-28 and the right half of which resembled a Hallicrafters SX-32 (a later model). According to Mr. Chuck Dachis of The Hallicrafters Collector of Austin, Texas, the model that was actually in President Truman’s office was probably made during a transition period (1940-1943) between the production of the models SX-28 and SX-32. This seems to suggest that the receiver may have been first acquired during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt and simply remained in the White House during the Truman years.

We do not know, with any degree of certainty, just how the receiver was utilized during the Truman Presidency, although it is entirely possible that Truman used it at the end of the Second World War to listen to war broadcasts from various locations.

I hope this information will be of assistance to you. Thank you for your inquiry and for your interest in the Harry S. Truman Library.

Clay Bauske
Museum Curator
Harry S. Truman Library

If the Hallicrafters wasn’t the first thing you saw in the photo, the only other explanation is that your eyes were fixed on the television set. Truman was the first president to have a television in the office, and this one appears to be a DuMont model RA-108 from 1949. Of course, it stands to reason that Truman was the first president to have a TV in the White House. The first station to come on the air in Washington, W3XWT, later WTTG, came on the air in May, 1945, a month after Truman took office. According to the Winter 1949 issue of White’s Radio Log, there were four stations on the air in Washington when this set rolled off the assembly line.

Truman Library photo, Facebook.

While we were at the Library, we took the opportunity to sign the condolence book for President Jimmy Carter, shown here in this earlier Library photo. The book will be sent to the Carter Library in Atlanta.

1952 Transatlantic Television Ideas

Seventy years ago this month, the October 1952 issue of the British Wireless World carried this illustration showing possible methods of linking American and European television. The diagram had actually first appeared two months earlier in the August 1952 issue of Tele-Tech as part of an open letter to the President of the United States (which would have been Harry S Truman) imploring action on TV networking with Europe and South America. According to the magazine, American homes would be able to view the great events of Europe, live, but “the underprivileged of Europe can be shown the wonderful richness of life in America.”

The diagram showed the potential methods, the first of which being an “airplane-relay between a dozen or more express planes continuously flying a regular route across the ocean,” presumably carrying 16-mm film.

The next idea was Stratovision, the use of a string of aircraft aloft, each relaying the signal to the next plane. As we previously showed, this system was tested, and even used to a certain extent, in the United States. But doing it over the Atlantic would require a set of aircraft carriers on which the planes could land, which would likely make the idea much less feasible.

The next idea was a string of VHF relay stations through Labrador, Baffin Island, Greenland, Iceland, the Faeroe Islands, and the Shetland Islands. The longest link would be 290 miles, meaning that the idea might be feasible. If this idea sounds familiar, it’s because it’s similar to one we talked about earlier, one proposed by David Sarnoff in 1951, although his plan envisioned the link going the other way, over the Bering Strait. Other ideas included a submarine coaxial cable, or scatter transmission, essentially the use of brute force to propagate VHF signals over the horizon. It also mentioned “miscellaneous marginal proposals,” such as use of moon reflections, which of course depended on the moon being visible over both continents, which would happen for about five hours per day.

One of the first transatlantic broadcasts was the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the following year. It was first seen on American television courtesy of 16-mm film flown by the RAF to Gander, Newfoundland, to the CBC, which was then picked up by American networks. The first live transatlantic broadcast didn’t take place until 1962, and it relied upon a method not anticipated by the 1952 article, namely, the use of the Telstar 1 satellite. While Telstar was the first transatlantic use of satellite, it should be pointed out that it wasn’t the first television transmission by satellite. Those honors go to Echo 1, which successfully relayed signals via a passive reflector between the east and west coasts of the U.S.

Nagasaki

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The attack is reported here in that day’s issue of the Chicago Tribune. If the Japanese needed further convincing to surrender, that day also brought news that the Soviets had declared war on Japan and were attacking Japanese forces in Manchuria.

The video below is a radio broadcast that day by President Truman promising that the bombings would continue until the Japanese surrendered. The war would be over in a few days.

V-E Day

Churchill waves to crowds celebrating Victory in Europe, May 8, 1945. Wikipedia photo.

Today marks the 75 anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, commonly known as V-E Day.

The instrument of surrender was signed in Berlin by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel at 21:20 local time on May 8. The event coincided with President Truman’s 61st birthday, and was less than a month after the death of FDR. U.S. flags remained at half-staff for the remainder of the mourning period.

Truman broadcast that it was a victory only half won, since the battle against Japan still raged on.

Death of FDR: 1945

New York Times.

On this day 75 years ago, April 12, 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died, and President Harry S Truman was sworn in.

You can hear some of the radio coverage at this video:

FDR Re-Elected 1944

Seventy-five years ago today, November 7, 1944, Franklin Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term as President. Shown here is “the piano playing candidate,” the Vice-President-Elect, Missouri Senator Harry S Truman, celebrating with some buddies from his service in World War I. The picture appeared in the Milwaukee Journal, November 8, 1944.

Just five months later, Truman would become President upon the Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945.

Villa on the Lake Ontario, 1944

Shown above, in the August 21, 1944, issue of Life Magazine, is Mrs. Eva Bass, a Paris nightclub singer who had lived in Milan before the war. Because she was a Swiss Jew, she was placed in a concentration camp, and later in “free confinement” in Potenza.

When the Allies arrived in Italy, she carried her children 60 kilometers through the lines, many days without food. They were placed in an Allied relief camp in Italy. She was one of a smaller group, chosen because they were virtually desitute without any means of support, to go to America. “They will remain at Fort Ontario, Oswego, N.Y., for the duration of the war as wards of the U.S. Sine they entered the U.S. outside the immigration quotas, they will have to leave when the war is over.”

After they were registered and their meager possessions cleared customs, they were assigned to army barracks where they would live for the duration of the war.

The family shown below is identified as the Albrecht family. The father was Jewish and the mother Catholic. The children are identified as Peter, 10, and Renata, 5. According to the magazine, he operated a theater in Vienna but fled to Italy in 1939, followed later by his wife and children.

As the photos and article make clear, the conditions were very austere, but one of the refugees “threw her arms around a government representative, saying, ‘this is more beautiful than anything in Europe. Now I have a villa on the Lake Ontario.”

All of the residents remained interned until 1946. According to Wikipedia, ” President Roosevelt made himself very clear that immigration laws were not going to be ignored. The refugees would merely be in the United States, not citizens of the United States. They would have no visa status. President Roosevelt also assured Congress that the Army would not permit any refugee escapes.” In 1946, under President Truman, the decision was made to allow the refugees to become U.S. Citizens.

Sinking of the Tuscania, 1918

SS Tuscania. Wikipedia Image.

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Tuscania, February 5, 1918. The ship was a luxury liner of the Cunard Line, and was serving as a troop transport, carrying American troops to Europe. The ship left Hoboken with 384 crew and 2013 army personnel aboard. On the morning of February 5, a German submarine sighted the convoy and stalked it until darkness. At 6:40 p.m., it fired two torpedoes, one of which sent the ship to the bottom of the Irish Sea. 210 men were killed in the attack.

Color picture; An elderly man holding a glass and wearing a hat stands in front of a wooden lodge.

Harry Truman. Wikipedia image.

One of the notable survivors was 20-year-old soldier Harry R. Truman (not to be confused with the President), notable for becoming a victim of Mt. St. Helens in 1980.

June 29, 1946

The newspapers 70 years ago gave a glimpse at how the postwar world was going to be different. This is the Milwaukee Journal of June 29, 1946. The pictures are taken a Bikini Atoll, where Operation Crossroads
was underway, with the world’s fourth atomic blast scheduled for the next day.

The headline at the top of the page reports Herbert Hoover’s statement that mass starvation in the world had been averted, except in China, where there was still a pressing need. Just over a year earlier, President Truman had enlisted Hoover to deal with the food situation, and Hoover’s final report was noted here.

In other news, President Truman had signed a bill extending the draft, which had been set to expire in March 1947.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Milwaukee Journal, Nov. 22, 1945.

On this Thanksgiving, we look back to Thanksgiving seventy years ago, when America and the world gave thanks for final victory, as expressed by President Truman:

In this year of our victory, absolute and final, over German fascism and Japanese militarism; in this time of peace so long awaited, which we are determined wit all the United Nations to make permanent; on this day of our abundance, strength, and achievement; let us give thanks to Almighty Providence for these exceeding blessings.

We have won them with the courage and the blood of our soldiers, sailors, and airmen. We have won them by the sweat and ingenuity of our workers, farmers, engineers, and industrialists. We have won them with the devotion of our women and children. We have bought them with the treasure of our rich land. But above all we have won them because we cherish freedom beyond riches and even more than life itself.

We give thanks with the humility of free men, each knowing it was the might of no one arm but of all together by which we were saved. Liberty knows no race, creed, or class in our country or in the world. In unity we found our first weapon, for without it, both here and abroad, we were doomed. None have known this better than our very gallant dead, none better than their comrade, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Our thanksgiving has the humility of our deep mourning for them, our vast gratitude to them.

Triumph over the enemy has not dispelled every difficulty. Many vital and far-reaching decisions await us as we strive for a just and enduring peace. We will not fail if we preserve, in our own land and throughout the world, that same devotion to the essential freedoms and rights of mankind which sustained us throughout the war and brought us final victory.

Now, Therefore, I, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States of America, in consonance with the joint resolution of Congress approved December 26, 1941, do hereby proclaim Thursday November 22, 1945, as a day of national thanksgiving. May we on that day, in our homes and in our places of worship, individually and as groups, express our humble thanks to Almighty God for the abundance of our blessings and may we on that occasion rededicate ourselves to those high principles of citizenship for which so many splendid Americans have recently given all.