On this day 75 years ago, April 26, 1942, KSTP radio in St. Paul, MN, began an innovative program, as described in the article shown here from the April 27, 1942, issue of Broadcasting.

According to the report, the station was doing its part to help satisfy the great demand by the armed forces for radio operators, by conducting weekly programs designed to teach young men and women the international Morse code.

The weekly program aired Sundays at 9:30 AM, and “used drama, as sugar-coating for the lessons.” It was built around a small family, one of whom was an amateur operator. Script writing was done by Jack Hill of the St. Paul Radio Club, using lessons from the American Radio Relay League.

After the third week’s episode, the station planned to incorporate “teaser announcements” into the program in an effort to determine how many would be interested in lessons one night a week in classrooms in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The St. Paul Radio Club would furnish instructors for those courses.

The program seems to have been a great success, as reported in the September 1942 issue of QST (pp. 80-81). The fifteen minute weekly programs resulted in a total of 325 Twin City residents signing up for the classes, initially held at KSTP’s Minneapolis and St. Paul studios, with advanced students moving on to classes at the YMCA.

According to QST, transcripts of the radio broadcasts, featuring the “Strong” family, were available by mail by writing to Hill at 1138 Fauquier Avenue (now known as Bush Avenue) in St. Paul.

Seventy-five years ago, the April 12, 1942, issue of the Chicago Tribune carried this story about a wartime curiosity on the shortwave bands, Station DEBUNK.

After the United State entered the war, the station sprung up on 7.2 MHz, and tried to pass itself off as a clandestine station operating from inside the United States.

But according to the newspaper, the FCC had confirmed what most SWL’s had already figured out, namely, that the station was broadcasting from Europe. The newspaper noted that the station was on the same frequency as the Berlin shortwave station.

The newspaper also noted that many listeners saw the hand of Freddy Kaltenbach in the station’s appearance, noting that it expressed his manner of expression and thinking. We previously wrote  (here and here) about propagandist Kaltenbach, a former Iowan of German birth.

The station was also profiled in the April 18, 1942, issue of Radio Guide, which noted that the station normally signed on to its 41 meter frequency between 7:30 and 8:00 PM Central War Time. The transmission began with an interval signal consisting of a piano playing part of the melody from the Star Spangled Banner, repeatedly playing the music for the words “by the dawn’s early light.”

The announcer then asked listeners to phone their neighbors to tune in and then played some jitterbug records. After about ten minutes, the announcer, one “Joe Scanlon” unleashed propaganda that was “anti-British, anti-American, anti-Communist, anti-Jewish, in fact, anti everything but National Socialism.”

After the diatribe, the station would sign off with the Star Spangled Banner. The Radio Guide profile noted that the station was amateurish in nature, with “the modulation as rotten as the talks.”

Announcer “Scanlon” was actually Herbert John Burgman, originally of Hokah, Minnesota.  Burgman served in the U.S. Army from 1918 to 1920, posted in Germany. In 1921, he was employed as a clerk at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin and married a German national. By 1941, he was a committed Nazi sympathizer, and declined repatriation to the U.S. along with the rest of the embassy staff, and he signed on as a propagandist for Radio DEBUNK.

After the war, he was arrested a tried for treason. The prosecution relied not only eyewitness testimony, but the recordings of the broadcasts from the FCC’s Silver Hill, Maryland, monitoring station. Despite a plea of insanity, Burgman was convicted of 13 acts of treason and sentenced to 6-20 years in prison. In 1951, the Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction. Burgman v. United States, 188 F.2d 637 (D.C. Cir. 1951).
He died in prison in 1953 at the age of 59.  He then found his way home to Minnesota and is buried in Austin, MN.

You can listen to a sound clip of Station DEBUNK at this link.

With America’s entry into the war, the nation’s broadcast stations were essential to inform and warn the public, and to maintain morale. As such, they were placed under military protection.

The photo shown here appeared 75 years ago today, in the December 22, 1941, issue of Broadcasting magazine.  It shows a military policeman, stationed at Fort Snelling, standing guard over KSTP, St. Paul, MN.  The caption notes that the station housed both the 50,000 watt main transmitter as well as an auxiliary 5000 watt transmitter with its own tower.  Both transmitters had been equipped for code transmission on Army and Navy frequencies.

The transmitter site remains at the same location today on the east side of U.S. Highway 61 in Maplewood, MN.  The modern image here is the Google street view.