This photo, form the New York Tribune, July 9, 1922, shows William Hodson, a Boy Scout from Troop 108, Brooklyn, along with two other scouts, operating a receiver. But it’s not just any receiver. It’s a “three-coil duo lateral regenerative set with loud speaker attachment.”
I’ve always been curious about what the short wave bands sounded like in the United States during World War II. Short wave was available on many, but by no means all, pre-war consumer radios. The radio shown here, Admiral model 71-M6 covers the standard broadcast band, has a phonograph, and also covers the 31 meter shortwave band, which it calls the “European” band. The ad is from the February, 1941, issue of Radio Today.
I own an Admiral console very similar in appearance to this one, but mine is a bit more upscale. Mine also includes the 25 meter band and has push button tuning for the standard broadcast band. (Most of the buttons on mine are labeled with Chicago stations, so it must have originated in the Chicago area.) I forget the exact tube count of mine, but I believe it’s more than six. It has push-pull audio, meaning that it has two tubes in the final audio stage. Mine also has an RF preamplifier stage, which this one is probably lacking.
But the styling of mine is so close to the one shown here that it’s very likely that mine also predates the war, and the sounds of wartime shortwave broadcasts probably came out of its old speaker. Its actually a very good receiver on both the AM and shortwave bands. And since it’s set up for only the two shortwave broadcast bands, it’s quite easy to tune to a particular frequency, a feature lacking in most commercial shortwave receivers.
The ability to make sound recordings was virtually unknown in consumer equipment, so the chance of finding a recording of someone’s SWL’ing from that era is very unlikely. But the site americanradiohistory.com has a treasure trove of old radio publications, and I found one that sheds some light on what the casual listener with a radio such as my Admiral would have been able to hear. The predecessor of TV Guide magazine was Radio Guide, and during the war years, it seems to have gone by the name Movie-Radio Guide. It did include a couple of pages of short wave listings in each issue, and provides a good look at short wave during the war years. The issue for December 20-26, 1941 appears to have been mostly ready for press prior to Pearl Harbor, but it does include a notice: “War conditions permitting, complete information as to how wartime conditions will affect your radio listening will be revealed by Curtis Mitchell, U.S. Army” in the next issue.
That issue, dated December 27, 1941, announces that the Guide will have “new, enlarged short-wave information and program section” where “short-wave dialers will find a large, carefully compiled list of the world’s short-wave stations, carrying war news in English.”
The promised listing of war news shows the scheduled times and of English-language war news broadcasts:
Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo are all represented on the list. Later issues also show a listing for the Vichy, France, station. These stations also have programs listed in the accompanying program schedule. For example, the “Lord Haw Haw” show is shown as being broadcast at 5:30 PM U.S. Pacific Time on Saturday from DXZ (9.57 MC) and DXJ (7.24 MC) and Y (the Paris station on 9.52 MC). At 6:30 PM, Berlin carried “Greetings from British prisoners in Germany to their families in the U.S. and Canada.” The text refers to this program as a “sadistic touch.”
Most usefully, this magazine also has what appears to be a rather comprehensive list of “Transmissions Beamed on North America”. The December 27 issue covers from 17.87 MC (GSV, London) down to 5.95 MC (XGDY, Chungking). One article notes that Radio Saigon, while Axis controlled, signed off with the Marseilles.
The January 3, 1942, issue discusses the possibility of blackouts of U.S. standard broadcast stations during air raids. It also reminds listeners that the Post Office Department suspended mail service to Germany, Italy, and other lands under their control, and that listeners shouldn’t “waste postage on reports to Axis stations.” It also notes that “with most of the interference now absent [presumably since amateurs sharing the 40 meter ham band were now silent], reception ranging from fair to excellent is being afforded by the stations broadcasting on [the 41 meter] band. DXJ (7.24), Berlin, for example, is being heard daily from 4:50 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. EST with louder signals than any of the seven other Berlin outlets for the North American service.”
This issue also presents the beginning of a list, in serial form, of all short-wave stations by frequency. This issue caries listings for the 19 meter band (15 MC). The issues for January 10, 1942 and January 17, 1942 list all of the stations transmitting on the 25 meter band (11 MC). The January 24 and January 31, 1942 issues contain the listings for the 31 meter band (9 MC). The listings for the 41 meter band (7 MC) are in the February 7, 1942, issue.
This issue also reports that Tokyo is now carrying messages from American prisoners of war, and notes that these messages are probably recorded under duress. The 49-meter band (6 MC) and a few stations below are covered in the February 14, February 21, and February 28 issues.
The February 28 issue also notes that Berlin has revamped its English service, to consist of a news broadcast followed by “a fifteen-minute talk or commentary in English by one of Goebbels’ gabblers.” This issue also notes that Moscow has expanded its shortwave service, and that “reports from all parts of the country indicate that these new transmissions are being received with very good signal strength.” These programs apparently originated from Moscow studios, but were put on the air from a transmitter at Komsomolsk, Amur.
In addition to these comprehensive listings, the magazine also contained in each issue a list of “important stations” shown here, this one from the February 28, 1942, issue:
In short, if there was any doubt, it appears that the shortwave bands were lively during the war, and that American listeners with a shortwave receiver had many opportunities to hear first hand the propaganda being broadcast by the axis powers.
While the final seeds of war were being sown in Europe, in this hemisphere, the Panama Canal was quickly coming to completion, and opened on August 15, 1914. This feature in the Burlington (Vt.) Weekly Free Press for July 30, 1914, shows some of those finishing touches. These included the powerful radio station, which was still under construction:
Work on the three 600-foot steel towers of the proposed Darien radio station at Caimito has begun and will be completed before opening day. Each tower is built in the form of an equilateral triangle, 150 feet on the side. At each corner of the triangle will be a footing of concrete. The depth of the excavation for the footing has varied from twelve to twenty-eight feet below the surface of the ground, the greater depth being necessitated by the irregular surface elevations, The concrete base will be rectangular in plan, sixteen by twenty, and ten feet deep. The building to serve as quarters for operators has been practically completed and will be provided with furniture by the Navy. New radio stations for relatively local use as compared with long distance stations are to be erected at Colon and Balboa and will supplant the ones now in service at these points. The towers resemble the ones at Arlington, Virginia, and each station will have two three hundred feet towers six hundred feet apart. The present wooden masts at Colon, about two hundred feet high, and the antennae of the present Balboa station are suspended at an elevation of about one hundred and ten feet above the ground between the steel tower and the power plant.
When the station, whose callsign was NBA, became operational, it was able to make regular contact with the powerful navy station at Arlington, Virginia. The transmitter is shown here:
Photo, Google Books
This is a 100 kilowatt Poulsen arc transmitter, manufactured by the Federal Telegraph Company. It is described as being very sturdily designed, with an “unusually rugged and elaborate water-cooling system.” The arc transmitter produced a continuous wave signal, and could even be modulated for voice transmissions (although this one was used strictly for radio telegraph work).
In an earlier post, I reported on the April 1922 wedding of Sarah Cockefair and Albert Schlafke, who were married in the skies above New York before thousands of radio witnesses. Perhaps inspired by the New York couple, it seems that a Minnesota couple decided to tie the know in a similar fashion just a few months later. This wedding took place in June, 1922, during an airshow at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. It is reported in the article shown above, a wire story appearing in various papers including the Albuquerque Evening Herald on July 2, 1922.
According to the article, Zelma Olson of Minneapolis desired to be married in an airplane, and desired that the ceremony be officiated by one Rev. E.A. Jordan, who weighed 220 pounds. Unfortunately, the aircraft could accommodate only an additional 75 pounds.
It’s not until the third paragraph of the story that we learn that the groom was one Edwin Moline, who was presumably going to be present in the aircraft as well. His weight is not stated.
The site of the wedding, about five years earlier. (Photo from Google Books)
The problem was solved, at Moline’s suggestion, by placing a radiotelephone set in the plane (presumably one weighing less than 75 pounds), and having Rev. Jordan officiate by wireless.
This he did, and Rev. Jordan conducted the ceremony from a pagoda overlooking the State Fair Grandstand.
There doesn’t seem to be a great deal of historical record surrounding this novel ceremony. I was able to find this post by one Jennifer Moline, presumably a relative of the 1922 newlyweds, indicating that the wedding actually took place on June 4, 1922, a fact not reported in the wire story.
Also, the original 1922 press photo is available for purchase on eBay, and a better copy of the photo can be found at that listing. The back of the image notes that the photo originated from the St. Paul Daily News, and that the photographer was Earl L. Vogt. There’s a date stamp on the back of June 8, 1922, which seems consistent with a wedding date of Sunday, June 4, 1922.
If anyone has any additional details about this wedding, I would enjoy hearing from you.
This mobile wireless setup appears in the July 1914 issue of Popular Mechanics. Used by the U.S. Army, the set was reported to have a range of 30-40 miles when used with an inverted-L antenna. It was reported to send a pure musical note of 500-750 sparks per second. It could be operated from either a storage battery or a hand-operated dynamo.
A hundred years ago, the New York Sun for June 14, 1914 reported on the beginnings of the ARRL.
The article announces that “H.P. Maxim, who invented a silencer, hopes he has invented a communicator.” It outlines Maxim’s plan, which is generally what the ARRL accomplished soon thereafter. “The scheme is to get all the amateur wireless operators of the country, and they exist by the hundreds of thousands, interested in transmitting messages from coast to coast.” Maxim is quoted that the proposal is to “select those stations which are able to transmit from fifty to 100 miles and which are kept in perfect running order. And then all stations in the league which we are forming, to be known as the American Radio Relay League, will at a predetermined hour ‘listen in.’ That hour will probably be 7:30 each evening.”
Maxim points out that the intention is “to make this thing strictly amateur. The messages are to be relayed by courtesy. There will be no fees for receiving, delivering or relaying the messages. No money transaction of any kind is to be considered in connection with the league.”
He also notes that the Government is likely to be cooperative, since the relay proposal ensures that it “will make it unnecessary for an amateur to have a high powered set,” thus reducing interference.
The War slowed things down a bit, but the first “Transcon” test was successfully carried out in January, 1921, with a successful transcontinental message and reply in “two hours flat.”
D-Day Landing (U.S. Army photo)
The complete broadcast day for D-Day, June 6, 1944, was recorded by both CBS and NBC. One detail that I always found interesting was the following wire report, which was also carried in print by the AP in the D-Day afternoon papers:
Music for Invasion Forces
About the same time the German controlled Calais radio station came on the air with the following announcement in English:
“This is D day. We shall now bring music for the invasion forces.”
The whole Nazi controlled French radio network went off the air at 7:25 a.m. in the middle of a physical training broadcast.
Milwaukee Journal, June 6, 1944.
I’ve never seen any explanation of this curious statement, although the impression was that the French personnel of the station had taken advantage of the chaos and taken over the station.
The truth, however, appears to be even more interesting. It seems likely that the “German controlled Calais radio station” was actually Soldatensender Calais, a German-language station operated not by the Nazis, but by the Political Warfare Executive of the British Foreign Office. Soldatensender Calais (Soldier’s Station Calais) was broadcasting not from Calais, but from the village of Milton Bryan, Bedfordshire, England, with a massive 500 kilowatt mediumwave transmitter. It broadcast on 612 kHz, 714 kHz, and 833 kHz, frequencies shared by Radio Deutschland.
Joseph Goebbels himself lamented in his diary in 1943:
In the evening the so-called “Calais Soldiers Broadcast” which evidently originates in England and uses the same wavelength as Radio Station Deutschland when the latter is cut out during air raids, gave us something to worry about. The station does a very clever job of propaganda and from what is put on the air one can gather that the English know exactly what they have destroyed and what not.
The transmitter had originally been ordered by WJZ in Newark, New Jersey (now WABC, with its city of license New York), in hopes that the FCC would authorize the high power to match the superpower signal of WLW in Cincinnati which had in use on and off from 1934 to 1939. But when the FCC insisted on maintaining the 50 kW limit for standard broadcast stations, the station was eager to sell the transmitter to the British government for £165,000. At the time, the station was the world’s most powerful mediumwave station. It had the code name of Aspidistra, and remained in use by the BBC until 1982.
It was able to successfully spoof Nazi broadcasts to the point that it was regarded as a reputable source of information. When real German stations went off the air during air raids, the powerful British station would rebroadcast the signals of other German network stations still on the air, thus giving the impression that it was part of the German network. The superpower transmitter could blanket the continent, thus allowing it to join the Nazi broadcast network seemlessly. But into those programs, it could subtly insert misinformation. For example, it could be used to issue false evacuation orders to send civilians to clog the roads during German military movements. Captured German POW’s, even those who were aware of the station’s source, commended the British on the station’s plausible deniability. If a German officer walked in while the men were tuned to the station, they could plausibly claim that they thought it to be an ordinary German station.
The station’s creator, Sefton Delmer
The enemy is broadcasting counterfeit instructions on our frequencies. Do not be misled by them. Here is an official announcement of the Reich authority.
Of course, the English station then began its messages with the same announcement!
The only reference I could find to Soldatensender Calais with respect to the invasion was that when Calais later fell to the Canadians, the station was renamed Soldatensender West. I haven’t been able to find any explanation as to why the station made its English broadcasts on D-Day. But it seems to me that the intention was probably to demonstrate that Calais had already fallen in the early morning hours of June 6, and that the French staff of the fictitious station had taken matters into their own hands to start broadcasting music for the benefit of the invading Allied armies.
And since the American press apparently fell for it and reported the activities of the “German controlled Calais radio,” this tactic seems to have worked.
References
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I suspect that most who are familiar with the “foxhole radio” learned about it from the 1950’s era book All About Radio and Television by Jack Gould
The name “foxhole radio”, and perhaps the concept, seems to have originated from the construction of simple crystal sets by soldiers at Anzio in 1944. From March through early May, 1944, fighting was light, “living was leisurely” for the thousands of soldiers on the beachhead, and the beachhead was a “honeycomb of wet and muddy trenches, foxholes, and dugouts.”
One of the first references to the fox hole radio I’ve been able to find appeared in QST for July, 1944. It doesn’t use the term “foxhole radio,” but this “Stray” reads as follows:
According to Toivo Kujanpaa, a licensed ham op stationed on the Anzio Beachhead, several of the radio men there rigged up a field version of a “crystal” set using a razor blade for a detector. Their efforts were rewarded by the reception of a “jive” program (along with some German propaganda) aimed at the American forces from an Axis station in Rome.
About that same time was when, as far as I can tell, a variation of the name “foxhole radio” first appeared in print. Time Magazine for July 17, 1944 made the report,. Time reported that one Lt. M.L. Rupert was one of “hundreds of U.S. infantrymen” who made the foxhole receiver to kill time and boredom at Anzio. Lt. Rupert wrote to Marlin Firearms Company (the manufacturer of the razor blades) with a description of the set.As QST later lamented, Time “as usual” hadn’t given credit to hams for coming up with the idea.
A similar account, also crediting Lt. Rupert’s letter to the manufacturer, appeared in the New York Times on June 25, 1944. According to the New York Times, the idea of using the pencil lead originated with O.B. Hanson, NBC’s vice president of engineering, who refined on the concept sent to the razor blade manufacturer. Interestingly, the byline of the New York Times account is none other than Jack Gould, the author of All About Radio and Television
There were two follow-ups in QST. The August issue contains the following Stray:
Further details on the foxhole radio sets now have been received from a correspondent in Italy. The razor blade and safety-pin detector is described as follows: “A station was found by moving the point of the safety pin, anchored at the other end, over the opposite end of the blade from where it is connected to the coil and antenna. The ‘phones are inserted between the pin and the grounded side of the coil.” He adds that “reception was very good.”
Finally, a letter appears in the October issue of QST from Justin Garton. No call sign is listed, but Garton’s address is shown as 448 Riverside Dr., New York, N.Y. Garton reports that the boys on the Anzio beachhead were able to receive Rome during the day and Nazi propaganda programs from Berlin at night. Garton also includes the following schematic:
I wasn’t able to find a call sign for either Kujanpaa or Garton. Since the Stray indicates that Kujanpaa was licensed but didn’t give his call, I’m guessing what happened was that he was licensed after Pearl Harbor and consequently did not receive a call sign. It’s possible that he received a call after the War, but I wasn’t able to find it. According to this enlistment record, one Toivo J. Kujanpaa of Massachusetts, born in 1910, enlisted on June 11, 1943. According to the Social Security Death Index, he was born on June 19, 1910, and died on January 6, 1991. Its quite likely that he got his amateur operator license after Pearl Harbor but before enlisting a year and a half later. With the wartime moratorium on station licenses, he would not have received a call sign, despite being licensed.
If you’re an ARRL member and logged into your account there, you can download the QST articles cited above at the following links:
And this June 1945 Stray submitted by W2MIB includes an alternative detector,
Update: Gould’s book “All About Radio and Television” is now available for free download at AmericanRadioHistory.com.
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The 1912 edition of Wireless Telegraph Stations of the World notes that the Canadian steamer RMS Empress of Ireland was equipped with a wireless set capable of 85 nautical miles, operating on 110 and 300 meters. She bore the call sign MPL.
Popular Mechanics, July 1914
A hundred years ago, the wireless operator Edward Bomford was called upon to send the distress call SOS DE MPL, signalling the greatest peacetime maritime loss in Canadian history. 1012 souls (840 passengers and 172 crew) perished during the early morning hours of May 29, 1914, following a collision with the Norwegian collier SS Storstad. The steamer had just begun her voyage from Quebec City to Liverpool, England. The harbor pilot had just disembarked at Pointe-au-Père, Quebec, and Captain Henry George Kendall was taking the ship on its normal outbound course. He sighted the lights of the Storstad several miles distant, but ultimately lost sight of the coal ship in the fog. At about 2:00 AM, the Storstad crashed into the side of the Empress.
The Storstad was relatively undamaged, but the Empress sunk in the approximate 40 meters of water in about 15 minutes, leaving little time to evacuate the ship of the mostly sleeping passengers.
Bomford, the young wireless operator, had just relieved operator Ronald Ferguson. An officer ran to the wireless house with orders from the Captain, but Bomford was already at the key, calling the station at Pointe-au-Père. He made contact with Pointe-au-Père operator Crawford S. Leslie. Leslie and other operators quickly notified the government boats Eureka and Lady Evelyn. The Eureka had steam up, having just taken the mails to the Empress. The Eureka got under way immediately, followed closely by the Lady Evelyn. They found the surface of the water calm, dotted with a few lifeboats and debris. Some survivors were taken aboard, some of whom succumed to exposure after exposure to the cold waters of the St. Lawrence, the temperatures that night being just a few degrees above freezing.
The survivors were taken to Rimouski, Quebec, a town of about 2000. That town’s doctors scurried from house to house to treat the survivors quartered there. Most of the town’s population, having been alerted by telegraph, was present at the wharf to meet the survivors, eager to provide whatever help that was possible, carrying blankets, hot coffee, food, and medicine. Among those assisting with the relief efforts was John McWilliams, one of the wireless operators from Pointe-au-Père, who had hastily gone to Rimouski to help render aid. According to one account, few gained more praise than was accorded to him for his efforts.
Both of the wireless operators, Bomford and Ferguson, as well as Captain Kendall, were among the survivors. I haven’t been able to find any information about Bomford (whose name is spelled Bamford in some accounts). There was an Edward Bamford born in 1887 who was awarded the Victoria Cross in 1918. This is almost certainly a different person, since this Edward Bamford had enlisted in the Royal Marines in 1905, where he served until his death in 1928.
The chief radio officer Ferguson, was later a licensed ham, G4VF. He was picked up by the Storstad, and later transferred to one of the tugboats assisting in the rescue. Since the tug had left hastily with no wireless operator aboard, Ferguson was given permission to smash the lock on the tug’s wireless and put it on the air to help coordinate the rescue efforts. Ferguson died in 1985 at the age of 91.
Over a thousand perished that night. Canadian and Norwegian inquiries reached conflicting conclusions as to the blame for the collision. The Canadian inquiry largely placed the blame on the captain of the Storstad, while the Norwegian inquiry largely blamed the Canadian captain.
References:
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Young readers will enjoy the young-adult novel Second Watch by Karen Autio
Canadian readers can find the following books at amazon.ca
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Among the many hats I wear is that of counselor for the Radio Merit Badge. I was also on the staff of K2BSA at the 2013 National Scout Jamboree.
Radio has a long history with scouting. The first edition of the Scout Handbook includes several pages on how to construct an “up-to-date wireless apparatus for stationary use in the home or at the meeting place of each patrol.” Wireless Merit Badge was originated in 1918 and was renamed Radio in 1923. And in 1920, scouts were called upon to relay government bulletins to their communities. This small item appeared in the Ogden (Utah) Standard-Examiner of May 19, 1920.
It reports that the Naval radio station in New York was sending out a daily message to scouts from the National Council of the BSA, “predicated upon appreciation of the war service of radio operators who learned wireless telegraphy when they were scouts.” It reports that the signals had been received from 42 states, including all on the Pacific coast.
More details, including the illustration shown above, are given in the July 1920 issue of Boys Life. The message was sent each evening from station NAH at 9:30 PM Eastern time at 25 words per minute, with a 1500 meter (what we would today call 200 kHz) spark signal. The 30-50 word messages “always contain something of interest to boys. Sometimes they are from the Department of Agriculture or some other government department, with a request for each operator to make the message known to the public immediately.” The recipient was expected to have a system of reaching those in his neighborhood, such as “farmers’ telephone, semaphore, Morse flag, blinker or heliograph,” or even a “good horse, a bicycle, motorcycle, automobile, sea-scout cutter or other vehicle.”
The Boys’ Life article concludes by admonishing every scout to have arrangements to receive the daily NAH bulletins, and to do his part when a test message or other urgent communication comes through.
The June 1920 issue of Boys’ Life points out that “neither the army, navy, postal service nor any land telegraph or telephone company can cover the country as quickly, at present, as the scouts will be able to do if they grasp their opportunity and make use of the Navy’s cooperation.” The article also admonishes that “every tenderfoot, second-class and first-class scout should consider signal practice with buzzer sets or radio sets at once” to avail themselves of this opportunity, the value of which to our government would be beyond calculation.
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