Category Archives: World War 2

The first automatic amateur radio repeater station was put on the air in 1956 by Art Gentry, W6MEP, and it’s been on the air ever since. But you can see that the idea had been around for a while, as shown in this article 80 years ago, in the June 1945 issue of QST.

At the time, Amateur Radio was still off the air for the duration of the war, but some hams involved in civilian defense activities did have authorization to operate as part of the War Emergency Radio Service (WERS), usually on the 2-1/2 meter band. One such WERS station was WKKW in Hanipshire County, Mass. The network was headed up by a net control station (NCS) at one of the highest points in the county, which ensured good coverage. The problem was, however, that not all stations could hear each other. So if a message needed to be relayed, it meant an added step of the NCS relaying it.

The solution was an automatic relaying system at the NCS station. While the article called it “automatic,” it did not automatically hit the air as with a more modern repeater. Instead, the NCS merely patched the audio from a second receiver into the transmitter, with the patch cord shown here. He monitored through headphones, and switched back when the message was over. Of course, the transmitter and receiver had to be on different frequencies, so when a message had to be retransmitted, the originating station was told to QSY to 112.7 MHz, and the repeated signal was on the net frequency of 114.6 MHz.

The equipment had to be reasonably well shielded, and the antennas had to be separated. (The article noted that the feed line was a twisted pair.) The article concluded by noting, “it is to be hoped that others will experiment with this and other simple means of relaying, since it is an interesting field of experimentation and one which offers a good return in the way of improved WERS operation. It suggests, also, interesting possibilities for postwar amateur activities at the high frequencies.”

German Spy Radio, 1945

Eighty years ago this month, the May 1945 issue of Radio News showed this transmitter-receiver mounted in an “innocent-looking traveler’s suitcase,” and seized from a German spy by agents of the FCC Radio Intelligence Division. It was said to be substantially built and of an up-to-date circuit design. It included a tool set, vibrator power supply, and wire for erecting antennas.

You can see what appears to be the same model at the Imperial War Museum.

1940 Gas-Mask Box Receiver

If you were in Britain 85 years ago and needed an enclosure in which to mount your radio, you needn’t look any further than the box in which your gas mask came! This set, shown in the May 11, 1940, issue of Practical Wireless shows exactly how to do it.

Apparently, the box was laced up with string, and the magazine explained how you could substitute wire, and use that for the antenna. The batteries would fit inside the enclosure.

Curiously, the article concluded by noting that the antenna wire and earpiece could be put away inside the box, allowing the box to be easily closed. “It then has the appearance of quite an ordinary gas-mask box.” I guess you wouldn’t want to alarm people by letting them know you had a radio, whereas the ordinary gas-mask box wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.

V-E Day

Today marks the 80th anniversary of V-E Day, May 8, 1945. You can hear how it was covered on NBC Radio at this video, which includes addresses by President Truman and Prime Minister Churchill:

Recharging Flashlight Batteries: 1945

Flashlight batteries were sometimes in short supply during the war, and the May 1945 issue of Popular Science gave some pointers on how you could get some extra life out of them by recharging them. If the battery was already dead, there was little hope, and if they were bulging or pitted, they were beyond hope. But by recharging them before they were completely dead, you could give a low battery a new lease on life.

The idea was to zap them with about twice their voltage. So for a flashlight battery, you could put two in series, and then charge them with a six-volt battery from the car. You would wire them as shown below, but then carefully monitor them. After two to five minutes, they would start to get warm, at which point you would disconnect them and let them cool. This process would be repeated two or three time. It was important not to allow them to become hot. When done, the cells could be put back in use. They wouldn’t last as long as new batteries, but new batteries might not be available.

1940 DX’ing

It wasn’t until June 5, 1940, that the FCC completely banned amateurs from working foreign stations. And it wasn’t until after Pearl Harbor that amateur radio was put off the air entirely. But even before the ban on foreign contacts, U.S. amateurs had been prohibited from communicating with any of the belligerent countries, and even some neutral countries had shut down amateurs as a precaution. So there wasn’t much DX to be found, as the ham in this cartoon from the April 1940 issue of Radio News has discovered.

Laying Telephone Wire by Air, 1945

In 1945, the U.S. Army had ben using as much as 235,000 miles of wire per month for communications. Despite the role of radio, it was often advisable to use telephone communications. Among other things, radio might disclose positions to the enemy.

There was the matter of laying all that wire, and one method is shown here, on the cover of Popular Mechanics, April 1945. A “grasshopper” plane was fitted so that it could skim the ground and 200-250 feet. At one end, probably closest to the front, it would drop a parachute bearing a telephone unit, attached to the wire. The wire was wound binder twine fashion, to play out without tangling, and with minimal resistance. Rolls were 1-1/2 miles long, and three to five miles of wire could be layed in a flight at 65-70 miles per hour.

By this method, patrols cut off from communications could be swiftly reached.

1940: War Comes to Norway, Denmark, and Greenland

Eighty-five years ago, on April 8-9, 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway. This was of particular concern to the United States, since the war was now creeping closer to America, since the Danish colony of Greenland was geographically part of North America. A year later, Greenland became a de facto protectorate of the United States, and when America entered the war, Greenland became a combatant.

President Roosevelt suggested that it would be “a good thing for the American people to learn a great deal about Greenland.” According to Life Magazine, April 22, 1940, from which suggested that most Americans’ only knowledge was the hymn beginning “from Greenland’s icy mountains to India’s coral strands.” The magazine also reminded readers that during the last war, the U.S. bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark to keep them from falling into hostile hands.

While orders came to Greenland from Copenhagen, via radio and via neutral Portugal, these orders were ignored. Instead, local officials came to taking orders from the Danish Ambassador to the U.S., Henrik Kauffmann, who became nicknamed as the “King of Greenland.” He was charged by the Danish government with treason, but the sentence was revoked after liberation in 1945.

That issue of Life devoted fifteen pages to the expansion of the War to the Nordic Countries. Shown above is an Inuit Greenland girl flirting with two Danes. The magazine noted that the Inuit had a good deal of white blood, and the Danes have no objection at all to marrying them, since there were “considered more useful wives in this hard climate than the thin-blooded white women. They are extremely courteous, for Greenlanders know they must get along with one another to survive at all.”

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