This interesting short story appeared 80 years ago in the January 1942 issue of Radio Service Dealer. The story appeared in the magazine’s “Serviceman’s Diary” feature written by contributing editor John H. Potts.

The story must have been written days after Pearl Harbor, and the author is fantasizing about an air raid warning. Ordered to shelter by a police officer, a radio repairman found himself in front of a big apartment building. Somewhat counter-intuitively, he remembered that the safest place would be on the third or fourth floor, so he went to the third floor and rang the bell of the first apartment he saw. An attractive woman answered the door, and the story has its happy ending when she falls for him after he is able to fix the radio.

It’s an interesting prediction of home front life early in the war, and makes an interesting read:

Eighty years ago, these gentlemen probably realized that they would soon be serving in the armed forces, and their stint would probably be more comfortable if they came to their induction in possession of a skill useful to Uncle Sam. Therefore, they have undertaken to learn Morse Code, thanks to this one-tube oscillator described in the January 1942 issue of Popular Mechanics.

The set used a single 117L7-GT tube, whose 117 volt filament meant that it could run straight off the AC power lines, without worrying about dropping resistors or transformers. It had plenty of volume, which could be controlled with a volume control, to drive a speaker or up to 20 pairs of headphones for group practice.

Eighty years ago today, the December 29, 1941, issue of Broadcasting showed Private Milton Shaw of Cleveland, Georgia, standing guard over the 50,000 watt transmitter of KIRO, Seattle, sited on Vashon Island. The soldier was one from the 41st Division. The magazine claimed that the station was “located in the center of a large colony of Japanese nationalists.” The magazine noted that the station was the only 50,000 watt station north of San Francisco and Salt Lake City.

According to this source, Shaw was killed in Action in New Guinea on June 17, 1944, and his remains are buried at Oakwood Cemetery, Oakwood, Georgia.

Eighty years ago, this young woman is pulling in a favorite program with this camera-style portable radio. The brand is not stated, but it has five tubes, including the rectifier, and can operate either from battery or, as she is using it here, standard household current. It had the option of use with a separate window antenna to increase the sensitivity. It was finished with gray plastic, with a dark blue covering of simulated leather.

A few days after this picture appeared in the December 1941 issue of Popular Science, she was probably using the same set in a more somber mood to pull in the latest bulletins from Pearl Harbor.

Fifty years ago this month, the November 1971 issue of Electronics Illustrated carried the story of Ivan The Terrible, the Soviet interloper who interfered with Nazi broadcasts during the war.

Deutschlandsender broadcast its German home service on 191 kHz, with broadcasts including the news. One day in 1941, listeners were able to hear additions to the news broadcast. For example, if the announcer said, “new victories have been won by the Wehrmacht,” another voice completed the sentence with “in the grave.”

The voices were coming from Soviet Station RW-1 at Noginsk, near Moscow. The engineers at that station were able to tune the 500 kW transmitter from its original frequency of 172 kHz and synchronize it with the German station to avoid any heterodyne. Eventually, the Germans were forced to put their news broadcasts on mediumwave, and use their powerful longwave transmitter for entertainment programs.

When the Russian source of the broadcasts was known, it was dubbed Ivan The Terrible, and that name is used in this 1941 Time magazine article from September 15, 1941.

According to the 1971 Electronics Illustrated article, British and American intelligence issued a report disclosing the identity of Ivan the Terrible. Unfortunately, however, the American copy of the report was misfiled and was lost somewhere in the Washington catacombs. The British copy was still covered by the Official Secrets Act and couldn’t be made public until 1991.

But the author of the article did enough digging to give “a pretty good idea” as to the identity. According to the 1971 article, the instigator was Sololmon Abraham Lozovsy.
Despite his service to the Soviet Union, Lozovsky became the victim of one of Stalin’s purges. Even though Krushchev later issued a pardon, it came a bit too late, since Lozovsky was shot in 1952.

The actual voice of Ivan The Terrible was that of Bohemian Ernst Fischer.  After winding up on the wrong side of the Austrian civil war, he found his way to Moscow where his fluency in German was put to good use. After the war, Fischer brought his communism back to Austria, where he remained a figure in the Austrian Communist Party until 1969, serving as the Communist Minister of Information immediately after the war.

For a similar use of radio during the war, see our earlier post on Soldatensender Calais.

Shown here, in the October 11, 1941, issue of Radio Guide is a photo of CBS correspondent William Shirer, conferring with a German naval officer acting as his censor. Shirer had recently returned to America after being posted in Berlin, and the magazine offers some of his recollections.

For most of his term in Berlin, Shirer had lived in an apartment, but for the last year of his assignment, he had lived at the Adlon Hotel.  Since the hotel catered to foreigners, it was one of the last places in Berlin to have hot water constantly available. In fact, Shirer often met with officials in his room, and was able to provide those officials with a hot bath.

The article served partially as a tease for Shirer’s forthcoming book, Berlin Diary,  which is still available. The book recounted his years in Berlin. Shirer is best known as the author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

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