Shown here from 75 years ago is a blackout light bulb, manufactured by the Wabash Appliance Corp., 335 Carroll St., Brooklyn, NY. The bulb provided a beam of blue light that was projected downward, for use indoors during wartime blackouts. The inside of the 25 watt bulb had a silver reflector to hide filament glare and direct the beam downward.
It is shown here mounted in a socket, from the January 1942 issue of Service magazine.
Shown here in Popular Mechanics, January 1917, is the recently launched USS Arizona passing down the East River from the New York Navy Yard on her first voyage into the Atlantic. The ship had been launched in June 1915 and christened with a bottle of water taken from the first to flow through the spillway of the Roosevelt Dam.
The 608 foot long ship remained stateside during the First World War. She was sent to Turkey in 1919 at the beginning of the Greco-Turkish war, and transferred to the Pacific Fleet for the rest of her career.
It was regularly used for training between the wars, and after the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, the ship’s crew provided aid to the survivors. In April 1940, she was transferred to Pearl Harbor with the rest of the Pacific Fleet.
Arizona sunk and burning, December 7, 1941. Wikipedia photo.
During the attack of December 7, 1941, a bomb detonated in a powder magazine, causing the ship to explode violently and sink, with the loss of 1177 lives.
The ship remains a permanent memorial to “be maintained in honor and commemoration of the members of the Armed Forces of the United States who gave their lives to their country during the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941.”
Shown here, in the January 1942 issue of Radio Retailing magazine, are resident aliens in Los Angeles lining up at a police station to turn in their cameras, guns, and radios capable of receiving short wave.
The magazine noted that Attorney General Francis Biddle had issued an order that enemy aliens, that is, citizens of Japan, Germany, and Italy, turn these items in to the nearest police station. An alternative would be to have receiver rendered incapable of receiving signals other than those in the standard broadcast band. Therefore, the order “seems to open the way for radio servicemen to render a useful service of eliminating shortwave reception from aliens’ sets–and get paid for it. In this way, the alien may keep his set for regular broadcast listening to U.S. stations, while the police authorities are spared the storage of hundereds of radio sets which they are poorly equipped to handle. And the radio man collects $1 to $2 per radio set altered.
Typically, the modification consisted of removing the shortwave coils, and providing the set’s owner with an affidavit documenting the modification.
75 years ago today, the Chicago Tribune, January 6, 1942, carried an article regarding the status of the order. It reported that local officials found the response so far to be unsatisfactory, since fewer than 2550 cameras, guns, and radios had been surrendered as of the previous night, despite an alien enemy population of more than 50,000 (28,000 Germans, 21,000 Italians, and 250 Japanese).
The Chicago police reported that the items surrendered included several antiques, including an 1878 breach loader. One man was reported to have “embarrassedly handing over a sawed off shotgun, possession of which had been taboo in Chicago ever since the prohibition gang war era. He said that he inherited the weapon from his father.”
One man, not bothering to wait for a receipt, simply drove up to the police station, hurried a radio from his car, and drove away. Another motorist tossed a $100 radio from his car and drove off.
The paper also reported a supplemental order from the Attorney General listing the following prohibited items:
Weapons or implements of war or component parts thereof; ammunition of all kinds; bombs; explosives or material used in the manufacture of explosives; signal devices; codes or ciphers: papers, documents, or books In which there may be invisible writing; photographs, sketches, pictures, drawings, maps, or graphical representation of any military or naval installations or equipment of any army, ammunitions, implements of. device or thing used or intended to be used in the combat equipment of the land or naval forces of the United States or of any military or naval post, camp, or station.
Happy New Year from OneTubeRadio.com!
As we enter 2017, we look back 75 years to January 1, 1942, the first New Year’s Day of the War. The nation’s industry was already largely on a wartime footing, as shown by these night shift workers at the Northern Pump Company in Minneapolis. They took a half hour break to don paper caps and give 1942 a short defiant cheer. Then, they went back to work making anti-aircraft guns for the Navy.
The company was founded in 1929 by the merger of Northern Fire Apparatus Company and the Pagel Pipe Company. It moved to the Fridley plant shown here in January 1941. In 1942, it created subsidiary Northern Ordinance Incorporated. Northern Ordinance continued naval production until 1964 when it was purchased by Food Machinery Corporation (FMC), which operated the site until 1994. BAE Systems currently owns and operates the Fridley site.
Northern Pump currently operates in Grantsburg, Wisconsin.
This photo appeared in the January 12, 1942, issue of Life Magazine.
As a public service, we once again remind readers that Santa takes the naughty list very seriously. This 1942 poster was produced by the War Production Board.
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.
The December 1941 issue of Radio Retailing hit the presses after Pearl Harbor, and much of the issue stressed that for the war effort, radio was a necessity. The cover reminded that there was no more essential consumer item than the radio. It noted that millions of Americans had learned anew that the radio in the home, office, or automobile was of prime importance, and that the nation’s radio retailers and servicemen would need to meet the imperative of keeping sets in operation above everything else.
LaGuardia. Wikipedia photo.
The issue provided a quote from Defense Administrator Fiorello LaGuardia for advice during blackouts: “Keep indoors. Lie down. Turn off the lights. Turn on the radio.”
Capt. Colin P. Kelly, Jr. Painting by Deane Keller, via Wikipedia.
Here, Hang Snow sings “There’s a Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere,”
written in 1942 by Paul Roberts and Shelby Darnell. The song refers to a version of heaven reserved for a pantheon of American heroes, including “Lincoln, Custer, Washington and Perry, Nathan Hale and Collin Kelly too.”
The last named American hero, Collin Kelly, died this day 75 years ago, December 10, 1941. He was one of the first heroes of the Second World War. His was the first American B-17 to be shot down in the war.
On December 10, he took off on a bombing run from Clark Field in the Phillipine Islands. On the return flight, the plane was attacked. Kelly ordered his men to bail out. Moments later, the plane exploded, killing him.
Kelly was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, and President Roosevelt wrote a letter to the President of the United States in 1956, asking for an appointment for Kelly’s infant son. President Eisenhower honored this request by appointing Colin P. Kelly III to West Point.
USS Shaw at Pearl Harbor. Defense Department Photo.
Today marks the 75th Anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. Most Americans learned of the attack by radio, and the story of that coverage featured prominently in the December 15 issue of Broadcasting magazine, the first to go to press after the attack. The photo at the left shows the news staff of stations WLW and WSAI, Cincinnati, huddled shortly after the first news of the attack broke.
According to the magazine, the first broadcast of the attack came at 2:26 Eastern Time, when WOR New York broke into a Dodger-Giant football game to read the United Press flash. Two minutes later, the news was broadcast nationwide over the NBC Red and Blue Networks.
CBS carried the announcement during its 2:30 station break. The afternoon news program was quickly reorganized. CBS newsman John Daly had spoken by telephone with KGMB Honolulu, and news of the attack on Manila, Philipine Islands, was carried live by a telephone hookup with KGMB, that signal being cut mid-broadcast.
Newsrooms came to life as staff were summoned in on an otherwise slow Sunday afternoon. At 2:45, the NBC network rang four chimes, instead of the customary three, to alert staff to report to work.
One NBC executive phoned KGU Honolulu for an immediate report. The voice from Honolulu reported that he was a station executive and did not have a microphone available. The NBC executive told him to keep talking to keep the line open as he raced to the network control room, and the call was eventually patched through live over the air. He was on the air by 4:06 PM with the live report, until a long distance operator broke in to report that the line was needed by the military. A recording of that broadcast is available at this link. Another six minute call was aired later that hour.
Starting on Monday, December 8, West Coast stations were on a wartime basis. In compliance with an army order, stations in California, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho went off the air. In Washington, KIRO‘s 50 kilowatt signal remained on the air for Army and Navy use only.
During the blackout, which lasted until the next morning, only five minute news flashes were permitted every half hour. More organization was apparent by Thursday and Friday, when staggered schedules were followed.
The nation’s shortwave stations went on a 24 hour schedule, with broadcasts in multiple languages. CBS carried reports in ten languages to Europe, and three to Latin America. It noted that both networks were following a policy of objectivity in news, following FDR’s pronouncement that more than ever, there was a need for truth in the news.
The East Coast shortwave stations were assigned staff from the Office of Coordinator of Information to review material for any that might give aid or comfort to the enemy. In San Francisco, the Navy served a similar function for GE shortwave station KGEI.
CBS Short Wave Listening Station, Long Island. Wikipedia photo.
The CBS and NBC shortwave listening stations were operating on a 24-hour schedule, making material available for the networks, press, and Government.
More information on radio broadcasting in the aftermath of the attack can be found at this post and this post.
Television had newly come on the air commercially in New York, and the magazine reported that the new medium developed a new presentation as the events swiftly unfolded. WCBW came on the air at 8:45 PM until 10:00, the first time the station had been on the air on Sunday. Throughout the week, it presented several news programs daily. It covered President Roosevelt’s Monday speech, with a waving flag transmitted over the visual channel.
NBC commentator Sam Cuff uses map to show WNBT viewers strategic location of Hawaii.
WNBT moved an AP teletype into the studios, with the camera focused on the incoming wire. In the weeks preceeding the attack, WNBT had devoted much of its programming to civilian defense training, a role which continued during the war.
Sales of battery operated radios were said to have skyrocketed on December 8.
Seventy-five years ago today, America’s entry into the war was three days away, but the signs were clear that it was coming soon. The Chicago Tribune, December 4, 1941, carried this headline of FDR’s plans for war.
The front-page cartoon makes clear that the paper was decidedly in favor of neutrality and opposed to intervention. It shows a Midwestern bastion of peace, looking with alarm at what it viewed as pro-war propaganda from Washington.
The war plans, consisting of documents from the War Department and letters from the administration, had been obtained by the paper and the contents were disclosed. It showed the likely enemies as Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan, and anticipated theaters of war in both Europe and the Pacific. It also stressed the importance of maintaining solid relations with the republics of the Americas, since trade with both Asia and Europe would probably be cut off for the duration. It called for ten million American men to take up arms, with half of those to serve in an Expeditionary Force to Europe, with a ground offensive slated to begin in 1943.
Another cartoon in the same issue of the paper restated what the paper viewed as Midwestern pro-peace values, insisting that we raised our cattle, and not our sons, for slaughter.
