Chart showing German amateur frequency bands, 1944. DASD-CQ, September 1944.

It’s widely believed that amateur radio went off the air for the duration of World War II. That was certainly the case in the United States and Canada, as well as most of the warring countries. Some neutral countries remained on the air. For example, Portuguese hams remained on the air, and much of South America was still engaging in amateur radio as usual.

But strangely enough, the major exception was Nazi Germany.  German stations were ordered off the air after commencement of hostilities in September 1939.  But soon thereafter, many stations were granted a special wartime license, known as Kriegsfunkgenehmigung.  QST for April 1940 carried the following announcement sent from Chris Schmelzer, D4BIU:

There seems to be a widespread misunderstanding concerning the activities of German amateur stations to-day. According to a statement made by our government, all sport activities, etc., will be continued during the war to as large an extent as possible. Due to this, amateur stations D4ACF, D4ADF, D4BIU, D4BUF, D4RGF, D4TRV, D4WYF, D4HCF and D4DKN have been relicensed recently. More licenses will follow shortly. The stations are supposed to carry on strictly in the usual manner.

September 1944 DASD-CQ.

The website of the Foundation for German communication and related technologies contains copies of many wartime issues of DASD-CQ, the journal of  the German national amateur radio society, Deutschen Amateur-Sende-und Empfangs-Dienstes, which continued publication throughout the war.   From recording calls contained in that journal, the author of the web page counts at least 86 active call signs through 1944.  And DC5WW has provided a list (the source of which is not clear) of all licensed stations as of August 1944.  These include a number of stations licensed only for 10 meters.  And a collection of 1943 German QSL cards can be found at the website of Radioclub Braunschweig.  In addition to the hams with transmitting licenses, a larger number of receiving licenses were issued to DASD members.  It appears that the DASD was tasked with approving licenses at this time.  A 1944 letter from DASD president Ernst Sachs to Heinrich Himmler explaining the importance of amateur radio is available online.

So it is clear that there were a significant number of hams on the air from Germany throughout the war.  Many of them, it seems, were using a receiver very similar to the National HRO.  In fact, the tuning condensers were manufactured by National and imported through Portugal.  When the German military believed that they were not up to military specifications, they were given to the DASD for distribution to hams for use in receivers using German tubes.

As shown on the chart above, amateurs were allowed to operate on 20 channels between 3500 and 3600 kHz, as well as 7000-7200, 14000-14400, and 28000-30000 kHz.  (Not surprisingly, the Germans called them kiloHertz rather than kilocycles at the time.)

One can only speculate as to why Nazi Germany allowed its hams to remain on the air when the free world was silent.  The author of this page offers two reasons, both of which seem plausible.  The first was to show the world a sense of normalcy.  Apparently, the idea was for those in the rest of the world to have the impression that life was going on normally.   Or, as the QST article above put it, “all sport activities, etc., will be continued during the war to as large an extent as possible.”

The other reason was more practical.  It was believed that hams and SWL’s could provide valuable propagation information.  Indeed, one source noted that both hams and SWL’s were required to keep duplicate logs and send one copy to the authorities for analysis.

According to that same author, there was apparently no political test for licensees.  There was no special requirement of adherence to Nazi ideology (at least, no more so than required of the general population).  While the original plan to issue licenses was apparently approved by the SS, the actual administration of the program was under the control of the Wehrmacht, whose concerns were presumably more practical than ideological.

Even more surprising is that there were a handful of QSO’s, during the war, between these German stations and British stations!  In 1944, the British government allowed a small number of hand-selected prominent hams back on the air.   Under this program, called “Plan Flypaper” the call signs G7FA through G7FJ were assigned and allowed to operate with 50 watts on 80, 40, 20, and 10 meters. Among these hams was Louis Varney, G5RV, who became G7FJ. The full details of this program, including the operating rules, can be found at the Southgate ARC website.

The participants in this program made numerous contacts with neutral countries, and a handful of contacts with German stations.  They were forbidden from calling German stations, but they were instructed to make the contact if a German station called them.  The purpose of this program was apparently two-fold.  First of all, the idea was to simply make themselves available in case any interesting information was received.  They had instructions, if an enemy station wished to send a message, to relay it to headquarters, and to inform the other station to contact them again the next day for any response.

The other idea was that if any Allied prisoners of war gained access to a transmitter, they would be able to make contact with one of these British stations.  Apparently, neither of these goals was realized.

Here’s another interesting article about amateur radio in Nazi Germany, by Prof. Bruce Campbell KG4CUL:  https://theconversation.com/nazis-pressed-ham-radio-hobbyists-to-serve-the-third-reich-but-surviving-came-at-a-price-90510

Click Here For Today’s Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Cartoon

Weather Station Kurt on display at the Canadian War Museum (Wikipedia photo).

On October 22, 1943, Germany made its only armed landing on the North American continent of the Second World War. On that day, the U-boat U-537 anchored at the northern end of Labrador and its crew loaded ten cylindrical canisters, each weighing about 220 pounds, onto rubber rafts and then ashore. Together, these canisters constituted an automated weather station, which the Germans had given the code name Weather Station Kurt. The station was one of 26 manufactured by Siemens and deployed around the North Atlantic to give German meteorologists data on weather as it moved across the Atlantic. Other stations had been deployed in Greenland; Bear Island, Norway; Spitsbergen; and Franz Josef Land. Another such station was intended for North America, but the sub carrying it was sunk en route.

One of the canisters contained the meteorological instruments, and one contained a 150-watt  Lorenz 150 FK radio transmitter. (A specimen of this transmitter can be found in LA6NCA’s collection.)  The remaining canisters contained nickel-cadmium batteries to power the system. The system was designed to operate for up to six months, sending a two minute transmission every three hours on 3940 kHz. The data was sent in Morse, which was to be manually transcribed by German radio operators.  Some technical details, diagrams, and wartime photos of the station can be viewed at the links below.

The station was camouflaged, and components were  marked in English with the words “Canadian Meteor Service.” Not only was there no such agency, but Labrador was part of Newfoundland and not Canada.  The station was placed far enough North in the hope, apparently realized, that the Innuit of Labrador would not encounter it.  To confuse anyone who might stumble upon the remote site, empty American cigarette packages were strewn about.  A satellite image of the remote site can be viewed at Google Maps.

The station apparently worked flawlessly, but but was subject to jamming from a source that has never been identified. The Allies apparently never learned of the station’s existence, but It apparently provided weather data for only a few days.

The station was abandoned and not found until 1981. A German researcher working on an unrelated project stumbled onto records of the station in 1977. A retired Siemens engineer who was working on records of the company also stumbled upon references to the station about the same time. He contacted a Canadian Defence historian, who eventually sent a team to the site in 1981. Although some canisters had been disturbed, the station was still there. The station is currently on display at the Canadian War Museum.

References

• Description of station and wartime photo at DF1NH (German)
• Description at uboat.net
• Weather Station Kurt at Wikipedia
• The War Comes to Canada at Canadian War Museum
• Deutsche automatische Wetterstationen in der Arktis 1942-1945 (contains technical description and diagrams, German, with English abstract and captions).  English translation at Google

Read More at Amazon

Seventy years ago today, October 23, 1944, the Milwaukee Journal carried this item regarding the prisoner broadcasts that were being carried by the German and Japanese shortwave stations. The stations broadcast the names of, and sometimes personal messages from, Allied prisoners of war. Often, these broadcasts preceded any official notification.

The paper cautioned American families “not to accept” such messages, and certainly not to pay for them. The paper did note that the government monitored these broadcasts and would make official notification if warranted. But the paper did concede that these broadcasts were generally accurate, and that “well meaning persons and some well meaning busybodies have taken it upon themselves to notify friend and stranger alike when the name and address of a captured American serviceman pops up on the Berlin or Tokyo radio.”

This phemomenon was discussed in more detail in the book World War II Radio Heroes: Letters of Compassion by Lisa Spahr. As the title suggests, letters from listeners to the families were generally well received, and often represented the family’s first notification that the serviceman was captured and still alive.  The author of that book wrote it after discovering 70 letters written to her great grandmother from shortwave listeners around the United States reporting that her son had been captured but was in good health.  She was able to track down some of them, forming personal friendships with some of these “busybodies.”

Even though the article cautions families “not to be victimized by persons attempting to sell similar information,” I have never found reference to even a single case of anyone attempting to profit from notifying families, although one apparently asked for a postage stamp so that he could continue providing the service.  The government did all it could to discourage the practice, even accusing one listener in Nebraska of being a Gerrman spy.

References

Book Review of Letters of Compassion

Book Website

Author’s Blog

Facebook Group

Bing Crosby entertains troops in London, 1944. US Archives photo.

Seventy years ago today, the radio section of the Milwaukee Journal (October 17, 1944) reported on Bing Crosby’s four weeks in France, where he performed for the troops “under any and all conditions, during bombings and artillery barrages, and in any kind of weather.”

The singer reported that the handiest things for stages were often captured German trucks and trailers, and that some of the performances took advantage of captured German mikes and sound equipment.

The paper notes that the Vichy radio station was now in Allied hands and was being used for Allied broadcasts. There were, however, still some Germans holding out in the basement. “Rather than destroy the equipment by bombing, the Allies went right on broadcasting and were trying to starve the Germans into surrender.”

Radio Vichy’s leading voice wasn’t in the basement.  Philippe Henriot, the “French Goebels,” was the leading propaganda voice coming from the Vichy station.  He had been assassinated by the French resistance on 28 June 1944.

A hundred years ago today, October 15, 1914, the United Fruit Company passenger steamer Metapan, bound for New York from Colon, and the  American-Hawaiian line steamer Iowan, crashed near the entrance of New York Harbor. The Iowan suffered only slight damage, but The Metapan, with 76 passengers aboard, sank rapidly after the crash. Thanks largely to the ship being equipped with wireless, everyone got safely ashore. The Metapan was raised six days later and taken to Brooklyn for repairs.

The Metapan. Popular Mechanics, January 1915.

Until a few weeks prior to the crash, the Metapan had flown the British flag.  With the war, she was hastily registered as an American ship and flew the neutral U.S. flag.

The first ship to respond to the SOS was the British cruiser Lancaster. The dredge Atlantic quickly sent two steam launches, and a number of other small boats gathered quickly. According to press reports, a group of English passengers were singing “It’s a long way to Tipperary” as they boarded the lifeboats.

According to the report in the New York Evening World, the Metapan’s wireless operator, realizing the ship’s predicament, switched over to a storage battery to send the SOS.

The Iowan. US Navy photo, Wikipedia.

The Iowan had entered service only months earlier, and resumed inter-coastal service via the Panama Canal after repairs.  In 1916, the Iowan came under Navy control and served as a troop carrier.   The ship resumed civilian service after the war and in 1942, was transferred to the Soviet Union under lend lease, and was renamed the SS Tashkent.  After World War 2, the ship remained a Soviet merchant vessel until 1966, when she was transferred to North Korea for use as a fish processing ship.  She was finally scrapped in 1969.

References

SS Iowan at Wikipedia

Popular Mechanics, January 1915

Master, Mate & Pilot, Nov. 1914

New York Evening World, Oct. 15, 1914.