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.

Seventy-five years ago, Europe was once again at war, but America was for the time being neutral. But the shortwave bands were alive with the sounds of war, and Radio Guide, the predecessor to TV Guide magazine, was covering shortwave radio. The issue of the week ending October 6, 1939, gave some pointers for tuning in, as well as reviews of what could be heard from the European capitals. One article notes that “many listeners have given up tuning short waves in disgust after one or two feeble attempts, mainly because they did not know exactly where and when to tune for foreign programs intended for their consumption.” The article assures that by following the given instructions carefully, many stations could be heard.

Another article reviews the programs, and notes that the BBC attempted to appeal directly to the German people, and continued in its musical program to include German composers. It notes that French broadcasts were typically quite terse.

And as for the Germans, the article notes that while the output is typically crude, “the German stations have come up with the up-to-now cleversest device of combining propaganda with entertainment.” The station would play German waltzes and “only after the listener has settled down to a stretch of pure entertainment that the announcer quietly intersperses” propaganda.

For more information on the shortwave bands during the War, please visit my earlier post.

Seventy-five years ago, American radio listeners were frequently hearing the phrases, “we take you to London,” “we take you to Paris,” and “we take you to Berlin,” as Americans learned how close they were to Europe’s troubles. As this item from Radio Guide for the week ending September 29, 1939, points out, we were close enough to hear a man breathe in Paris or the rustle of a paper in Berlin.

The diagram shows the example of how NBC would connect to its correspondents in London, Fred Bate or John Gunther. From NBC’s New York studios, the cue would go via telephone to the RCA short wave transmitter at Rocky Point, Long Island. The signal would be picked up by an English receiving station and sent by telephone to Broadcasting House in London. The English broadcast would go by telephone to the English short wave transmitter and picked up by the RCA receiving station at Riverhead, Long Island. From there, the signal would go back to NBC’s Radio City studios for retransmission to the network.

The process concludes when the American listener picks up the broadcase and says to himself “fervently and with conviction,” and alas, in vain, “We must stay out. We must stay OUT.”