[GreenKeys] End of World War II - Teletype and bulletins

Sat May 3 17:13:08 EDT 2025

 Greenkeyers--
Several years ago, I became friends with and did some work for Reg Tibbetts, W6ITH (SK).  He related to me the following story regarding the Japanese surrender at the end of WWII.  I hope my feeble memory is correct on what follows so there may be some erroneous recollections.
During WWII, Reg ran--among other things--an intercept receiving station out of his home on a huge piece of land with rhombic antennas in Moraga, CA for the United Press.  He had some folks working for him under UP contract to listen on several frquencies for news traffic coming out of the Far East and South America.  In the latter stages of the war, these intercepts became much more numerous as the Allies gained more conquests, especially when the Phillipines were liberated.  His employees were to listen for Morse (CW) messages as well as maintain listening for and copying RTTY signals that were becoming more prevalent as the War progressed.
The message that the Japanese had surrendered came over a radio teletype channel during the middle of the night Pacific time.  One of Reg's listeners noted the message on the RTTY circuit but it came through with no bells which were needed to alert operators of the priority of the message.  Reg was asleep in bed and the operator woke him up to inform him that what he tore off the model 15 could be the very surrender message that everybody was anticipating.  The message copy was chock full of garbled information and had several erroneous line feeds, etc.  After looking over what the copy presented, Reg told the operator to cut a tape with 5 bells on it giving a moderate clean-up of the original copy as received and send it out on the UP wire.
It turned out that the UP transmission from the Phillipines (not sure of that location of the source of the message) as received in Morage CA was, in fact, the UP's genuine article announcing the Japaneses surrender.  I had a chance to look at the Teletype copy that was received and saved by Reg when I was doing some work for him back in the 80s.  I can state that it was very rough copy and I probably would have been very reluctant to send it--never mind a cleaned up version of it--along to the UP wire service network.  But Reg did so and the UP "scooped" everybody else.
Anyone that advertises that they have a copy of the surrender message or any announcement of the end of the War, should be viewed with skepticism.  The Teletypes used by UP were owned by UP and had their logo on the machine's cover.  So, I am dubious as to use of Bell System machines for wire service use especially during the War.
Frank Barthalomew (president of UP) tore up Reg's contract and made him chief engineer for UP (later to become UPI) from which he retired several years later.  Reg had a lot of fascinating stories to tell about his career and I consider that I was fortunate enough to be friends with him and listen to the tales.
I hope the foregoing is of some interest to the list.
Regards,George W6BN
    On Friday, May 2, 2025 at 03:39:21 PM PDT, hwhall--- via GreenKeys <greenkeys at mailman.qth.net> wrote:   

 PS - perhaps I misinterpreted the advertisement. It said "WWII" but not "military".

Wayne

On Friday, May 2, 2025 at 04:36:26 PM MDT, hwhall--- via GreenKeys <greenkeys at mailman.qth.net> wrote: 

It says Bell System Service on a couple of ID plates. Nothing to show it was a military machine that I can see. So, maybe the documents are repros. How can we know? I have paper rolls that look that old, too. LOL

No cover, busted keyboard & sold for $6000+? What do you think; they took a much lower offer?

Wayne
WB4OGM

On Friday, May 2, 2025 at 04:21:14 PM MDT, Jeff G <jeffg at junknet.net> wrote: 

Just did a quick search and couldn't (easily) find anything, but WOW, found this auction listing for a Model 15 with related WWII bulletins. Now I just need to print some up and pair it up with my Model 15s lol.

https://www.rrauction.com/auctions/lot-detail/348277307074026-world-war-ii-teletype-archive-with-model-15-printer-covering-fdrs-death-japans-surrender-and-the-atomic-bomb/

Jeff

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