[Milsurplus] WWII-era USN headphone question

[Mike Hanz]

Some things seem to come in spurts.  Last week an old B-17 flight 
engineer wrote this in another reflector:

My pilots were on UHF/VHF, and I as engineer was on intercom...this 
necessitated my leaving my left earphone off, the pilot left his right 
earphone off and the copilot left his left earphone off....we three in 
the cockpit had to YELL to communicate with each other...and I have a 
hearing loss because of this practice.
 I realize this is a B-29 Forum, however, if there was a chance of enemy 
fighters, the same would apply to a B-29, or the B-24.
 I cannot speak for the B-29 crews as I did not fly combat in the B-29.  
I merely wanted to point out, that the gunners had priority on the 
interphone.

I mentioned in the web page reference on headphones that the Navy had 
solved this problem back in 1936 with the H-2 split feed headphones and 
dual interphone amps. Today I saw a note that Jacob Beser wrote to Paul 
Tibbets in 1989, discussing various equipment he had used (or thought he 
had used) in the atomic weapon missions, and his narrative underlines 
the sad lack of response by the Signal Corps to USAAF operational 
needs.  Beser essentially built a pair of Navy H-2 headphones and a 
custom junction box to allow switching of the source feeds.  Just like 
the RL-24 interphone system...duhhhh.  See 
http://www.childrenofthemanhattanproject.org/collections/mp-pfil/pages/mpp-pfil-072.htm 
for the complete text of the letter.  Beser got several of the 
nomenclatures wrong (I would too after 44 years), and he seems to be 
blurring things he and other Raven officers did in training runs versus 
the actual weapon delivery missions, but the letter is an interesting 
read regardless.

73,
Mike