[Milsurplus] WWII Radio Chatter??

[Hue Miller]

In the mid 1970s i met a gentleman, Viggo Conradt-Eberlin, who lived
in the same area of North Seattle, Ravenna near 15th Ave., an OT from
pre-WW2 and WW2. He was a ham, i don't recall his call, but anyway
i am sure he has since passed away, may he be in peace. He had been
communications officer on some flagship. I don't know how much of what
he told me was accurate, or suffered from his memory or even his desire
for a little bit of fame. He told me he had rigged a disk recorder up to the
TBS in the con, and had recorded some of the action in the big sea 
battles off the Philippines. That much may have been true. For me, that
was like the Conquistadores hearing that just a few day's ride away was
a city made of gold. He never did give me a clear answer on where those
discs were, whether he had them in the attic or what, but now i believe he
either left them with the ship or something like that, they were lost in the
dangerous ( to WW2 relics ) postwar years, when many people just wanted
to move on.  He told me about some improvement to  the TBS antenna he
had made, which largely increased the radio's range. I suspect that was 
some kind of mechanical improvement, or maybe even just moving it 
higher.  The admiral?? he suppposedly served under - now my memory
is sketchy- but it's in some book i have - i think was eventually recalled??
due to anger and drinking problems?? He was the one who one night
when a movie was being shown on the ship, someone fell overboard,
and the commander refused to have to movie stopped.  Puzzling to me,
Viggo did not seem to be aware of the controversy around this commander.
On the other hand, he did have a scrapbook of his Pacific war mementos.
I recall one page had a photo and article on Manus Island. ( Not a luxury
island paradise. ) I sure wish now i had taken a closer look at that scrapbook.
I wonder what happened to that stuff. Well, opportunities - some you take,
and some you let slip by. BTW, while filmosound and wire recorders did 
exist, i suspect they were too expensive to be in much common use. I 
strongly suspect the most common recording medium was still the disk
cutter. Jim Barrows W7?? ( SK ) told me when working for the FBIS 
recording Japanese broadcasts from Oregon and Washington sites, the
material was recorded on disks. I even once saw an aircraft disk recorder
in black wrinkle paint - sure wish i had saved that instead of letting it go to
metal scrap. -Hue Miller