[Milsurplus] Foxhole radios in Pacific War

[Hue Miller]

Something from the "LoopAntennas" list that i found 
quite interesting and decided to copy over:
( via Hue Miller )
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1b. Re: Foxhole set and such.... 
Posted by: "mhatlau" mhuss1 at bellatlantic.net   mhatlau 
Mon Dec 31, 2007 12:23 pm (PST) 
Hue, As a project in my AIT class (Basic Receivers)back in the early
1980's, I had the students gather the materials and build a foxhole
radio during a weekend field training exercise. It took about two
hours, and they were encouraged to improve on the design after
successfully completing it. The model I used was handed down to me by
an Uncle who served in the Marines through Guadalcanal, New Briton,
and Peleliu, after which he transferred to the U.S. Navy for Okinawa.
The first one he made while on Guadalcanal, the wire and headphones
stolen from a Bell Aircobra. He told me the plans came by way of
scuttle-butt, I.E. one guy would show the next. Apparently they were
popular enough that aircraft headsets had to be locked up rather than
left in the cockpit. He said he made several on Guadalcanal for
buddies, and on New Briton, and one on Peleliu. All were sensitive
enough to listen to Tokyo Rose at night, even on Guadalcanal. The
plans he turned over to me were specific and detailed, down to which
model number headphones were suitable. At the time I taught, Blued
razor blades were the hardest item to procure. Luckily, a local
small-town pharmacy kept a stock of blued razor blades. I don't think
they are available any more. The original varied in several respects
from the garden variety seen on the internet in that it was designed
to receive 4-10 MHz rather than the Broadcast band, among other
things. I suppose they were also used in Europe, but my Uncle never
met a Veteran who had used one in the European Theater, though he met
many who had used it in the Pacific. 
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HM's reply:
Re foxhole radios in Pacific War: very interesting and VERY
surprising to me. I would not thought a razor-blade radio 
could pick up Japan HF broadcasts, as these radios were 
just not as sensitive as a crystal radio with a more
conventional detector, and i've never known that aircrew 
headphones were either reknown for sensitivity and i think
they were based at 600 ohms, is this not right. Plus, Japan
was broadcasting with power of ( i think i read ) 40 kw on its
shortwave transmitters. Still, this may have been possible;
It's an overwater route and in the hundreds of miles only.
Maybe that interesting anecdote will even inspire me to try
it out. If you had said, used razor blade radio to listen to the
local Armed Forces Radio, i could easily accept that; most 
every island with a military population in the thousands, after
being pacified, got a AFRS radio station of 1 kw power, and 
some smaller islands without an AFRS station had local-built
stations of lower power.  But - i had NEVER heard or read 
about the Pacific War connection to the foxhole radio - that
REALLY deserves to be more widely known. It occurred to 
me that it must have been a bit difficult to set up these 
foxhole radios to work - you had to have Japan on the air -
plus the fading normal to shortwave radio "may" have meant
trying to find a hot spot on the blade, a frustrating experience.
-Hue Miller