[Milsurplus] SACO Radio

[Hue Miller]

Editor, World War II magazine:

Having an interest in both SACO and U.S. Navy radio equipment WWII, I was
pleasantly surprised to see your article "What the Hell?" in the Nov. - Dec.
2010 copy. Published accounts by SACO veterans are rare to find, and the 
SACO
veterans website seems to be inactive.  I need to comment on your photo,
"...SACO men teach Chinese troops how to transmit information".
This is actually the first photo I have ever seen of this radio set in 
action.
However, the radios in the photo are actually U.S. Navy portable 
direction-finding
receivers, type DAG. This receiver was apparently designed for close-in 
direction
finding of shortwave radio transmitters. You can see the rotatable round
loop antenna and to its right, the extended whip antenna: these 2 antennas
working together indicated the single direction to the radio signal source.
Model DAG was rated higher in classification than the usual wartime
Navy radio equipment, meaning the set was somewhat "secret".
Most of the ones found in the militaria market now, seem to be in new
or near new condition, looking like the only wear and tear maybe
accrued only under their postwar owners. I take this to be an indicator
that the DAG, altho well constructed, was not really practically usable,
hence hardly issued at all. Consider the situation in China, for example:
altho the Chinese students were learning to use a radio receiver, with
the feature that it didn't require a local power mains, it was more
likely the Japanese who were looking for SACO  radio stations, than
SACO looking for Japanese radio stations, which after all, were pretty
well known to be in Japanese garrisons.  In other areas of the Pacific
War, trying to locate near area, intermittently operating Japanese
radio sources, would seem to be a particularly dangerous proposition,
when there were so many targets more immediately threatening to
one's search.
Another source, a SACO memoir, and one photo, suggest the usual
SACO coastwatcher station used the US Navy type TBX radio, and
the net control and relay stations used the larger Navy field
portable system, TBW.
There's a light  adventure-comedy film from about 1961 called
"Destination Gobi", about a Navy weather station team in
the Gobi desert.  The narrow escapes are of course preposterous,
but some of the equipment is true and the overall idea is realistic,
and I would guess whoever wrote the script had some input
from experience.

In the same copy, "War Letters: A Dresdener recounts..." also
resonated with me.  An uncle of mine, Herman Kilian, had
a shop in Dresden. With the bombing, shop and uncle
vanished.  His wife survived; she put her two children
in a baby carriage and left on foot, on the road out.
-Hue Miller

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