[Milsurplus] Doubting the Foxhole Radio, conclusions

[Hue Miller]

The ancient ones used no-gain receivers with actual tuned circuits and antenna matching,
and the LF spark transmitters, to achieve the distance you mentioned, were, I think, quite
more than a few kilowatts (at least in input power ). 

No one doubts such a radio works – minimally. You note the great output boost when 
the tuned circuit is brought into resonance. Also, I have to wonder how some infantry
officer had time, and room to rig an antenna, during the pounding the Allies took at
the Anzio invasion site. There is, I believe, a grain of truth to the story, but I suspect
it got helped along because it was a great story. Perhaps this could have happened
after the Germans were driven farther away from the beachhead, where their tank
forces  were decimated by  by fire from U.S. ships. How many soldiers actually
built the ‘Foxhole Radio’? Maybe a few; maybe only one, that’s a possibility, and
maybe it grew from there.

Someone wrote that Allied forces had a number of troop entertainment receiver
I dispute that this is true of ground forces. I have seen minimal reference to S-29,
Zeniths, R-100 and so on owned by U.S. ordinary troops. My father mentioned
listening to Axis Sally via his gun battery’s radio equipment. Probably most 
broadcast listening done by using the service radio equipment. ( Anecdote 
fellow told me:  “Officer said, ----, there’s a knocked out German convoy on 
the road there. Go on down and see if there’s anything you can use. So I got
this receiver, Torn.E.b., and kept it with me til the end. I used it to listen to
baseball games from the U.S.A.” ) 
The German army, I can think of at least 5, 6 battery powered radios that
were troop morale types, and a couple more that were AC-DC mains types.
Ironically, the list of stations permitted to be listened to, was very strictly
limited.

“Many military double headsets of WW2 were 2000 ohms to 15,000 ohms 
impedance, a good match for a crystal set. The 600 ohm stuff was more 
common among Army Air Forces, not ground Army radios”.

This may have been true early in the war, but the impedance standard became low impedance.
Also, an article I saw, which supposedly illustrated the Foxhole Radio, showed it equipped 
with a standard Western Electric telephone technicians single headphone. I am familiar with
that type. You know, there really weren’t that many traditional headphones floating around
at the front lines. Phone type handsets, yes.

Maybe the articles on this project should read more like this: “Build Lt. M. L. Rupert’s
Razor Blade Radio”  instead of like this: “Build the Foxhole Radio used by Soldiers”.
Of course, the second title has more audience appeal.

One You Tube respondent said yes, they used such radios in POW camps. All the 
stories I have read about POW radios described radios with a radio tube, not 
crystal radios. Only one account I can recall, about an American general at a 
Japanese camp at Shanghai, China, who built a crystal radio entirely from scratch, and
I do mean entirely. I gather, altho I am a little vague on the details, that there still was
an international – neutral reserve there, not suppressed by the Japanese, so there
were more or less independent radio stations there.

Many thanks to Carlo Strozzi for pointing out that Rome Radio at 250 kW was only
15 miles away, which definitely dispelled my doubts that the Foxhole Radio would
work at all. 
-Hue Miller