[Milsurplus] Doubting the Foxhole Radio, conclusions

Al Klase ark at ar88.net
Fri Aug 3 11:42:52 EDT 2012 

OK, my two cents.  Seeing as Hugh insists upon doubting THE TRUTH. :-)

Virtually every WWII GI grew up in the 1930's.  That meant that radio 
listening was a big deal, and may folks were perfectly capable of 
building a radio out of junk from memory.  Add to that the fact that 
you're stuck just east of Bumfuk, and have time on your hands.

There were no transistor radios, so power was always an issue with tube 
sets, and carrying them around in you pack or duffel bag wasn't going to 
be practical.

Now, a couple of data points:

My Uncle carried an improvised receiver in a cigar box during his 
exploits in WWII Europe.  He was a Signal Corps cable splicer, not a 
front line guy.  Someone else built it, and he has only limited 
recollection of what was actually inside.  Sounds like it has a tube 
running as a passive detector as there only seems to have been a dry 
cell or two involved.

At Cam Ranh Bay in 1970, we noticed that we could hear the local AFVN 
station (lots of kilowatts, pretty close) on the field phones when the 
far end of a line was not terminated.  Having read a fox-hole radio 
article somewhere, perhaps Popular Electronics,  I constructed a set 
with a blue blade, a pencile lead, a couple of screws, and a safety 
pin.  The receiver was a purloined low-Z telephone element.  Worked just 
fine with about 15 feet of commo wire in the rafters and the ground wire 
pinched under the bunk leg.  This precipitated a minor fad in HHQ, 361st 
Signal Battalion and three of four other radio were constructed, despite 
the fact we all owned perfectly good radios.  We had time on our hands.

Somewhat related:  Canteen radio: 
http://www.skywaves.ar88.net/SPY/spy.htm  currently residing in the 
Radio Technology Museum at Camp Evans.  Come see it: 
http://www.rtm.ar88.net/

Regards,
Al





On 8/3/2012 9:26 AM, B Smith wrote:
> Anyone who doubts the ingenuity of an American GI in a combat zone
> obviously
> has never been in combat and does not understand the situation. I
> suspect hundreds of the
> foxhole radios were constructed.
>
> Z
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Robert Newberry"<N1XBM at amsat.org>
> Sent: Friday, August 03, 2012 9:04 AM
> To:<milsurplus at mailman.qth.net>
> Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] Doubting the Foxhole Radio, conclusions
>
> My Dad was a radio operator in the USMC during Korea. He said aboard
> ship
> the would string a long wire to listen to the BBC aboard ship. I guess
> this
> practice was only done under certain circumstances because I guess
> enemy
> forces (Russians?) Could detect their location somehow by them firing
> up a
> receiver...I assume picking up the IF somehow?
>
> I was watching a documentary on the Iraq war made in 2003. The Marines
> were
> using their gear in the Humvee to listen to the BBC. So I guess its
> still
> done today.
> On Aug 3, 2012 8:22 AM, "C.Whitaker"<whitaker at pa.net>  wrote:
>
>> de WB2CPN
>> My derived experience is that "front lines" of today
>> are far more regimented than those of Anzio and
>> WWII. A well talented "Scrounger", or "Com See,
>> Com Saw" in WWII France, was an asset to have
>> in the group. Almost anything could be had for a
>> price, (meaning a swap). That's how the Filipinos
>> got all those "Jeepneys".
>> I spent my military time in Communications, so it
>> was easy for that type to get things, and do things
>> that the average "grunt", (which is US Marine Corps
>> talk), ever heard of.
>> General Rule: It only took one Razor Blade Radio,
>> one War Correspondent, and one radio magazine
>> in the States, to produce thousands of these radios.
>> My favorite was the one where a pair of headphones
>> were modified to replace one receiver with a small
>> detector chrystal in parallel. Radar had crystals.
>> Clete
>> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>
>>
>>
>> On 8/3/2012 1:15 AM, appo2 at juno.com wrote:
>>> Well,,original radio communications used spark gap
>>> transmitter,,,and so
>>> called
>>> coherent detector receiver,,there were no vacuum tubes.coherent
>>> detector
>>> must
>>> be shaked if it were dot or dash in cw.But it worked,changed the
>>> course
>>> of wars.
>>> On Thu, 2 Aug 2012 21:28:00 -0700 "Hue Miller"
>>> <kargo_cult at msn.com>
>>> writes:
>>>> 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 �eFoxhole Radio�f? Maybe a few; maybe only one, that�fs
>>>> 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�fs radio equipment.
>>>> Probably most
>>>> broadcast listening done by using the service radio equipment. (
>>>> Anecdote
>>>> fellow told me:  �gOfficer said, ----, there�fs a knocked out
>>>> German convoy on
>>>> the road there. Go on down and see if there�fs 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.�h )
>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>> �gMany 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�h.
>>>>
>>>> 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�ft 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:
>>>> �gBuild Lt. M. L. Rupert�fs
>>>> Razor Blade Radio�h  instead of like this: �gBuild the Foxhole
>>>> Radio used by Soldiers�h.
>>>> 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
>>>>
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-- 
Al Klase - N3FRQ
Jersey City, NJ
http://www.skywaves.ar88.net/

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