[Milsurplus] "Life and Times of J. Harvey McCoy W2IYX (SK) "

[Hue Miller]

I wonder if anyone here read in CQ magazine for June 1998 this account, "As 
told to
Dr. Theodore Cohen N4XX".
McCoy recalls being bosun's chaired aboard a Navy cruiser where he met 
Roosevelt,
Churhill, and Pierre de Lavalle "and so forth", to join a discussion on 
losses to U-boats.
McCoy suggested that the distress frequency be changed from 500 kHz to in 
the 80-100
kHz for surer propagation and thus faster response to SOS or SSS signals. 
The proposal
was accepted and several bases were equipped with LF receiving equipment and
Beverage antennas for this range. ( Unexplained is where the directional 
Beverage
antennas were aimed. )
"When I concluded my 10-minute off-the-cuff speech, all of the conferees 
began
pounding on the table.....How soon can you accomplish this project?"
"Within a few minutes after connecting the receiver to an antenna at 
Julienhaab
( Greenland ), we heard an SOS, the designator of a convoy, the ship's 
latitude
and longitude, and the phrase 'Wolfpack 2".....The base immediately 
dispatched
anti-submarine aircraft to the convoy, and one submarine was 
destroyed......Both
Doc Beverage and I received Presidential Citations for the part we played in 
curbing
the German submarine menace."

I would mean-spiritedly amend this to say "part we overplayed". Sounds a 
little too
much like "how I won the war" story.  I could probably research the meeting 
with
all the national leaders - with multivolume biographies of these figures, 
something
like this would likely be documented.
This move to distress frequencies does not seem to have been mentioned in 
any
accounts by WW2 Navy writers that I have read.
-Hue Miller