Radio In WW2
 

Heads up! Along with ongoing events, BBC News 24 is doing a piece re Wartime Radio shortly.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-49562570

Dave W

Radio In WW2
 

Also vaguely relevant:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...ond-world-war/

Re: Radio In WW2
 

They mention on this morning's news that when they broadcast Big Ben chiming, it was from recordings, otherwise the enemy would be able to discern what the weather conditions were, and would be able to hear if Luftwaffe aircraft were overhead, and other noises such as bombing or sirens.

They had to make sure that there were no scratches on the recordings, or that would give the game away that the chimes were not being broadcast live.

In another thread about 'secret listeners' , about 20 years ago I was in touch with an elderly local amateur, well into his late eighties, who performed that role throughout the war. After the war, he was so hooked on CW that he was on air day in, day out. He'd built a Heathkit HW8 QRP rig and estimated that he'd had in excess of 40,000 contacts on it, plus countless thousands of other contacts since he went back on air after the war.

He also said that he was a member of a resistance group and was quite casual about the fact that had we been invaded, they had a list of people who - as he put it - they'd 'neck'. (They'd already dug hidden graves just in case). Top of the list was the local Vicar who was a nosey busybody who knew everyone's business and would have sung like a canary.

It's often said 'he could have written a book' about those dark days, but of course, such people rarely do.

I should have spent more time with him.

Re: Radio In WW2
 

When I first started to spend time in the S East David they had a TV series re the "resistance" units who could expect to live 3 weeks at the most when [not if] there was an Invasion. They would monitor, pass on information and attempt to disrupt invading forces! The set up was pretty much the same and the underground hide-outs would have doubled as graves! A seventeen year old boy had to volunteer when he stumbled across a training session at night. The alternative was to be shot! He was an apprentice Butcher and could never explain to his employer why he was so tired at work! When you think about the people who were nothing but volunteers, their odds were far worse than the crews of Lancaster bombers complete with difficult to service R1155 RX's, not expected to survive either.

Dave

Re: Radio In WW2
 

Just as I was reading these posts,a Hurricane flew across no doubt from RAF Conningsby!

Also we get the Spitfires as well but have yet to see the Lancaster flying.

Re: Radio In WW2
 

Synchronicity HB! If anybody wants to catch the WW2 piece to record live it seems to be repeated at every hourly News Bulletin!

Dave

Re: Radio In WW2
 

I read years ago about someone who bought a house in Ealing in the 1970s.

When they tried putting up some shelves in the cellar they found they could only drill so far before they hit something too solid to bore. Investigating further they found a heavy steel door!

As there was no mention of this in the plans they contacted the estate agent & solicitor, & a few weeks later an OHMS letter arrived with a compulsory purchase order!

The asking price was generous to accept without fuss, & when enquiring more they found out the door was for a bunker built in the Second World War for making propaganda broadcasts that would be activated in the event of an invasion!

Has anyone heard of this?

Re: Radio In WW2
 

No but if it was mine I might have opened the door.

I've pondered a question for awhile...all the HRO receivers, and others, which were distributed to secret listeners...were they collected in again after the war or just lost?

Re: Radio In WW2
 

Possibly if they existed they would be very rusty?Yes,I would have certainly opened it and might then have kept quiet depending what I found.

Re: Radio In WW2
 

Such a scenario sounds unlikely. For one, an abandoned minor WWII 'bunker' would be of no interest to HMG. Two, that's not how CPOs work.

Tales of such underground structures abound, often in the form of the mythical tunnel from the castle to the church. A good source for checking out the reality is Subterranea Britannica.

Regards,
Richard

Re: Radio In WW2
 

Perhaps, but there are still extant many disguised bunkers. I believe there's a 'toilet' in Tewkesbury (I might have both the location and the design wrong) which was actually a concrete pill box such as dot the countryside everywhere, but some were disguised. Maybe this was one such and was simply built on to.

Re: Radio In WW2
 

I have read about the organisation of 'sleepers' to wait until an invasion had passed then become active and create havoc behind the lines or report intelligence to the authorities by radio. I would presume actual bunkers would be rare although likely. The information I have read (some while ago so cannot remember where) that the life expectantcy of such sleepers would likely be very short as the Germans were efficient and had some experience with France etc (as well as their own people). As such the cost efficiency of an actual bunker, rather than a well hidden radio or arms cache, would be low.

Another possibility if found in more recent times would be a private nuclear bunker as I remember a craze on such things in the cold war.

Re: Radio In WW2
 

The force under discussion was called the Auxilliary Units. They did not have bunkers. Instead, they had OBs, operational bases, to provide hidden basic shelter. These were not defensive structures. They were largely sited in woods and the like. There's some introductory information on them here:

https://www.coleshillhouse.com/operational-base.php

Regards,
Richard

Re: Radio In WW2
 

A friend of mine had a house a few miles from High Wycombe with a large rockery down one side of the garden which supposedly had been a concrete-surrounded stairway down to a subterranean shelter with the usual hefty steel entrance door etc. The previous owner had said that their gardener (ironically, a German PoW who had stayed and settled post-war) had spent many years trying to reduce the above-ground part but in the end had settled for blanketing it in soil as said rockery. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there was quite a bit of this sort of thing around, either for "sleeper" purposes, local government officials etc. or simply well-heeled private owners.

Re: Radio In WW2
 

This is the local one near to where I once lived, ones nearest to folks's locations might be listed on the website:

https://www.coleshillhouse.com/trenc...ional-base.php

At home in the garden there's a large semi-circular granite seat that was built by some German POW's.

Stories of mysterious tunnels etc abound, that's also the case down here being in mining country and all that, most of these "tunnels" never existed and the ones that did would not have been a mystery for long, stories of secret tunnels being excavated for miles and miles unnoticed are just that...stories...

Lawrence.

Re: Radio In WW2
 

Suggest you get hold of David Lampe's 'The Last Ditch' to learn about the Aux. Units. Several books have been written since, but not half as good.

Just after WWII a 'spy hut' was discovered hidden in the woods above Thirlmere, when the Forestry Commission took over the land from the Water Board. Within the hut was a transmitter and code-books. This was written up in an article in 'Cumbria' magazine in February 1977 by Mollie Hargreaves.

In 'The Last Ditch', an Aux. Unit radio station near Dalton-in-Furness is alluded to and I reckon this hut above Thirlmere was part of the network.

Re: Radio In WW2
 

There was intended to be quite an extensive radio-network linking Auxiliary Units; called the TRD, see here:

http://www.auxunit.org.uk/ausignals.htm

and

https://www.coleshillhouse.com/speci.../trd-radio.php

I believe there was also a much more-powerful transmitter used in some situations, which used a pair of 807s in a self-excited oscillator! and the base-sites for these were provided with a little generator powered by a Villiers two-stroke-engine (as used on lawn mowers) to recharge the batteries.

Re: Radio In WW2
 

I remember many years ago seeing those battery charging units for sale in Doncaster ,amongst other places.

The shop was John Burleys,who lived in Sprotborough,Doncaster.Sold R109,s at 50 Shillings each,new and sealed.I had one on my push bike!