Special thanks to the Wavescan staff for this week's radio nostalgia feature on Spindle Eye
Jeff: This week, Ray Robinson in Los Angeles brings us the interesting story of a U.S. military radio ship which saw service in the Pacific in the 1940’s and was used to broadcast news of the American atom bomb tests on Bikini atoll in the Marshall Islands in 1946.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. Our editor-in-chief, Dr. Adrian Peterson, actually brought us this story first about 15 years ago, but recent research by Dr. Martin van der Ven in Germany now allows me to add more information.
The ship in question was called the Spindle Eye. Plans for this new radio ship were developed during 1944, and she was originally intended to provide the master control for coverage of the projected invasion of Japan.
The ship was laid down in the Kaiser shipyards at Richmond, near San Francisco, California, and she was launched with the unassuming name Spindle Eye on May 25, 1945. She was nearly 340 feet long and 50 feet wide (which by comparison is about one and a half times longer and wider than Radio Caroline’s current radio ship, the MV Ross Revenge).
The Spindle Eye was fitted out as a radio ship at the Todd shipyards in Seattle, Washington with a bevy of electronic equipment. From a technical perspective, the Spindle Eye was a masterpiece of post-war engineering. On board were, among other installations, a 7½ kW broadcast-quality RCA shortwave transmitter that had been made at their Camden Factory in New Jersey, a 500 watt Hallicrafters BC-610 shortwave transmitter that was used for local coordination, a 2½ kW Wilcox 96C four-channel shortwave transmitter, high-speed teletype equipment capable of up to 500 words per minute, Acme radiophoto transmission systems, as well as extensive recording and mixing facilities in two studios – one for broadcasting and one for recording and production. Above the decks were also eight antennas. A central control room had an extensive patching infrastructure, Western Electric compression amplifiers, numerous receivers (including Hammarlund Super-Pro and RCA AR-88 models), a fully equipped darkroom, and an air-conditioned press conference room with 120 typewriter positions. In fact, all the studios and technical spaces were fully air-conditioned — quite an accomplishment for the time, and no small advantage in the tropical climate of the Marshall Islands.
In July 1946, the Americans conducted two
atomic tests in the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific, about halfway
between Hawaii and the Philippines. The
umbrella codename for the tests was ‘Operation Crossroads’, and in this
pre-television era, extensive plans were made for live radio coverage of the
detonations. Throughout the islands, a
total of 150 radio transmitters and 300 receivers were in use for the
coordination of the atomic detonations and for the broadcast of live news
reports.
The first test was an explosion in the air with the code name Able, and the second was an underwater test, code-named Baker. On Able-Day, July 1, 1946, a U.S. Air Force B-29 dropped a bomb (named “Gilda”) over the Bikini Atoll in the far northwest of the group. It detonated with a yield of 23 kilotons at an altitude of just over 500 feet, but it had been dropped about half a mile short of the intended destination. A fleet of 73 obsolete ships had been moored around Bikini, but as a result of the targeting error, only five were sunk.
The Spindle Eye was given the task of
co-ordinating all of the news transmissions from Operation Crossroads,
including voice broadcasts, press dispatches and radio photos. For this purpose, the ship was located at
Kwajalein Atoll, about 200 miles southeast of Bikini, and the callsign WVLC was
replaced by the Navy callsign NIGF. The
broadcasts from NIGF were beamed to RCA Bolinas and Press Wireless, Los Angeles
for onward relay.
One of the greatest technical challenges arose from the geographical orientation of Kwajalein and the prevailing winds in the area. The conventional delta-fed doublet antennas that had been installed on board radiated their maximum power at right angles to the ship’s axis — which for most of the day was an unfavorable orientation for the desired link to the US West Coast. So, using a four-point anchoring system, the ship was fixed on a heading of 143 degrees in order to align the main radiation lobe precisely with the great-circle path to San Francisco. However, this was pretty uncomfortable for those on board with the swells hitting broadside, so a second solution was a remarkable piece of technical improvisation. An inverted, unterminated V antenna was constructed, with its legs leading out to buoys that had been anchored in the lagoon. Interestingly, the outcome was convincing: an improvement in signal strength of approximately 30 per cent.
On Able-Day, July 1, program broadcasts from NIGF Spindle Eye began at 3:30 am local time with live news reports for NBC and CBS in the United States of the evacuation measures that were taking place. The Voice of America also carried these same reports worldwide through their large network of shortwave and medium wave stations. These were followed by outside broadcasts of the take-off of the B-29 bomber, and pooled broadcasts as the signal “Bombs Away” was received at 9:00 am. Two voice transmitters on the Spindle Eye were used in parallel with all of the live news reports – the 7½ kW RCA and the 2½ kW Wilcox. Subsequently the Wilcox was diverted for the transmission of news photos – the first photographs of the explosion which were sent via the army station WTJ in Hawaii and relayed onward to army station WVY in San Francisco.
One of the major news reporters on board for the occasion was Oliver Read who was the editor of the American radio journal, Radio News, and he published three lengthy articles about the Spindle Eye’s involvement in the operation in that magazine.
However, in spite of the elaborate plans for extensive live news coverage from the atomic test areas, on Able-Day there had been times when the voice relays were inferior and difficult to understand. This was due to the fact that the shortwave transmitters used had only modest output power considering the distance and propagation challenges with the local effects on the ionosphere immediately after the explosion.
For the underwater test, Baker, which was conducted 3½ weeks later, the radio ship Spindle Eye was moved to Honolulu, as a more central relay point between the atomic test sites in the Marshall Islands and the American mainland. On July 25, a second bomb of the same size was detonated at a depth of 90 feet below the waves, creating a vast radioactive column of water and debris that sank several ships – including the USS Saratoga – and caused extreme and unexpected contamination of the fleet. The Spindle Eye, operating under the call sign NIGF, received the shortwave reports from Bikini and relayed this programming on to RCA Bolinas and Press Wireless, Los Angeles for further distribution.
Following the two atomic tests, the Spindle Eye returned to the Pacific coast of the United States, and operation of the RCA transmitter as WVLC-NIGF came to an end at the close of 1946.
One year later, the Spindle Eye was renamed the Sgt. Curtis F. Shoup and it was then used in the Pacific as a helicopter freighter. After that spate of service came to an end, the ship was transferred to the Mediterranean for oceanographic studies. Finally, she was sold for scrap on May 9, 1973.
It is known that a few QSL letters were issued for the WVLC-NIGF broadcasts, and the Voice of America also issued their regular QSL’s confirming the relay of the atomic tests at Bikini Atoll. In addition, special QSL cards were printed to commemorate the atomic tests, and these showed an artistic version of the sinking of a ship.
Back to you, Jeff.
Jeff: Thanks, Ray, and again, we are grateful to Dr. Martin van der Ven in Germany for his additional research on this feature.
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