Category: World War II

A VISIT TO LITTLE GLEMHAM

5/27/2019

My father’s maternal grandfather, Arthur King, emigrated to the U.S. in the late 19th century from Little Glemham, Suffolk, England, where his father and then his brother had served as clergymen at St. Andrew's Church. He left behind a large and close family of siblings, and for the rest of his life, black-and-white photos and letters written double-sided in a spidery script on flimsy "airmail" paper flowed freely across the Atlantic.

My great grandfather Arthur King. He contracted polio late in life and walked with a cane.

At a family wedding a few years ago, surrounded by the people I love best - my husband, my daughters, my grandchildren, my siblings and their families - I had the sudden insight that as the oldest grandchild of Edwin and Beatrice King Stodola, I am the Stodola family matriarch.

With great honor comes great responsibility! In particular, I find myself heir to most though probably not all of the Stodola family archives. This material did not come to me all at once, but piecemeal over the course of many decades. I can't even remember how it all made its way to me. Some of it I've had as long as I can remember. Some my father packed away in cardboard cartons when we moved from New Jersey to New York. Once my mother died, he never again opened them or made any attempt to sort their contents. Later the boxes, still unopened, were carted from our basement on Long Island to a storage unit in Florida. My stepmother tried valiantly over time to identify and get things into the hands of the right Stodola child (mostly me, because she knew I would care and share), But like me, she was hampered by cryptic labels (my favorite: "him and me") and nonexistent dates, and in addition knew far less about our family history than I.

Although I have eight great grandparents and sixteen great great grandparents, just like everyone else, the Kings have always seemed a little larger than life to me because I heard so much about them from my grandmother, who as an adored only child maintained close ties with her father’s relatives in England; and because the Kings were a prolific and retentive lot, leaving a rather large paper burden behind for their descendants to sift through. Over the years, I have threaded my way through most of the documents in my possession and succeeded in identifying many though not all of the photos. I have also connected, through DNA matching and more traditional methods, with second and third cousins who still live in the UK and are much more steeped in King history than I.

In order to become an American citizen, my great-grandfather had to renounce allegiance to Queen Victoria. His citizenship papers are part of my King family collection.

In 1998, before genealogy tourism was even really a thing, Ovide and I made a fascinating visit to the tiny town of La Copechagnière near the Loire Valley of France, birthplace of his ancestor Paul Vachon who in the 17th century brought his three sons to the New World, giving one the “dit” name of Pomerleau. As a family history buff with a keener interest in how our forebears participated in the larger sweep of human history than in an exhaustively-documented series of begats, I concluded that If one hopes to learn about the life and times of one's ancestors, there is no substitute for walking where they once walked.

I vowed on the spot that we would one day make a similar pilgrimage to Little Glemham.

“One day” finally arrived more than 20 years later, this past April, when we embarked on a two week tour of London and environs that included an exploration of Little Glemham in Suffolk and a visit with two second-cousins-once-removed in Sussex. Except for the stress of driving on the left, along narrow roads with many roundabouts, which fell solely upon Ovide, and the stress of navigating, which was my bailiwick, our vacation could only be described as idyllic. Even the weather cooperated - we never even unpacked our umbrellas.

The rest of this essay is about our trip to the UK.

* * * * *

In case you are wondering where to find Little Glemham, population 187, it’s located just a couple of miles south of Great Glemham, population 224. Even the Brits have to google to find it. And yes, it’s really spelled that way - two m’s, no n’s.

When we started planning our itinerary, we realized we could include Easter in our schedule, which seemed a propitious time to visit St. Andrew’s. I emailed the current rector, who assured me that although St Andrew’s is now part of a “benefice” of eight churches - necessary because attendance had dwindled too much to justify weekly services at each church - an Easter service was indeed planned for St. Andrew’s.

On our first full day in East Anglia, knowing we might not have an opportunity to poke around much on Easter Day, we stopped by St. Andrew’s, which looked exactly as I remembered it in my photographs. The only problem was, it also looked like every other church in every other nearby village, even to the little gatehouse in front, with only minor variations in size and layout. These parish churches date back to the Middle Ages - starting life as Roman Catholic churches and after Henry VIII becoming Anglican - and I guess having hit on a successful formula, the builders decided to stay with it.

We were greeted by two devoted volunteer caretakers, Rod and June Clare, who were busily cleaning and decorating the church for Easter. No need to knock - like all the little churches we visited it is open 24/7, with signage apologizing profusely if for any reason it might have to be closed for even a few hours, just please close the door when you leave to keep the birds out - and we were welcome to stay as long as we wished.

Rod Clare sharing some of St. Andrew's rich history with me.

June Clare dusting and polishing.

St. Andrew's has been fortunate in its history and is happily well-loved by those few who remain on its rolls. Since it was first built in the 12th century, it has benefited from several updates in its first few centuries, from a restoration project in the 1850s, and from extensive recent repairs. Though the departure of the lead bellringer several years ago led to a silencing of the bells, they can now be heard once again thanks to a troupe of ringers that circulates among the local churches. (Listen to the bells of St. Andrews!)

Then...

Babies have been baptized at this font since the 13th century.

...and now.

The window on the north wall, given by parishioners and friends in honor of Arthur's brother, was the work of a local artist, Margaret Rope of Leiston.

After we finished our tour of the sanctuary, Rod led us to the King family plot in the churchyard, where we found monuments marking the graves of my great great grandfather and several of his descendants. Though the stone was partially effaced with time, we could make out the words “parish priest” faintly etched on the side. My grandmother had always referred to him as “rector," so I consulted Professor Google and found that the terms rector and parish priest, along with vicar and curate, are used more or less interchangeably despite barely perceptible differences in their technical definitions. (My brother, who has spent lots of time in the UK, claims that “understanding the ins and outs of the Anglican Church is like cricket - if you weren’t raised with it, it will always be a Mystery!”)

I assumed at first that the charming old home next to the church was where my great grandfather had grown up but later learned that by the time the Kings came on the scene, the rectory had been relocated about a mile away, to a house large enough to accommodate Richard Henry II, his wife Fanny, and their twelve children. A sign in front of that building (now privately owned) identifies it as the "Old Rectory", presumably making the one next to the church the old Old Rectory.

The original rectory, next to the church.

The newer "Old Rectory," about a mile from the church, where the Kings lived.

* * * * *

We arrived early on Easter Day so that we would be sure to find seats. We needn't have worried - the six of us who attended could each have occupied a whole row with room to spare. I was repeatedly struck by the thought that Little Glemham was once home to enough parishioners being born, getting married, suffering, dying, and attending church each and every Sunday to provide Richard Henry King II with year-round full-time employment. He would probably roll over in his grave to learn that the attendees at the 2019 Easter service barely outnumbered the clergy, largely because Ovide and I were there and another man was in town for his father’s funeral, and that the current rector is a woman - who rushed off at the end to conduct another service in another part of her benefice.

* * * * *

Also in honor of Easter Day, Glemham Hall (more properly Little Glemham Hall) was open for a tour of the premises. Such tours are common in the UK, as many of the beautiful old Elizabethan stately homes that once formed the backbone of England's social, economic, and governmental system struggle to maintain themselves in a state of “arrested decay.” Today the key employees are more likely to be event planners than butlers. Unlike many such tours, however, this one was conducted by the lord of the manor himself, who had grown up in those 80-some rooms and knew it as no docent ever could.

The house was built by the DeGlemham family in the mid 16th century, replacing the moated manor house their forebears had built on the site in the 13th century. In 1709 the North family purchased the property, along with the lordship of the manor, and shortly thereafter made major structural changes to give it the beautiful Georgian facade it boasts today. During the latter half of the 19th century, when my great great grandfather was rector of St Andrew’s, the mansion was occupied by Alexander George Dickson, a Conservative Member of Parliament and second husband of the widow of Lord North.

Think Upstairs Downstairs. Think Downton Abbey. Think (as did I) of the rector of St Andrew’s being honored by an occasional invitation to tea at Glemham Hall.

Beautiful Glemham Hall

Phillip Hope-Cobbold, surrounded by his ancestors, welcoming his guests.

A modern painting of the Glemham Manor grounds, showing Phillip's two sons playing lawn tennis in the background.

The current lord of the manor is Major Philip Hope-Cobbold, a descendant on his mother’s side of the Cobbold family, who made their fortune in the 18th century by founding a major brewery. The Cobbolds bought the house from what was left of the North family in 1923, so in fact Philip Hope-Cobbold’s forebears just barely overlapped with the Kings’ tenure. Still, the tour was both intimate and amusing, and Philip himself was totally charming, leaving us satisfied that we had gained at least a little insight into a social system that somehow allowed the Kings in their rectory to interact in a carefully choreographed way, friendly but at a distance, with the occupants of the nearby manor house.

* * * * *

As luck would have it, East Anglia, land of my father’s forebears, also played a critical role in the history of radar during World War. The Bawdsey Radar Transmitter Block, just 15 miles from Little Glemham in the village of Bawdsey on the Suffolk coast, was the first operational radar station in the world, where British scientists and engineers secretly gathered during the 1930s to demonstrate that radio waves could in fact be used to locate moving targets. Chain Home, code name for a series of early warning radar antennas strategically placed all along the British coastline to detect and track incoming aircraft, fanned out from Bawdsey.

During the Battle of Britain in 1940, their resources stretched almost to the breaking point, the British sent a delegation to the United States to propose a marriage of British science and knowhow with American industrial capability. Public sentiment in America favored neutrality; Henry Tizard, head of the mission, took the bold step of showing the Americans the technical innovations they had achieved without any promise of reciprocation. As Tizard hoped, the sheer impact of British superiority in the development of radar was sufficient to convince the Americans it was in their own best interest to support the British effort, and thus began the amazingly productive British-American collaboration in the development of radar.

It was just around this time that my father left his entry-level job at the War Department assigning radio frequencies to Army facilities ("boring!") to begin his fledgling career as a radar scientist. Although the Tizard Commission visited Bell Labs in New Jersey and Columbia University in New York City, I have found no evidence of their having stopped in Belmar - and in fact the subsequent locus of collaboration focused on the creation and development of the famous Rad Lab at MIT rather than on work already in progress by the Army Signal Corps at Camp Evans. Still, it seems likely the American commitment to the British war effort, cemented by the Tizard Commission, set the stage for my father’s career in radar research and his particular expertise in moving target detection.

Although we didn't have a chance to visit the Bawdsey Radar Museum, we did spend a couple of engrossing hours at the Parham Airfield Museum near Little Glemham, housed in the original World War II Control Tower of Framlingham Air Force Station #153. The museum is dedicated to the 390th Bombardment Group, which carried out more than 300 combat missions in the Boeing B17 “Flying Fortress,” during which 19,000 tons of bombs were dropped and 342 enemy aircraft were downed. Nearly 200 American planes never returned, and today being Memorial Day, it seems especially fitting to honor the more than 700 service members killed in these risky missions. Also worthy of mention are the humanitarian flights undertaken just before V-E Day to supply desperately-needed food to the Dutch.

In a world where Americans aren’t universally welcomed or appreciated, it was heart-warming to bask in the affection and gratitude with which the Yanks are still, even after all these decades, remembered at Parham.

Ovide owned a Hallicrafter SX28 receiver as a teenage ham radio operator. More recently, he and some fellow Club members restored one at Station W8UM. So he was delighted to find one on display at the Parham Airfield Museum.

* * * * *

Over the past year or so I had become friendly with my DNA match Jane, a second-cousin-once-removed who is also descended from Richard Henry II, so we spent a few days at an inn near her home in Sussex, south of London. Jane and her husband David turned out to be the most gracious hosts imaginable. Jane is a superb cook who served up steak and kidney pie and other traditional delicacies, and David entertained us with a video he had made for the BBC back in the 1980s in which he persuaded some friends to help him mow his lawn by staging a very amusing lawnmower tango worthy of Monty Python. We also watched an episode of Escape to the Country, the BBC version of House Hunters (but much better), featuring a visit to the one-of-a-kind Black Cow Pure Milk Vodka distillery developed by a well-known maker of cheddar cheese in West Dorset - where their daughter (my third cousin) happens to be employed.

Cousin Jane introduced me to her cousin (and like Jane, my second-cousin-once-removed), Ian, and we enjoyed a delightful luncheon with him and his wife Nathalie. Ian, unlike me, is a bona fide genealogist, so it was gratifying to be able to help him fill in the blanks on Arthur’s family (including five generations of descendants with the middle name of King).

Of all the things he shared with me, nothing was more thrilling than his photos of the Boys’ Butterfly Collection. One of the few pieces of information I could coax from my father about his relationship with his grandparents was his fond memory of butterfly collecting expeditions with Arthur. Thanks to Cousin Ian, I now understand that this activity was not just an idiosyncratic passion of Arthur's, it was part of a King family tradition that he must have hoped my father would enjoy and carry on.

My great grandparents (Arthur and Vergetta Sayers King) with my father.

The King Boys' Butterfly Collection

After our time with Jane and Ian, we had one day left to tour Sussex and decided to spend it exploring Canterbury and its Cathedral. Coincidentally, the date of our visit (April 25) was probably very close to the date more than six centuries before on which Chaucer’s fictional pilgrims were busy concocting tales to entertain their fellow adventurers as they wended their way towards the Canterbury Cathedral. Even from today’s perspective, the cathedrals of the Middle Ages are amazing structures, but to appreciate them fully, it is necessary to imagine them rising up almost literally out of nowhere, with nothing nearby of anywhere near the same magnitude; and then to imagine yourself a penitent who has never been more than a few miles from where you were born, whose sole experience with churches is with something on the scale of St. Andrew’s in Little Glemham. No wonder the pilgrims felt themselves in the presence of something supernatural and otherworldly.

* * * * *

My grandmother’s stories had given me the impression that a long line of Kings had been rectors of St. Andrew's in Little Glemham since time immemorial. In actual fact, my second great grandfather Richard Henry King II appears to have been the first to serve in that capacity, succeeded by his son Edward Septimus King (younger brother of my great grandfather Arthur, and of Richard Henry III, grandfather of my cousins Jane and Ian).

Richard Henry King II (1824-1886)

Edward Septimus King (1864-1925)

I have no further evidence of a King dynasty in Little Glemham. Richard Henry II himself was in fact baptized not in Little Glemham but in Mortlake, south of London, where the King family had apparently resided for a very long time: The King family crest that my cousins regard as authentic (as opposed to a somewhat different version painted by my grandmother that was a prominent part of my childhood iconography) is labeled “King of Mortlake/Arms granted 1589." I don't know the profession of Richard Henry King I, my third great grandfather, but like his forebears he was buried in Mortlake. His father, my fourth great grandfather Dr Charles King II, was a physician who lived and died in Mortlake.

Dr. Charles King II (1730-1814)

For much of its history Mortlake ("mort" apparently meaning "salmon," not "dead") was officially a village, though a village large enough to support a variety of industries including potteries whose products are still very much in demand, a tapestry works, a sugar refinery, and breweries at various times in its history. Its dreamy beauty was captured by JMW Turner in two landscapes painted in 1826 and 1827, depicting views of and from a large town house then known as Mortlake Terrace, commissioned by its owner. Currently Mortlake is a suburban district of London and a popular sleeper community.

In Little Glemham it was possible to walk where my ancestors had walked because the landscape has retained its small-village character and hasn’t changed beyond recognition. Probably Mortlake would have been more of a challenge.

At any rate, a quest for another day.

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edwin howard armstrong: DIANA's godfather

6/8/2018

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In 1991, just a few months before he died, my father was awarded the Armstrong medal and plaque by the Radio Club of America. Of all the accolades he received, none would have been more meaningful to him. Sadly, he was suffering from Alzheimer's Disease and beyond grasping the nature of the honor that had been bestowed on him. He hadn’t forgotten, however, that Major Edwin Howard Armstrong was one of his heroes, and he would happily discourse about the importance of Armstrong’s work to anyone who would listen.

I now wish I had listened more closely.

* * * * *

Most radio buffs are familiar with Armstrong’s turbulent career in wireless communications, during which he revolutionized the field not once but repeatedly - in the process stirring up mighty opposition from stakeholders in a new way of doing business that had little use for lone-wolf inventors like Armstrong.

His earliest work focused on improving receiver sensitivity. While still in college, he perfected the regenerative circuit, which dramatically improved radio reception by means of a positive feedback loop in the receiver, using a triode tube recently invented by Lee De Forest. Armstrong went on to invent the superheterodyne, which still further improved reception by mixing an incoming high-frequency signal with a second tunable lower-frequency signal to produce a predetermined intermediate frequency (IF) still further improved reception. The superheterodyne outperformed every previous approach including his own regenerative receiver and remains the industry standard to this day.

He then turned his attention to developing wide-band frequency modulation (FM) radio. Radios in use at the time were designed to be sensitive to the strength or amplitude of the incoming signal (that is, amplitude modulation or AM), but were also sensitive to environmental disturbances such as thunderstorms or electromagnetic waves emanating from electronic equipment. No amount of tweaking or shielding could fix this problem. Armstrong took a radically different approach, arguing that by varying the frequency instead of the amplitude of the signal to be transmitted and designing receivers accordingly, such interference could be prevented. He devoted much of the remainder of his life to demonstrating the superiority of FM.

As a wedding gift to his wife, Armstrong (shown here on their honeymoon in Palm Beach) built the world's first boombox.

Armstrong, a fearless climber, atop RCA's 115-foot north tower on the roof of the 21-story Aeolian Hall in midtown Manhattan.

Unfortunately for Armstrong, the commercial potential of the burgeoning field of wireless communication created a mercilessly competitive environment dominated by huge, well-heeled corporations. Armstrong’s genius as a radio engineer was matched only by his naivete about the realities of organizational politics (“all substance and no style,” as one biographer put it). Wildly underestimating the ability of greed and self-interest to prevail against (as he saw it) simple truth and honesty, Armstrong engaged in a long series of time-consuming, expensive, and sometimes quixotic legal battles to defend and protect his own interests.

His first such encounter was with Lee De Forest, who responded to Armstrong’s success by laying claim to the idea of regeneration, despite little evidence that he even understood how the triode tube he invented worked, let alone that he had dreamed up Armstrong’s brilliant new application for it. The ensuing litigation lasted for over a decade, with AT&T throwing its muscle behind De Forest after buying up his patents. In the end the Supreme Court, befuddled by the technical details, ruled against Armstrong, despite universal recognition among his scientific peers that regeneration was his invention and not De Forest’s.

His conflict with De Forest, personally and professionally devastating though it was, paled in comparison to that subsequently elicited by the introduction of FM technology. By essentially eliminating the static that bedeviled AM radio, FM threatened the broadcasting industry not only by obsolescing millions of dollars worth of existing radio equipment overnight but also by diverting interest, attention, and coveted frequencies away from the anticipated Next Big Thing, television.

The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) - led by David Sarnoff, formerly his friend and collaborator, now his bitter foe - was not about to take this lying down. Both fair means and foul were employed to thwart Armstrong: Lawsuits were filed and then intentionally dragged out, patents were infringed, royalties were withheld, reverse engineering was used to buttress fake claims of priority. Armstrong was forced to remove his equipment from the top of the Empire State Building, ostensibly to make room for television equipment, driving him to move his operation to Alpine NJ. Here the first FM station, W2XMN, began broadcasting in 1939 - but only after the FCC first revoked his license and then restored it but diverted FM into a new frequency band at limited power - again, supposedly to make way for TV channel 1. (Ironically the Alpine station was briefly resuscitated after radio communication from the World Trade Center came to an abrupt halt on Nine-Eleven.)

FM station W2XMN broadcast from Alpine, NJ, where Armstrong's 425 ft antenna tower dominated the Palisades landscape. It's still there!

Faced with the prospect of seemingly unending legal battles he could ill afford, Armstrong became despondent and even lashed out at his beloved wife Marion, who moved out of their home to escape further abuse. On the night of January 31, 1954, Edwin Armstrong donned his overcoat, scarf, gloves, and hat, removed the air conditioner from a window of his 13th floor apartment in Manhattan’s exclusive River House, and jumped to his death. Marion Armstrong continued to prosecute her husband’s unresolved infringement suits and ultimately triumphed, winning some $10 million in damages. Sadly, this vindication came too late to comfort or benefit Armstrong himself.

* * * * *

Far less known - perhaps because it remained highly classified for many years - is the story of Armstrong’s work on FM radar during World War II. Indeed, in Armstrong’s entry in the Dictionary of American Biography, this phase of his career is casually dismissed as “a hiatus caused by World War II.”

Politically conservative and proud of his military service in World War I, Armstrong generously extended to the US government royalty-free use of the patents he had so fiercely defended - a patriotic but costly gift. Meanwhile, in addition to his legal expenses, he was self-funding much of his research at Columbia (having declined a salary for his appointment as a full professor at Columbia in order to escape administrative duties and minimize teaching responsibilities), as well as his high-powered FM station in Alpine NJ. (His red and white antenna, all 425 feet of it, still looms over the surrounding Palisades landscape, where its affluent neighbors regard it as an eyesore.)

As his debts mounted catastrophically, his attorney, Alfred McCormack, urged him to accept government contracts for his investigations of long range radar. These contracts enabled Armstrong to hire an assistant, Robert Hull, a newly-minted Columbia graduate, and together the two set about adapting FM technology to radar. The end of World War II, however, brought these explorations to a close, leaving no clear indication of what they hoped to accomplish. Since then, continuous wave FM radar has found only specialized applications, and pulse radar remains the technology of choice for most purposes.

* * * * *

And here begins my quest to clarify the nature of Armstrong’s role in Project Diana. Starting with a standard SCR-271 early warning radar, Armstrong and Hull had transformed the equipment into a powerful transmitter and sensitive receiver using conventional pulse radar. The Project Diana team modified the set still further, adding a tunable crystal to allow the narrow band receiver frequency to be adjusted to compensate for the Doppler shift caused by the constant relative motion between the earth and moon.

As I worked on my most recent blog entry, about the famous bedspring antenna, I found myself becoming increasingly curious about whether Armstrong had directly interacted with the Project Diana team, and whether he had actually spent time with them at Camp Evans during this period. On the one hand, I had never, among all the first-person accounts I’d read by the Project Diana team, including my own oral history interview with my father, encountered any mention of face-to-face meetings or discussions with Armstrong. On the other hand, Belmar and Alpine are less than 100 miles apart, and Armstrong was highly familiar with the Marconi facility, where he and David Sarnoff in happier times had first listened to signals from his regenerative receiver.

The answers to these questions proved surprisingly elusive, even after I consulted such authoritative and comprehensive sources as Empire of the Air by Tom Lewis, Man of High Fidelity by Lawrence Lessing, The Invention that Changed the World, by Robert Buderi, and the librarians in charge of the Armstrong archives at Columbia University. Finally, with the help of Fred Carl, Director of the InfoAge Science History Learning Center, I found my way to Al Klase and Ray Chase, who work with the New Jersey Antique Radio Club's Radio Technology Museum at InfoAge, where they specialize respectively in the development of radar and Armstrrong's career.

Al very kindly directed me to an audio recording made in 2005 of an interview with Renville McMann, a panelist at a celebration broadcast from Alpine of the 70th anniversary of FM radio [starting at min 7:00]. In this loving reminiscence of Armstrong, McMann describes the time he innocently suggested that Armstrong point his equipment towards the moon - and with uncharacteristic vehemence, Armstrong refused. That feat, as McMann later learned, was reserved for the Army. “Armstrong had a duplicate setup of the Camp Evans equipment at Alpine,” adds Al; indeed, “the SCR-271 radar tower, sans antenna, is still there…. So clearly, there was direct contact with the Diana team. Armstrong's narrow-band receiver was crucial to the success of the project.”

Al goes on to observe, “It's easy to assume Armstrong visited Camp Evans during the Diana era, it was only a day trip, even without modern roads, but I see no hard evidence. Dave Ossman, in his excellent radio drama version of Empire of the Air [starting at min 7:26] has Armstrong at Evans for the first experiment, but rereading [the original book version of Empire of the Air by Tom Lewis, p. 298], we could attribute this to artistic license. I, too, would like to know if he was there.”

But as Ray muses, it appears that the famous radio pioneer took pains to maintain an "arm's length" relationship with the youthful Diana team to ensure that they got full credit for whatever successes they achieved. He did such a good job of covering his tracks that barring some unexpected scholarly find, the nature and extent of his personal interactions with the Project Diana team will remain shrouded in mystery.

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CELEBRATING DIANA DAY

1/10/2018

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Seventy-two years ago today, on January 10, 1946, a handful of scientists at Camp Evans in Belmar NJ, led by Lt Col Jack Dewitt, successfully bounced radar waves off the moon - the first Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) communication - and the world has never been the same.

My father, E. King Stodola, was the team's scientific head. It's not hard to guess why he was chosen for this role. He was an engineer with good social skills and expertise in moving target detection (in this case a very large moving target). His approach to everything, from household repairs to shooting the moon, reflected the can-do spirit that Americans brought to World War II - work rapidly and intensively, use and modify materials already on hand, and then test, test, test.

Applying this method to the challenge they now faced, the team heavily modified an SCR-271 bedspring antenna, jacked up the power, and pointed it at the rising moon. A series of radar signals was broadcast, and each time the echo was heard 2.5 seconds later, the time it takes light to reach the moon and return.

As Fred Carl, COO of the InfoAge Museum located on the former Camp Evans site, succinctly put it, "Project Diana was a pivotal event that built on World War II expertise but pointed the way to the future." The conclusive demonstration that the ionosphere could be pierced captured the world's imagination. It opened the door to space exploration and to communication with the universe beyond the earth's envelope.

On January 10, 2016, I launched this blog to celebrate Project Diana in the context of life in postwar America and in particular of my Jersey Shore childhood. My husband thought I'd run out of things to say after a half a dozen posts. Two years later I'm still going strong.

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THE MOON ENTERS THE COLD WAR

12/7/2017

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Pearl Harbor, whose 76th anniversary we observe today, marked the end of American isolationism - not just as a political ideology but also as the comfortable assumption that its location beyond two oceans could somehow protect the US from the rest of the world. Pearl Harbor, and the declarations of war by Hitler and Mussolini that followed shortly thereafter, thrust the US into the role of defender of liberty and democracy and leader of what later came to be called the “Free World.”

After the War ended with the Axis powers soundly defeated, the temporary alliance between the Western bloc, led by the US, and the Eastern bloc, led by the Soviet Union, became unraveled by their profound social, economic, and political differences. The result was a Cold War between these two superpowers that lasted for over forty years, sustained by the belief on both sides that only the buildup of arsenals capable of “mutually assured destruction” could keep either side from demolishing the other. It was also characterized by the development of spy technology far more advanced than anything that preceded it - technology that, to remain effective, demanded almost epic levels of secrecy by those in the know.

* * * * *

I have elsewhere referred to Project Diana as the opening salvo in the Cold War, but only recently have I come to appreciate the full truth of this statement. Although much has been made of Jack DeWitt's almost obsessive fascination with the idea of bouncing radar off the moon, it is well to remember that his actual assignment from the Pentagon was to study ways to detect and track Soviet rockets that might, drawing on expertise captured from the Germans, it was feared, be capable of reaching the US. DeWitt argued, with some justice, that since there were no such rockets currently available for testing, hitting the moon would equally well confirm that radar could penetrate the ionosphere.

Not long ago a reader kindly referred me to a recently declassified document, originally published in 1967, in which the author, Frank Eliot, asserts that the “entirely new technique” emerging directly from Project Diana - that is, using the moon to receive and reflect radio signals - offered a possible solution to the thorny problem of how to intercept Russian radar signals in an era when flights over the Soviet Union were prohibited. Although Project Diana involved monostatic transmission - that is, sending and receiving signals in the same location - a Naval Research Laboratory engineer named James Trexler figured out as early as 1948 that signals emanating from one location (e.g., in Russia) could potentially be detected via bistatic transmission to other locations (e.g., in the US) if they happened to bounce off the moon.

Thus was born the highly classified PAssive MOon Relay or PAMOR, code-named "Joe." Initial tests proved so promising that the project was intensified, at even deeper levels of secrecy. As one wag put it, “Leave it to the US Navy to weaponize the moon.”

Moon bounce via bistatic transmission. (Courtesy of Roger Shultz)

The Russians, of course, weren’t bouncing signals off the moon for the benefit of their Cold War adversaries. Indeed, most of their signals simply escaped the atmosphere and disappeared into outer space. Detecting those that did serendipitously hit the moon could only be done at certain times of day, in certain locations on earth where both the sending and receiving elements could “see” the moon at the same time; nor could the lunar terrain be too “rough” for clear reflection of signals. Antennas had to be at least 150 ft in diameter and preferably larger, and only a few were available for that purpose (e.g., those at the Grand Bahama tracking station, the Naval Research Laboratory’s Chesapeake Bay Annex, Stanford University, and Sugar Grove, West Virginia).

There were more ways for this effort to fail than to succeed, but the military got lucky - not only in having favorable antenna locations and encountering favorable lunar conditions, but also, in the case of the “Hen House”, a major anti-ballistic missile operation deep within the Soviet Union, in being able to take advantage of occasional brief practice sessions during which the Russians actually set their radar to track the moon. In the end, PAMOR proved to be an intelligence coup, continuing to yield information until the late sixties, when it was obsolesced by communications satellites.

PAMOR's success led the Naval Research Laboratory, in the mid 1950s, to commission an ambitious spinoff code-named Operation Moon Bounce, a series of experiments to test the feasibility of using the moon as a natural communications satellite. These tests were so effective in refining moonbounce technology that Operation Moon Bounce was used for several years to link Hawaii with Washington DC. Like PAMOR, Operation Moon Bounce was superseded in the late 1960s by networks of communications satellites - networks whose design profited from the experience gained during the Moon Bounce tests.

Moonbounce communication, generally referred to as Earth-Moon-Earth or EME, is now largely the province of amateur radio enthusiasts, who continue to reap the benefits of Operation Moon Bounce and ultimately of Project Diana.

* * * * *

As anyone who follows this blog regularly must be aware, the Army's reluctance to publicize Project Diana has long puzzled me. Based more on my own inferences from my father’s comments than on anything he actually said, I have generally interpreted it as retribution for Jack DeWitt's lack of complete candor about what he was doing, forcing the Army to play catch-up after the fact.

Still, this explanation has never entirely satisfied me. Why (per an earlier post) should those who left the Signal Corps (that is to say, those over whom the Army no longer maintained control) be selectively denied media attention? Why should my father, even decades later, have trouble gaining access to his own earlier work? Even granting that DeWitt was an ask-for-forgiveness-not-for-permission kind of guy working in an organization that prized discipline, it all seemed - well, a bit of an overreaction on the Army’s part.

The recently declassified article by Eliot has given me a somewhat different perspective on this issue. In short, it suggests that the Army discouraged media attention less because of what the Project Diana team did wrong and more because of what it did right.

The success of PAMOR clearly depended on the Soviets' remaining unaware that their emissions were being monitored, a consideration that makes the Army’s wish to control information that might provide clues about the extent of its capabilities more understandable. Likewise, severely restricting access to information about PAMOR and its debt to Project Diana based strictly on need-to-know provides a more plausible explanation for classifying it above my father’s level of security clearance than an arbitrary determination to curtail access to his own work, even though it did in fact have this (presumably unintended) consequence.

Did my father know about PAMOR? He obviously wouldn’t have told me if he did, but given that documents such as the Eliot article weren’t declassified until 2014, I tend to doubt it. Had he known, he might have been more philosophical about the modest notice given by the Army to Project Diana’s milestone anniversaries.

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SPAM

8/8/2017

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I was only two years old when World War II came to an end so have no recollection of the rationing of gas, meat, sugar, or any of the other staples that were distributed to citizens only in controlled amounts because supplies were needed to support the War effort (or for ancillary reasons - but that’s a post for another day). Nor do I remember ever hearing anyone talk about it, nostalgically or otherwise. All rationing ended in 1946, and with a great sigh of relief Americans began consuming with a passion that has only grown since then. Rationing, it seems, was a subject best forgotten.

I do, however, remember two leftovers from rationing that persisted into subsequent years. The first is the zinc-coated steel penny minted in 1943 to conserve copper, which was needed for ammunition and other military equipment. These pennies were lighter in weight than their copper counterparts, and unlike any other American coin ever, they were magnetic. They continued to turn up like - well, like a bad penny - until the 1960s, when the Mint finally succeeded in collecting and destroying most of them. They can now be purchased for a few dollars apiece; only a handful of 1943 copper pennies and 1944 steel pennies, both struck by accident, have any real value.

I had some polished steel pennies made into a chain to celebrate my birth year.

The second is Spam.

Spam is a canned cooked meat product with an almost indefinite shelf life (claims the manufacturer; or 2-5 years if you go by its “best by” date), made with pork, ham, salt, water, modified potato starch, sugar, and sodium nitrate. Natural gelatin is formed during cooking and leaves a jelly-like coating in the can. One 3.5oz serving is laden with enough salt (57% of what you should eat every day), fat (41%), and preservatives to make a nutritionist cringe. On the other hand, it has only six ingredients (not counting water), none of them unpronounceable, bringing it close to complying with the "five-ingredient rule" - Michael Pollan's famous criterion for "real food."

Born of the Depression, Spam was introduced in 1937 by the Hormel Foods Corporation of Austin, Minnesota. The name was invented by the brother of a Hormel executive, who won a $100 prize for his submission. Hormel claims that it means something, but exactly what is a closely-guarded secret (perhaps forgotten by now). Speculations include that it is an abbreviation or acronym for "spiced ham", "spare meat", "shoulders of pork and ham”, “Specially Processed American Meat”, “Specially Processed Army Meat”, and a large number of less printable variants.

Although Spam had already been around for a few years, it was during the War that it became a staple of the American diet - because unlike most other meat products it was not rationed. Because of the difficulty of getting fresh meat to the Front, it was also ubiquitous in the military, serving as the WWII version of MRE. The Army found other uses for Spam as well - to grease guns, for example - and the cans were used for scrap metal. Consequently, the majority of Americans old enough to qualify for Medicare probably remember eating Spam. (And like me, they probably remember the distinctive can that opened with a key.)

My mother, true to her New England roots, served it pan-fried with baked beans. I don't know that I ever clamored for it, but I really don't remember it as a penance, either.

* * * * * * * * * *

Having assumed that Spam had long since been sent to the abattoirs of history, I was somewhat surprised to notice few years ago that it could still be found on supermarket shelves (now with a convenient pop-top instead of a key) and on amazon.com, where Spam Classic boasts a 4.5-star rating. (There are also a dozen and a half Spam spinoffs, including Spam Jalapeño, Spam Chorizo, and Spam with Hickory Smoke, not to mention Spam singles and Spam spread.) In fact, it has never gone away at all. For some it’s a cheap source of protein; for others it’s a comfort food. By 2003, it was sold in 41 countries and trademarked in more than 100 countries (excluding most of the Moslem world). Another Spam milestone came in 2007, when the seven billionth can of Spam was sold. It is still manufactured in Austin, Minnesota, where Hormel maintains a restaurant (Johnny's SPAMarama) with a full menu of Spam dishes and a Spam Museum. (Spam is also manufactured in Fremont, Nebraska.)

Over the years, Spam has taken its place in popular culture, turning up thinly disguised in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (in which Cary Grant, who works for an ad agency, is assigned to the "Wham" account); in 'Weird Al' Yankovic's take-off on the R.E.M. tune "Stand"; as well as in many more obscure locations.

But by far the best-known parody of Spam is an iconic 1970 Monty Python skit in which the server in a cafe offers “her” customers “Spam, Spam, Spam, egg and Spam; Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, baked beans, Spam, Spam, Spam, or Lobster Thermidor aux crevettes with a Mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy, and with a fried egg on top and Spam." Meanwhile, a group of Vikings who also happen to be eating in the cafe (where else would a Spam-craving Viking hang his horned helmet?) periodically bursts into song in exuberant praise of "Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spammity Spam, Wonderful Spam." It would probably be safe to say that the Monty Python sketch is more famous than Spam itself, and that except for the oldest among us, many would never otherwise have heard of Spam. The source for the use of the term "spam" to refer to unsolicited and unwanted email is almost certainly Monty Python and not Hormel.

Is there a connection between spam and Spam, beyond the fact that both are something you might prefer not to appear on your plate? The answer appears to be no. Since the information technology world was (and is) populated by Monty Python fans, the simultaneous appearance of the Spam skit about mystery meat and the felt need for a term for mystery email seems to have been pure serendipity. If anyone has a better answer to this question please let me know!

Will Spam ever make a comeback? Can its humble image be polished? After I learned that some chichi Manhattan restaurants added dishes with tobacco as an ingredient to their dessert menus when indoor smoking was banned, nothing would surprise me. Accordingly, I googled "spam served in fancy restaurants" and sure enough, up (among several entries) popped a 2015 blog post entitled "SPAMalot! Look at How These Trendy Chefs Are Using Spam," featuring such multi-ethnic entrees as Spam Sliders, Spam Sushi Dog, and (in a pairing that startled even jaded diners-out) Foie Gras and Spam Loco Moco.

Shades of Monty Python.

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WORLD WAR II: THE AMERICAN FRONT

7/12/2017

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Suppose they gave a war and nobody knew?

In the minds of most Americans then and now, World War II was “Over There.” The home front was regarded not as a war zone, but rather as a base of operations for providing supplies and support. America was where Rosie the Riveter kept wartime production going so that our boys could go overseas where they were so badly needed. America was where homemakers like my mom, along with her friends Mary Jane Evers and Ruth Mofenson and all the other Camp Evans wives, got by on a ration of 4 gallons of gas per week so the War effort in Europe could be fueled.

And yet just days after Pearl Harbor, Hitler ordered an attack on America. He had been anticipating the entry of the US into the War, which would likely infuse American industrial might into the Allied effort, and believed that preventing the US from supplying Britain with fuel and arms would be key to a Nazi victory. The Nazis had been fighting what Winston Churchill dubbed the “Battle of the Atlantic" since 1939, including the use of Unterseeboote (U-boats) to attack Allied merchant shipping in an effort to counteract the naval blockade of Germany. The German Kriegsmarine was thus well-poised to add the US to its list of targets. Operation Paukenschlag (Drumbeat), a barrage of submarine attacks on American shipping, was launched in January of 1942, and soon Nazi U-boats were swarming up and down the East Coast, preying on American warships, tankers, tenders, and supply ships.

U-Boat crew watches the sinking of a torpedoed tanker.

The German fleet was ready; the American military was not. The first few months of 1942 were basically a romp for the Germans, who referred to it as the “Second Happy Time” (the first being an earlier naval operation in which little resistance was offered). The British, who had been the victims of the first “Happy Time,” recommended that ships avoid obvious standard routes, that navigational aids such as lighthouses be shuttered, and that a strict coastal blackout be enforced. Whether because of doubts about the soundness of the advice or because it was decided to allocate resources elsewhere, the suggestions of the British were by and large ignored. Although small shoreline communities were politely asked to “consider” calling for dim-outs, fear of negative effects on tourism and business shielded larger cities from such requests. All the U-boats had to do was watch for ships silhouetted against city lights at night.

After a few months the Americans knuckled down and adopted more stringent measures. Blackouts were ordered and enforced, and my husband remembers being scolded, as a young child in Maine, for peeking under a cover draped over a radio to hide the light while the family listened to the news. Peacetime shipping lanes were abandoned and shipping was restricted to daytime in convoys, escorted by British corvettes specially designed for anti-submarine warfare. Unpredictably-timed daily patrols were implemented, and gradually the German “wolfpacks” retired to happier hunting grounds elsewhere in the Atlantic. Eventually German codes directing sub maneuvers were broken by the Allies, and Operation Drumbeat officially ended in July of 1943 - although periodic submarine attacks on American ships continued until just a few days before Germany surrendered in 1945.

Still, although the Allies technically won the Battle of the Atlantic by virtue of winning the War, the overall picture for America did not exactly smell like victory. Indeed, one historian claims that Operation Drumbeat “constituted a greater strategic setback for the Allied war effort than did the defeat at Pearl Harbor." More ships and more lives were lost in the former than in the latter, giving lie to the popular notion that Pearl Harbor and Nine-Eleven were the only two successful strikes against the American homeland. Yet in all, only a handful of U-boats were destroyed.

* * * * * * * * *
So where was everybody while all this was happening?

A few people, of course, were of necessity informed about what was going on in their back yard. My father, in our oral history interview in 1975, told me with perhaps less than complete candor, “There was no attack on the East Coast, at least not at that time [of Pearl Harbor] - although there was some later.” (A better interviewer than I would have pressed him on this issue.) His brother Sid, who was in the Coast Guard stationed in Boston, surely knew. The “need to know” list, however, was apparently astonishingly small - reflecting the succinctly-stated policy of Ernest J. King, Chief of Naval Operations: “Don’t tell them anything. When it’s over, tell them who won.” (This is the same Admiral King whose daughter once remarked that her father was very even-tempered: "He's always in a rage.")

Nonetheless, many individuals were uncomfortably aware that something was afoot, especially after blackouts were systematically mandated and enforced. A number of ships were torpedoed by U-boats within sight of New York and Boston. Other residents near the shore reported seeing eerie lights and other unnatural phenomena that were difficult to explain. Further news about the German presence trickled out when a couple of unsuccessful attempts to land German spies on American shores via U-boat were foiled.

American World War II poster by Seymour R. Goff. (The original "might" quickly dropped out.)

On the whole, however, popular alarm was subdued by nondisclosure (with the rationale that news of sinkings so close to our shores might aid the enemy or undermine morale) and misdirection. No patriotic newsreels about these shoreline attacks were shown at American matinees (whereas German moviegoers regularly saw such footage). Citizens who had actually witnessed a U-boat attack, or the destruction of a U-boat, were asked not to reveal what they had seen. The famous slogan “Loose lips sink ships” was in fact coined to justify this veil of secrecy. The American people were never given a full account of the genuine danger they faced.

Partial knowledge and half-truths, of course, bred speculation and rumor - something that can be more dangerous than the truth. On Saturday August 7, my grandmother noted in the journal she kept in the summer of 1943 during her annual stay on Cape Cod, “Gradually the news comes in with the story of the Busy Blimps. We hear a large convoy was going by and was attacked by a German submarine; that it has been sunk somewhere off our shore. We hear distant guns but never know whether they are real, or target practice somewhere." She drew pictures of her neighbor’s clothesline on successive days, hoping to discern patterns in the size and spacing of the hanging towels that might, just might, be coded messages. Less amusingly, she also identified a potential German spy among the customers at a local bakery. “The authorities think someone is acting as a German agent along our shore. I think so too, but probably have my eye on the wrong person.” Fortunately she was wise enough not to gossip about her suspicions; loose lips may sink ships, but false accusations can do their own kind of damage.

* * * * * * * * *
How close did Operation Drumbeat come to the Jersey Shore?

Very close indeed.

Here as elsewhere along the Eastern Seaboard, residents periodically reported seeing Allied convoys being attacked by the U-boats and being awakened at night by the sound of explosions at sea. But the most shocking evidence came to light in 1991, when a fisherman’s net caught on a massive object sixty miles off Point Pleasant, New Jersey. When a group of recreational divers made the 230-foot descent, they found an intact U-boat, along with its torpedoes and the remains of its crew. No records of attacks in the area or unaccounted-for U-boats could be found to identify the wreck.

Over the next six years, a team of professional divers led by John Chatterton and his partner Rich Kohler made it their mission to determine the identity of the wreck - dubbed “U-Who” because of the uncertainty. Their efforts were hampered by diving conditions so treacherous that they claimed the lives of three divers during the course of the exploration. (See Bernie Chowdhury's The Last Dive: A Father and Son's Fatal Descent into the Ocean's Depths (Harper Collins, 2000) for a heart-rending account of the deaths of Chris and Chrissy Rouse, an experienced father-and-son scuba diving duo.)

Chatterton and Kohler's first clue was the discovery of a knife inscribed “Horenburg,” the name of a Radio Operator assigned to U-869, a Type IXC/40 U-boat. Their initial elation, however, was dampened by the news that U-869 had been sent to Africa and sunk off Casablanca on February 28, 1945 by an American destroyer and a French sub chaser. Reluctantly, the “Horenburg knife” was discounted. In 1997, however, serial numbers and other conclusive evidence were recovered confirming the identity of the wreck as U-869. Evidently the commander, Hellmut Neuerburg, had never received the orders diverting the sub to Gibraltar and instead perished off the Jersey Shore just a few miles from where I lived in Shark River Hills; I was two years old at the time.

Crew of the ill-fated U-869.

U-Who continues to hold its secrets close - though not for want of ink spilled on the topic. Chatterton and Kohler, as documented in Robert Kurson’s bestseller Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II (Random House, 2005), concluded that the sub was probably sunk by one of its own acoustic torpedoes. Gary Gentile, another experienced wreck diver, hotly disputed this theory in his book Shadow Divers Exposed: The Real Saga of the U-869 (Bellerophon Bookworks, 2006), citing logs from two destroyer escorts suggesting that they had sunk the sub and also arguing that the damage was more consistent with the destroyer attacks. The United States Coast Guard’s official report, after a lengthy investigation, supported Gentile’s conclusion, but Chatterton and his colleagues continue to believe that the two destroyers attacked the sub after it had been struck by its own torpedo. The truth may never be known.

Yet another piece of the U-Who puzzle was added when a German named Herbert Guschewski, after watching a preliminary version of a 2004 PBS NOVA episode about the wreck entitled “Hitler’s Lost Sub,” approached the producers of the documentary. Guschewski had been the Second Radio Officer assigned to U-869 (and a close colleague of Martin Horenburg, whose knife had given the first hint about the sub's identity) but was hospitalized with pneumonia and pleurisy just before the boat departed and had thus been unable to accompany his crew-mates on their first and only voyage. An interview covering his recollections of life on a U-boat and his feelings about being the sub’s lone survivor is included in the final version of the NOVA program. It is worth watching.

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THEY ALSO SERVED

5/29/2017

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Like many others, I posted a photo of a man in uniform on my Facebook page today to commemorate Memorial Day, in this instance a cousin who died a few days after his 19th birthday at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, in a battle fought on perhaps the harshest terrain and under the worst weather conditions ever recorded in the annals of war.

As I recounted his sad story and remembered the family’s grief (still vivid in my memory though I was only seven at the time), I started thinking about all those others who, though they may not have served in uniform, were also required to make heroic sacrifices. I thought of my cousin's parents, whose hopes and dreams for their son were shattered in that long-ago moment. And I thought of all those whose lives have been deflected by a call to arms, individuals without whose material and emotional support such missions, however heroic or futile, could not be carried out.

Of no war is this truer than of World War II, perhaps the last war in American history to have had almost universal public support. It was not only the Great War, it was also the Good War, a war in which we felt clearly aligned against the forces of evil. In his book The Greatest Generation, Tom Brokaw included within the scope of that term not only those who went off to fight on foreign soil but also those whose productivity at home made a decisive contribution to the war effort. It included not only my father-in-law, who spent most of the War as an Army Surgeon in Italy, but also his wife, left on her own to raise a child - my husband - who essentially never knew his father until he was four years old. It included my stepmother Rose, a true Rosie who put her career as a musician and a grade school teacher on hold to work as a welder at Grumman Aviation on Long Island. These were sacrifices made, and made willingly if not gladly, because Americans saw it as a collective commitment, not just a head count of troops sent by the President to fight and perhaps die in lands whose names they could barely pronounce. As Tom Brokaw put it, it was the “right thing to do.”

My father’s family is a case in point. It has often struck me as interesting and perhaps even a little odd that my father and his two younger brothers all served in somewhat unconventional capacities.

My father, King Stodola, as anyone who follows this blog is aware, worked for the Army as a civilian scientist. There was never any question of his being sent overseas because his work in developing radar was considered essential to the war effort and in the event proved crucial to the Allied victory.
Syd, the youngest of the Stodola brothers and the only one to don a uniform, served in the Coast Guard, the smallest by far of the four branches of the American military and a bit of a neglected stepchild despite a long tradition of keeping its big promise, Semper Paratus (“always ready”). “They don’t get half the credit they deserve,” said one man of his Dad’s Coast Guard career.
Quentin, the middle son, chose the most controversial path (even within his own family), registering as a Conscientious Objector - not a popular position especially during World War II, and even more especially for someone who was not a Quaker.

* * * * * * * * * *

In recognition of Memorial Day, I decided to delve a little deeper into the contribution of these three young men to the war effort, and to invite their mother, Beatrice King Stodola, to help me out. Almost as though she were anticipating my queries, my grandmother was prescient enough to keep a journal entitled “Saint Barbara’s Hill: A Cape Cod War-time Log,” in which she documented her joys and (many!) anxieties, as well as the comings and goings of her “boys,” during her annual stay at Shining Sands, the family’s beloved vacation cottage, in the summer of 1943. (My poor grandfather, except for an occasional stolen weekend getaway and a longer stay later in the summer, remained sweltering at his office job in New York City - but that’s a story for another day.)

I feel particularly blessed to have this journal because it gives me a glimpse of the adult relationship I might have had with my grandmother had she lived long enough. For example, on Thursday, August 5, she wrote, “My husband swims every day, but [I] must confess I only go in when I feel like it, which is not very often.” Friends, does that sound like me or what? I'd enjoy swimming so much more if only I didn't have to get wet! And again, a few days later, on Friday August 13: “I had rather a disturbing letter from one of my sons [Quentin]. He may not bring his wife with him when he comes on furlough. It’s just too bad! Received a letter from the wife of another son [King] with a picture of my grandchild – bless her. It was so nice to have daughters when my sons married.” As the mother of daughters, I feel exactly the same way, mutatis mutandis, about my two sons-in-law!

Shining Sands, site of many happy memories from my own childhood.

My grandmother, presiding on her porch (which by now had acquired a railing)..

My grandfather standing by the door.

Quentin, setting up a dive.

A quiet moment with Syd.

The journal offers fascinating insights into life in the 1940’s in a country at war. My grandmother repeatedly refers to the nightly blackouts and notes her inability to get enough butter to make a blueberry pie. More chilling is the pervasive sense of fear and suspicion that permeates the journal, compounded by the inability to know exactly what’s going on: Is that apparently harmless shopkeeper an enemy agent in disguise? Is that man on the beach really just burning his garbage, or is he sending signals to the Enemy? Although these concerns may seem exaggerated, it is now known that German threats to coastal shipping were much more extensive than previously believed.

Despite her ongoing concern about German submarines and suspicious strangers, however, she seemed to be in greater danger from target practice conducted by the American military on the nearby dunes. The serenity of her vacation retreat was incessantly violated by the sound of the “ack-acks” in the (not-so-distant) distance - accounting for the title of her journal: “We shall have to change the name of this hill to Saint Barbara’s Hill. She’s the patron saint of gunners I am told.” During one of his weekend visits, my grandfather retreated several times one afternoon from the task of putting up screens on the second floor windows because the tracer bullets aimed at the target (towed by an airplane!) were just too close for comfort.

But the most obvious impact on her family, of course, was the involvement of all three of her sons in the war effort. They are here “only in spirit, just now,” she notes. “‘Uncle Sam’ keeps them busy at the moment.”

My father, working overtime at Camp Evans and spending what little spare time he had fulfilling his role as a new father, evidently never made it to the Cape at all that summer. My mother, however, kept the lines of communication open. On Thursday July 29, my grandmother wrote, “Pictures came today of our first grandchild [that would be me] – five months old. We have all been wondering whom she looked like but these snap-shots certainly look as her dad, my oldest son, did when he was a baby.”

My Uncle Syd, a carefree bachelor, seems to have shown up whenever he had a few days’ leave. On Saturday July 24, she wrote, “About noon a telegram came from our Coast Guard son saying he would be in this afternoon between three and four – probably a forty-eight hour leave. He arrived on the four o-clock bus from Boston. The rest of the day was spent in TALK and EATS.... After we pulled the black-out curtains we played three-handed bridge, in the midst of which the mother cat walked in proudly carrying a half-grown rabbit. The little thing seemed partly alive so the Coast Guard rescued it and put it out in the silver leaf." And then the next day, "We went out early this morning to see if the rabbit had escaped safely. It had! Somehow saving the life of a rabbit, and guns on the next hill, seems rather incongruous. …The Coast Guardsman left on the late bus very proud of his new stripe – he is now a seaman first class.” And again, on Sunday August 8: “We sat on the edge of the dune with [Syd] and watched groups of P.T. boats on the horizon…. [He] left at 7:30 with a package of cigarettes given him by the owner of the nearby village store. Those little things mean so much more to the boys than anyone realizes.”

About my Uncle Quentin, whom I later came to know very well and whom I would describe as a perfect blend of severity and saintliness, I will leave the last word to my grandmother, who got it exactly right in her comments on Monday August 16: “[Quentin] is leaving this week-end to work for the Government in New Mexico. He has been at a C.P.S. [Civilian Public Service, which provided American Conscientious Objectors with an alternative to military service during World War II] camp in New Hampshire since shortly after the war began. I stand by all of my sons like the Rock of Gibraltar, whatever their beliefs. Who am I to say what is right or wrong when it comes to creed or religion? He has lost eighteen pounds being a human guinea pig in a diet experiment for the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory. They are trying to find the best food to send to the starving millions abroad. Last year he was a guinea pig for a louse experiment conducted at the camp by the Rockefeller Institute. In the last war thousands of boys lost their lives through disease spread by lice. The powders developed in this experiment came in time to be used by our boys in Africa.”

"Getting our lousy underwear at the Lyceum." Basically the project involved wearing louse-infested underwear treated with DDT.

Quentin's granddaughter Sarah Wald and I have donated his collection of photos from his experience as a Conscientious Objector, of which this was one, to the Swarthmore College Peace Project.

On this Memorial Day, I’m proud of all the Stodola boys, for their courage in forging their destinies and for their signal contributions to the war effort. Each in his own way did work that saved countless lives. How many families are vouchsafed such a privilege?

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TORA, TORA, TORA?

4/5/2017

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A few weeks ago, in a post describing my father’s work on detecting incoming kamikaze attacks, I mentioned that his earlier work on the Army radar that had successfully detected Japanese planes approaching Pearl Harbor was probably the basis for his assignment to find a way to prevent Japanese planes from flying “under the radar.” This offhand remark generated a flurry of comments and questions. One friend wrote: “WAIT! You’re saying your dad…knew planes were coming in to bomb Pearl Harbor???…. That is a breath-taking piece of information, Cindy.”

Although I went back and added a link to the original entry in support of this observation, it is such a quintessential Camp Evans story that I decided it was worth a post of its own.

First, lest I left any room for confusion: No, my father had no idea that planes were coming in to bomb Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941, as he later stated unequivocally in my oral history interview with him. In fact, there is no reason why he should have known. He was still a newbie at Camp Evans, less than a year on the job. His task was to optimize the equipment then in use, the SCR270, and work on the next step in the series, the SCR271, planned for installation at Pearl Harbor but not yet built.

In the hours during and after the attack, the only ones likely to be privy to information about what had or hadn’t been detected were the members of a select, top secret group that had been working at Camp Evans for years to prevent surprise air attacks on critical vulnerable targets including not only Pearl Harbor but also the Marshall Islands, Midway, the Philippines, the Panama Canal, and others. Needless to say, these men held positions well above my father’s pay grade.

The SCR270B was a portable unit that could be carried in four trucks. The antenna, a steel tower folded over on itself with nine bays clamped onto it, stood at 50 feet when deployed.

What actually happened in Hawaii that fateful morning is a classic example of an advanced new technology getting out ahead of its end users. Privates Joseph L. Lockard, age 19, and George E. Elliott, in his early twenties, reported for duty at 4am at the Opana Mobile Radar Station, located 230 feet above sea level on the northern tip of Oahu. Although they were supposed to work in three-man teams, only the two men were on duty - Lockard serving as Operator and Elliott as both Plotter and Motorman.

It was an unusually quiet morning, and Lockard took advantage of the lull to train Elliott in the use of the SCR270B. At 7am, the end of their shift, Lockard began shutting down the unit, when suddenly the oscilloscope picked up an image on the 5" screen so surprising he first thought something was wrong - a blip so large it must have been at least 50 planes. As of 7:02am, the blip appeared 132 miles from Oahu. Elliott suggested they report this reading to the Information Center at Fort Shafter, around 30 miles south of the Opana Station. Lockard hesitated at first, but after several minutes of conversation - during which the blip moved another 25 miles closer to Oahu - he gave Elliott the go-ahead.

Joe Lockard on duty at the Opana Mobile Radar Station.

At the Information Center, Lieutenant Kermit Tyler, Pursuit Officer and Assistant to the Controller, was on duty that day, and except for the Switchboard Operator, he was alone. The Switchboard Operator took down Elliott's message - then, realizing that Tyler was still in the building, turned the call over to him.

Tyler's job description was "to assist the Controller in ordering planes to intercept enemy planes...." This was his second time serving in that capacity, the first having taken place three days earlier; he had no training in radar. The Controller and the Aircraft Identification Officer were out of the building having breakfast. Dismissing out of hand the possibility that the blip could actually be incoming enemy aircraft, Tyler scoured his mind for alternative explanations, then remembered that a squadron of B57 bombers - "Flying Fortresses" - was expected from the mainland that morning. With a sigh of relief he uttered five words that haunted him for the rest of his life: "Well, don't worry about it."

By now it was 7:20am. The planes were 74 miles away.

The first bombs struck Pearl Harbor at 7:55am, and only then did the three men realize what it was they had seen on the radar screen. Had the information been passed along, even with only a little over half an hour's lead time, American aircraft might have been dispersed and ammunition readied. Had the Navy been notified, it might have used the information to help locate the Japanese aircraft carriers from which the invading planes took off. Although it is unlikely the main thrust of the attack could have been averted, a response, any response at all, might have demoralized the Japanese by undermining their supreme confidence that they had achieved "tora," a surprise attack - a goal they saw as crucial to their success.

In subsequent inquiries, Tyler was exonerated due to his lack of training and experience. Lockard received the lion's share of the credit and was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal in 1942. Elliott was given the Legion of Merit but declined because he felt, with some justice, that he should not be given a lesser medal than Lockard.

Meanwhile, back at Camp Evans, thousands of miles to the east, members of the team charged with preventing surprise attacks waited on tenterhooks when they learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor, fearing their radar had failed. “If our radar had not given warning because of breakdown, or just ineffectiveness," said First Lieutenant Harold Zahl, "surely part of the finger of blame would point at our group.” He himself had designed and hand-made special tubes for the radar set; had one of them failed? Not until several days later did they receive a call from Washington reassuring them that human error and not equipment failure had been responsible.

* * * * * * * * * *
Although no one knew exactly when or where an enemy strike might occur, the Navy had developed and emplaced ship-based radar units as early as 1940, and by early 1941 the Army team at Camp Evans had set up land-based radar systems in potential target areas around the world. In addition to the Opana station, four other radar units had been installed in Hawaii. This is no secret.

Moreover, the story of the radar signals received by Lockard and Elliott but misinterpreted by Tyler and then ignored altogether is hardly an obscure anecdote buried in tomes read only by military historians or on websites visited only by passionate World War II buffs. On the contrary, it has been retold countless times in popular books and movies over the years. Notable among them: a brief, readable account entitled A Day of Infamy written by Walter Lord and published in 1957 (60th anniversary edition issued in 2001), in which a riveting description of the events that unfolded in the hour before the attack appears; a Japanese-American full-length dramatization of the events of that day entitled Tora! Tora! Tora!, which garnered an audience score of 81% on Rotten Tomatoes; and a 1981 New York Times bestseller entitled At Dawn We Slept, the first volume of a massive trilogy by a history professor named Gordon W. Prange, who devoted not years but decades to the study of a single day in history, generating thousands of typewritten pages of text that after his death were valiantly edited by two assistants-coauthors. (Lockard and Elliott make their first appearance 500 pages into the book.) The story even appears in wikipedia.

So why is it that so many of us still cling to the myth that the US was totally unprepared for the attack on Pearl Harbor?

Perhaps because the Japanese version of the story - that the attack on Pearl Harbor came as a complete surprise to the Americans - is the one that captured the world’s imagination. Mitsuo Fuchida, leader of the first wave of Japanese fighters, famously sent the message “Tora, tora, tora!” to his superiors waiting on the aircraft carrier Akagi - making the communication (intentionally) puzzling to the casual listener since the word tora means "tiger" in Japanese. But “tora” was also a radio codeword combining the two Japanese words totsugeki and raigeki, a phrase meaning "lightning attack”; to those in the know, “Tora, tora, tora” had nothing to do with big cats and everything to do with having delivered a bolt from the blue. And why shouldn’t the Japanese have believed this? After all, from their point of view there was no indication that anyone had the slightest inkling that an attack was underway. No defense was mounted, no evasive action was taken, thereby allowing the Japanese to punch above their weight at Pearl Harbor.

Or perhaps it’s because we collectively prefer the metaphor of the sleeping giant awakened to the less heroic conclusion that three undertrained, inexperienced men had been entrusted with a new technology, and that but for human error, the encounter might have taken a somewhat different turn.

What is lost in the myth-making process is perhaps a minor footnote to the overall arc of the Pearl Harbor narrative but an important chapter in the history of radar. It was the first wartime use of radar by the US military, and, despite the series of mishaps that rendered it useless at Pearl Harbor, it was abundantly clear that this revolutionary new technology was poised to transform the way war was waged. Being neither a military historian nor a radar scientist, I will leave a fuller investigation and interpretation of these developments to someone more qualified than I.

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Defeating the "divine wind"

2/25/2017

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In 1274 AD and again seven years later, Mongol fleets led by Kublai Khan launched major attacks on Japan. On both occasions, according to legend, massive typhoons destroyed the vessels and foiled the invasions. The Japanese believed these storms had been sent by the gods to protect them from conquest and called them the “divine wind.”

Or in Japanese, “kamikaze.”

In the waning days of World War II, when Japan’s defeat was all but inevitable but surrender was unacceptable, Emperor Hirohito “asked” Japanese pilots to become kamikazes, divine winds once again defending the homeland by deliberately crashing into Allied warships. Preference for death over defeat or capture was deeply embedded in the Japanese military culture, as was the tradition of absolute loyalty to the Emperor, the gods' representative on earth. The number of volunteers exceeded available aircraft, and extra men were sometimes sent to accompany the official pilot, perhaps to provide moral support.

Some kamikaze aircraft were fashioned from existing planes, others were purpose-built - most notoriously the MXY-7 "Ohka", which was actually designed to kill its pilot. (Although the Americans sometimes dismissed these pilot-guided missiles as “baka” bombs - a Japanese pejorative roughly meaning “stupid” - it would probably be more accurate to describe them as the original “smart bombs.”) The first kamikaze mission struck in late October of 1944. In the end, nearly 4,000 kamikaze pilots died and more than 300 managed to hit a ship. Reportedly, more than 70 US vessels - aircraft carriers were a favored target - were sunk or damaged beyond repair.

USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa (photo above) and Lieutenant Junior Grade Seizō Yasunori on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing and 264 wounded from a crew of 2,600.By U.S. Navy; The original uploader was Quercusrobur at English Wikipedia.

Most soldiers go into battle understanding they may be called upon to make the supreme sacrifice. As we know from even more recent history, however, deliberate suicide attacks present special challenges since no exit plan is required. Kamikaze pilots were instructed to fly low over the water and to keep the mountains at their backs. This enabled them to evade Allied radar, which aimed its beams away from the ground to avoid signals from non-moving objects at a fixed distance from the antenna - producing "clutter" on the display that made detection of moving targets more difficult. Essentially, the Japanese military had found a radar blind spot they could exploit, for example, through suicide missions that could remain "under the radar" until they self-destructed.

Urgent appeals were made to the radar laboratories of the Army, the Navy, Bell Laboratories, and MIT to find a way to eliminate the blind spot. At the time, my father was head of the Special Developments Group, which had produced many radar improvements including the Army's first operational moving target radar. Based on his earlier work on the Army radar series, the SCR 270/271, which had successfully detected Japanese planes approaching Pearl Harbor in 1941 (information that was unfortunately discounted by the commanding officer on duty), he was assigned to lead a team of experts in responding to the call for improved detection of moving targets low on the horizon by filtering out background clutter.

To accomplish this goal, within the context of very limited time and budget, the team made major modifications to the SCR-270 to stabilize emissions and improve detection of small frequency shifts (Doppler modulation effects). The large return signals produced by stationary objects (i.e., background clutter) were then processed using small time constants, resulting in rapid decay on the radar screen, while the smaller Doppler-modulation signals were processed using longer time constants to obtain greater persistence of the moving target on the screen, producing a distinctive "writhing" pattern that could be readily perceived by the human eye.

These modifications were carried out onsite by available government personnel - no time to job it out! - and then field-tested both in a mountainous region near Ellenville, NY and on Navy landing craft. The updated equipment performed beautifully. Gone was the blind spot; kamikaze pilots could no longer fly under the radar.

Less than a year later, on August 6, 1945, the US dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima; on August 9, another was dropped on Nagasaki. The calculus that went into this decision - the number of Allied lives presumably saved by ending the War sooner rather than later, and whether the same goal might have been achieved without targeting large civilian populations - will undoubtedly be debated as long as it is remembered. In any event, the Japanese surrender was announced less than a week later, and the official documents were signed on September 2, 1945. For many historians, however, the verdict remains that although the A-bomb may have ended the War, it was radar that won the War.

My father later wrote that this "earlier work on moving target detection had prepared us well for [Project Diana]." And indeed, the approach he and his team brought to the task of making kamikaze flights visible - work rapidly and intensively, use and modify materials already on hand, and then test, test, test - foreshadowed his approach to bouncing radar waves off a very large target moving through space and, in little, to household repairs, where clever jury-rigging was elevated to a fine art.

My Dad, E. King Stodola, at around the time of the work described in this essay.

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CINDY STODOLA POMERLEAU

I was just shy of 3 years old when the US Army successfully bounced radar waves off the moon - the opening salvo in the Space Race, the birth of radioastronomy, and the first Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) communication. I was born on the Jersey coast for the same reason as Project Diana: my father, as scientific director of the Project, was intimately involved in both events. Like Project Diana, I was named for the goddess of the moon (in my case Cynthia, the Greeks' nickname for Artemis - their version of Diana - who was born on Mt Cynthos). Project Diana is baked into my DNA.

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TO THE MOON AND BACK
(ARCHIVED BLoG)

A VISIT TO LITTLE GLEMHAM

edwin howard armstrong: DIANA's godfather

CELEBRATING DIANA DAY

THE MOON ENTERS THE COLD WAR

SPAM

WORLD WAR II: THE AMERICAN FRONT

THEY ALSO SERVED

TORA, TORA, TORA?

Defeating the "divine wind"

CINDY STODOLA POMERLEAU

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TO THE MOON AND BACK ​(ARCHIVED BLoG)

CINDY STODOLA POMERLEAU

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TO THE MOON AND BACK
(ARCHIVED BLoG)