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Show v Wingovcrs "ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO PRINT FROM THE DELTA AIRPORT" DICK MORRISON OUTPOST .... There was no local flying Sunday. Sun-day. Any pressurized tnr.sporls, military aircraft or jets flying IFR along the airway might have heard the voice of Lewis Buffing-ton Buffing-ton on Delta Radio at 1715 in the evening giving the weather report something like this: "Delta, indefinite ceiling, 400 ft. obscurement. Visibility 5 16 mile. Fog. Temperature 33, dew point 32. Wind NNE 2 mph. Altimeter setting, 30.37." That was typical of the twice hourly broadcasts all day long. With the temperature at 33 and dew point 32 degrees the air was supersaturated with moisture, just above the freezing point. Any light plane would have iced up fast. The barometeric pressure of 30.37 (as well as a valuable ship. WARTIME RADIO . . . During World War II, when gas was rationed and the most sensible sens-ible thing to do was stay at home, one of my hobbies was short wave radio. I used to listen to Radio Tokio o'ften ,and compare its versions vers-ions of the news with our own. All the while such "renegade", or anti-Communist anti-Communist newspapers as the Chicago Chi-cago Tribune were asking, "Where is the navy?", Radio Tokio was telling us. Col. McCormick's paper knew the answer, of course, but U. S. papers had been requested not to print it. Somebody was afraid, af-raid, not that the Japs would find it out, but that the American people peo-ple would! On May 13, 1943, Radio Tokio made a statement I considered so interesting. I wrote it down and filed it. It was this: The Soviet will not agree to landing of Anglo-American Anglo-American trops in the Balkans." corrected 'for sea level) indicated mild high pressure and meant the fog might stay a while. As night fell, the fog seemed to close in, cutting the airport off from the rest of the world. Green and white shafts of light from the beacon, normally visible fifty miles or more, bored into the gloom and were blanked out in a few hundred hund-red feet. The only audible sound, outside, was the hum of the electric elect-ric motor that turns the beacon. Communicator Buffington was the only human being in that little isolated world Sunday evening. In the warm, well lighted CAA watch-house, watch-house, he was busy recording weather wea-ther data, sending and receiving teletype messages, making routine weather broadcasts, and answering occasional radio inquires 'from ships that passed in the night. Any addict ad-dict of science fiction might easily have imagined that the airport was a lonely outpost on some distant satellite, maintained to guide and refuel space ships in the coming At that time, a debate was raging as to the allied strategy, whether to land in the Balkans, and hit the "soft underbelly" of Europe, as Churchill advocated, or land in France, as Stalin wanted. Roosevelt Roose-velt and Stalin overruled Churchill, and Tokio's prophecy was fulfilled. Stalin's reasons for not permitting permit-ting the Balkan landing are now obvious. At the time, the American propaganda line on such Jap statements state-ments was this: "Those dirty Japs. They are trying to drive a wedge 'betwen us and our noble Russian allies." Now I am going to say something some-thing I've wanted to say for a long time. It's just too damned bad they didn't succeed. Do I NOW hear any objections? It is interesting, now, to recall some of the slogans, or whatever you call 'em, I heard on short wave during the war. There was Mussolini's rado: "This is Rome,1 the cradle of modern civilization." Russia said "This is radio Moscow. Mos-cow. Death to the German invaders." invad-ers." Germany said, "This is radio Berlin. The world today is divided into two camps. On the one side, Bolshevism, on the other the defenders de-fenders of civilization." Radio Tokio Tok-io used to come on with, "Hello, everybody, this is Radio Tokio, broadcasting in English to the west coast of North America." On one occasion, Tokio quoted Hanson Baldwin 'from the Reader's Digest two days after we got our Digest in the mail. The article was not a reprint, but a Digest original. or-iginal. How did they get it so soon. I think it was by radio, via Beunos Aires. Most interesting aspect of wartime war-time short wave was the reception recept-ion of messages from American prisoners of war. I received many of these, and forwarded them to the families, and the box of letters received in return is full of human interest stories. age of interplanetary travel. It isn't usual that anything exciting ex-citing happens on such a night, but it can. Buffington hasn't forgotten for-gotten the night last Jan. 13 when he and Nate Ward heard the radio of an air force B-25 which was lost in a storm, almost out of gas, and trying desperately to reach Delta airport. The storm was playing hob with the radio range, but by constant checking with the ship's radio man the Delta communicators were able to determine which quadrant of the range the ship was in, and they talked it down to a safe landing at Delta. There's no doubt that Ward and Buffington saved the lives of five men that night, as |