Discovering an Historic
Radio Station
Discovering an Historic
Radio Station
During a European trip this summer that included visiting
my wife's home country of Poland, I made
a wonderful and historic radio
discovery.
Prior to our trip a friend told me about an historical
wooden transmitting tower built in 1935 that still
exists in Poland.
He discovered it while taking a virtual tour of Poland with Google Earth.
When I
looked at it I realized it is located in the city where we would attend our nephew's wedding.
This is
something I must see!
It turned out to be much more than just a tower.
The tower is located in Gliwice, Poland (pronounced Glee
Veet Say). It is about 360 ft. tall
made of
impregnated Larch wood and claimed to be the tallest wooden structure in
the world. On July 31st
after a stay in Krakow, our
relatives Bronislaw and Tadeusz Korniak drove us to Gliwice. During
the ride, I asked if
they knew about the tower. Of course
they did. It is a famous place.
In fact we
will go there today they insisted.
My relatives told me it was being made into a museum to
commemorate a
great historic event in 1939. The
grand opening was set for August 31, 2009.
We arrived late in the afternoon when everything was
closed. There are three buildings on
the site
and the buildings and grounds were in an unfinished state.
We decided to return the next week and
try to see what was in the
buildings. What a surprise when we
returned.
The buildings and grounds were feverishly being prepared.
We were given permission to enter the
main transmitter hall.
There we made some great discoveries.
In the lower part of the hall we found
what I thought was a transmitter still installed.
The control room is located upstairs with a view of
the "transmitter" floor below. The control room had the
audio equipment made by Siemens and
Telefunken.
The original
control console would be placed in the control room as I
learned later.
When we left the transmitter building, a worker presented
us with a brochure about the site... in
English!! Later, I received from Bronek a
237 page book, in Polish, about the events that occurred
here. From these, I learned why the site is so special.
So here's the story.
(Gliwice circa 1925)
In the years 1927-1939 a Polish area called
Upper Silesia was divided between Poland and
Germany. The city of Gliwice was
part of Germany. The neighboring
city of Katowice (Cat o Veet Say)
was in Poland. There were two
competing radio stations, one in each city.
Radio Gliwice
broadcast German language programs and Katowice broadcast in Polish.
They each had their
audience based on language, but they competed for listeners also.
Dave and Krystyna Jennings at the controls!
Katowice had more power with a 12KW
transmitter. So the Germans in
1935 built a new
transmitting location consisting of a 360 ft tall wooden tower and three
buildings. One building was
for the transmitter and the other two were for housing station workers.
The transmitter made by
Lorenz was capable of 8KW and more with different final tubes.
The transmitter building had two
main rooms, lower and upper. On the
lower level were redundant sets of motor generators for the
transmitter medium voltage. Each set
had two generators. Each supplied
2KV for the two lower
stages of the transmitter. Transmitter
high voltage was supplied by transformers from 380V AC to
12KV. This was rectified in what are
described as six-phase, 100 liter, mercury drum rectifiers.
The high voltage system was also redundant. The power was connected
through a large panel to the
transmitter. This panel is the
one I mistook for the actual transmitter. It
is obvious looking at it now
that it contains switches, breakers, meters and indicators for power.
The upper room was isolated from the noisy
generators on the lower floor by thick glass walls so
staff could see the generators from above. This
room contained the transmitter frames, audio frames
and a control console for operators. The
transmitter had five frames. It was
a grid modulated
system. The final tubes were water
cooled by pumps located in the basement. It
was a sophisticated
operation as can be seen from the pictures.
On the night of August 31, 1939 a secret
German operation was carried out at the station.
Under
Himmler's orders, a few armed SS men dressed as civilians stormed the station
posing as Polish
insurgents. The plan was to overtake
the studio and transmit in Polish. This
was to be a pretext to
attack Poland for this provocation.
(Gliwice
under Nazi control!)
The German planning for the attack was flawed.
They took over the transmitter instead of the studio.
There was no convenient means to broadcast from the transmitter site.
After terrorizing the
engineers, they produced a "storm microphone[1]"
and plugged it into the line amplifier feeding the
transmitter. This was intentional
and it did not work very well as the audio levels were very low
and there was feedback through the loudspeakers in the room.
The attackers did get this message
out, "Attention!
This is Gleiwitz. The
broadcasting station is in the Polish hands."
There was to be an additional part of
the message, but it was not broadcast. During
the loudspeaker
feedback confusion, the engineers probably turned off the microphone before it
could be transmitted.
After this raid other German radio stations then broadcast the message
plus the additional part that
the Polish regular army was coming and that Poland had started a war.
Hitler used this staged attack as an excuse
to invade Poland the next day (September 1st).
Thus the
beginning of World War II in Europe. The
radio station attack became known in Polish as the
"provokado". Thus is the
story of the very important but largely unknown role of a radio station in
the start of WWII.
The station remained on the air transmitting
Nazi propaganda until the end of WWII. When
the war
ended, the Germans did not destroy the station when they fled.
They did not believe they were
losing, thinking they were withdrawing temporarily.
So, only the tubes were removed. The
Soviets
did more damage when they arrived than the Germans did leaving.
(Students learning about Radio Gliwice at
the museum grand opening.)
The Communists had big plans for the
station, but had to send Polish engineers to get it working
again. On October 3, 1946 it
returned to the air rebroadcasting Radio Katowice until 1952.
On May
3, 1952, Radio Free Europe started programming, in Polish, from Munich.
The truth about
Communism and Stalin's crimes were revealed to Polish listeners.
The Soviets could not stand for
this, so Radio Gliwice became part of a large jamming system.
The transmitter still broadcast normal
programming by day on 1231kHz, and at night was re-tuned to
jam Radio Free Europe on 737kHz. There
were also three 1KW transmitters made by the Czech
company Tesla that jammed Radio Vatican, RFE, and Voice of America.
The local power company
supplied about 100KW of power to the site at this time.
(Walter Cronkite broadcasting via the facilities of Radio Free
Europe.
The operation was the subject of constant jamming by 'Iron Curtain' nations!)
Security was very high with 10 soldiers
stationed on the bottom floor and a machine gun station in
the attic. All instructions were
given in secret code via a coding device. No
telephone
conversations were allowed. This
operation continued until 1956. After
Polish riots in Poznan,
jamming from Poland was outlawed possibly as part of other appeasements to
Poland from the
Soviets. Jamming of Polish language
stations was then done by Soviet transmitters.
So, Radio
Gliwice went silent.
After transmissions ceased, the site became
a radio equipment manufacturing plant. Chech
Tesla
transmitters were copied and seven were sent to various Polish cities.
In 1967 an RCA 50KW
transmitter was purchased and copied. It
was probably an Ampliphase BTA-50H. One
went to the
city of Wroclaw.
Sites for pictures of
RCA transmitter:
http://fmamradios.com/Ampliphase.html
http://www.oldradio.com/archives/hardware/RCA/50.htm
The original Lorenz transmitter stayed on
the site until 1962. It is not clear
if it was used until that
date. Attempts were made to send the
transmitter to museums, but none were interested.
In 1963 the
transmitter was unfortunately junked. All
that remains of it is the power panel on the lower floor.
The control console and audio racks are still located on the upper floor.
A number of documentaries, films,
and publications have been made about the station and events that
occurred. Most are in Polish or
German. A BBC film was made and
broadcast in 1966. In 2002,
the city purchased the site from Polish Telecom Company.
From this it became the museum
celebrated this year.
Today the tower is paying its way supporting cell phone,
emergency communications, and other
services.
It is carefully maintained to make sure it will be usable for the
foreseeable future. The
transmitter
building is the main museum. The
future plans for the other two buildings include a
restaurant and a hotel.
The rest of the grounds have been turned into a beautiful public park.
The grand opening of the Gliwice radio museum was on the
70th anniversary of the "Provocation" in
1939.
The pictures included are some that I took during the two visits to the
station site, and from my
brother in law taken during the grand opening.
There is also a 237 page book published, in Polish, about the history
of
the site with many additional historic pictures.
I would also like to thank Bronislaw,
Tadeusz, and the book author Andrzej Jarczewski for their
contributions to the story. All the pictures from our Radio Gliwice visit can be viewed
at:
www.radionational.org
David Jennings, WJ6W
September 2009
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: David Jennings is a multiple
Emmy Award winner for the design of
television systems and an avid Amateur Radio
operator, with a special interest in Amplitude
Modulation.
Bronislaw Korniak
and Tadeusz Korniak for all the help discovering the site and sending pictures
and information.
Andrzej Jarczewski, author of the book "Provokado Gliwice
31.08.1939."
Krystyna Jennings for translating portions of the book into English and, of
course, making me take our trip to Poland!
[1]
The "storm microphone" was used to make a special announcement
when dangerous lightening storms
threatened the transmitting equipment. To
detect lightening storms, a "thunder counter" in the audio racks
was connected to a secondary antenna mounted near the tower.
When lightening was very active as
indicated by the counter, the engineers would read an announcement using the
storm microphone and sign the
station off. They then pressed a
button on the control console that grounded the antenna for protection.
(Click Here for TEXT ONLY version)
Gliwice Photo Gallery (Click on thumbnail for full-sized image)
Gliwice Museum & Park Opening (Click on thumbnail for full-sized image)
Gliwice Museum Brochure (Click on thumbnail for full-sized image)
Editors Note: When reading this
remarkable picture story one can only wonder how
the richest nation in the world
allows its radio heritage to be bulldozed and stripped
for scrap metal when a
nation like Poland, facing many social and economic
challenges finds the
resources to preserve its history for future generations.
Gliwice is a
role-model for the preservation of America's remaining, historic
shortwave and
broadcast radio stations. As the planners at Gliwice have proven,
these
unique facilities can serve a practical as well as an educational purpose! A.P.