The Blue Eagle Mystery - Radio Pirate Or Secret US Government Station?

early summer 1964 and music and voices appeared on the airwaves this is the voice of the Blue Eagle relaying the Blue Eagle Network said the station just before it broadcast its own theme song entitled The Blue Eagle Blues listeners wondered about this new signal and Commercial broadcasters not only wondered but also became concerned because the station was causing interference to their signals who or what was the mysterious Blue Eagle the station without a call sign and where was it located although the station was heard over a wide area it seemed to be centered in the area of Baltimore Maryland the unusual radio voice announced no call sign no location and offered no suitable explanation for its existence at least one dxr in Baltimore wrote to the Federal Communication Commission to ask who is the Blue Eagle and what's going on here surely the FCC would know they are the people who authorize the stations we hear on the airwaves and police the frequencies to make sure everything's okay it wasn't long before he received an answer saying the station you intercepted was unlicensed Engineers from field offices at our field engineering Bureau located the station and while not actually observing the station in operation contacted the suspected operator and warned him of the possible results and penalties of such unlicensed operation it was a straightforward enough answer and seemingly explained away the Mystery station although it was a bit odd that the FCC would send a warning to a person who the agency had not actually observed operating the station previous announcements from the FCC in relations are catching Pirates always contained reports of FCC field Engineers walking in on illegal stations while they were in the act of broadcasting either way the FCC did seem aware of the station and they said they'd handled it in their own way it was probably just some guy with an unlicensed transmitter it wasn't an unheard-off situation and it seemed to be sorted a few days after the FCC wrote the letter the Blue Eagle was heard on the same frequencies with the same programming the same theme song and same interference the complete story even to this day has never been fully told and completely explained and no official accounts has ever been released the closest thing to an official explanation came in a second FCC letter written two months later in response to another inquiry about the Blue Eagle it said regarding the voice of the Blue Eagle what has been observed was the U.S government intermittent testing of broadcasting operations and related facilities for worldwide use because it's a government operation it is not licensed by the commission and the identification the voice of the Blue Eagle is used in lieu of a call sign both FCC letters were signed by the same member of staff and this situation continued to raise many questions with radio fans it was similar to the situation that had come about only four years earlier with radio Swan the CIA backed anti-castro broadcaster located on Swan Island then a U.S possession in the Caribbean the 50 kilowatt broadcaster was operating on 1160 kilohertz and creating massive interference to the operations of KSL in Salt Lake City and wjjd in Chicago when asked about the existence and operations of radio Swan the FCC replied that it had no information in its files on such a broadcaster the Blue Eagle situation became even more confusing when the dxer who wrote the original letter called the local FCC office in Baltimore to report that the station was still on the air the dxr later stated though I was engaged in conversation for about 10 minutes I didn't find out much he told me that the person who wrote me at the time was not aware that the Blue Eagle was authorized how was it that a field engineer had better information on a situation such as this than a staff executive in Washington there were some answers and they were located somewhere between the place where eagles turn blue and tape turns red in fact there was a rational explanation the idea originated somewhere deep within the Pentagon the idea was to take a large aircraft and outfit it with generators and broadcast equipment for the standard am band shortwave frequencies and even TV channels the result would be an Airborne radio TV station that could become an instant propaganda and information tool anywhere in the world whatever the need the station could be sent there quickly a similar plan had been used successfully by The Voice of America when it equips a Coast Guard Cutter The Courier with elaborate broadcast gear and anchored it at the island of Rhodes this game was passed on to the U.S Navy which supplied an old Lockheed Constellation for the job constellations were designed in the early 1940s as TWA luxury liners during World War II they became known as c69s and by the 1960s the Navy had dubbed it the c121 its four 2000 horsepower engines could lift it to 35 000 feet and being relatively slow it was a suitable platform for a flying broadcast station the Navy converted the aircraft equipping it with two am transmitters two shortwave transmitters and a UHF television transmitter along with the antennas for these units the equipment was heavy and this would prove to be problematic though the Navy and others in the Department of Defense and other agencies which participated in the Blue Eagle project had no desire to fool the FCC the fact that they may be doing so in some way or most likely didn't cause them to lose any sleep the FCC controls broadcast frequencies and the licensing of stations that operates on them but they don't actually license or authorize stations operated by other agencies of the federal government including the military the agency does acknowledge that there are certain communication frequencies and band segments set aside for federal use when FCC licenses are issued they're generally not for operations in those reserved bands as a courtesy other federal agencies let the FCC know if they need to use frequencies normally regulated by the FCC either this didn't happen or the FCC kept quiet the project was ready to go and was given the name Blue Eagle an identifier as opposed to an official call sign testing was required and so up went Blue Eagle it initially flew down the East Coast transmitting regularly crewman took turns being DJs they had Jazz country music rock pop and even BBC relays plus the programming of two nearby commercial radio stations wldb and wmid in Atlantic City New Jersey signals from the latter were apparently picked up directly off the air and re-transmitted the station was really only performing technical tests on the transmitting equipment and antenna systems and seeing what its signal coverage would be like from different altitudes there was no intention of providing propaganda or entertainment to any specific audience Blue Eagle was first reported by listeners on 19 100 kilohertz the signals were at a fair strength in the national capital area though they tended to fade from time to time and their so-called programs had even tended to vanish right in the middle of a musical selection the trouble began when Blue Eagle began its programming in a new spot in the radio spectrum this time it was on 532 kilohertz just below the low frequency end of the broadcast band not only did it have a strong signal on 532 kilohertz but it produced an array of harmonics on other frequencies it was after these instances that the FCC was queried and having apparently been told little about the project could explain little the exact meaning of the account telling how the FCC located the station contacted the suspected operator and warned him of the possible results and penalties is known only to the staffer who wrote the letter as the summer and the tests were on Blue Eagle appeared on additional frequencies including 95330 and 13 680 kilohertz it then vanished for a while but in April of 1965 it turned up again this time it was flying over the Dominican Republic during the thwarted Revolt mounted by the followers of deposed President Juan Bosch from there the plane headed west and was soon being picked up by dxers in California and Washington State despite the measured success the Blue Eagle had in Santo Domingo the project was not wholly accepted the constellation it turned out was badly overloaded normally it could reach 35 000 feet but had a normal service ceiling of about 24 000 feet with a normal load this one however had to hold to a much lower altitude it could just about reach 10 000 feet but that wasn't sufficient to gain a really commanding range for the equipment aboard especially the UHF television transmitter the Blue Eagle was beginning to turn into a white elephant according to one report The Voice of America was quietly asked if they had used for a fully equipped broadcasting aircraft they said thanks but no thanks it next turned up on an unspecified island in the Pacific and sat languishing on an unused portion of the field but true to its old habit of rising from the grave it was to appear again early in 1966 came an announcement out of official circles in Saigon that revealed the presence in Vietnam of an aircraft outfitted with amongst other things no less than two UHF television transmitters the plane and navy constellation was to Circle above Saigon and would transmit programs simultaneously in Vietnamese and English no one among the Vietnamese population owned a TV set so 1000 TV sets were ordered by the usaid mission for distribution to the Vietnamese the American military command planned to bring a further 5000 in once operational and with the TV sets in place the Blue Eagle was eventually joined by a second TV plane called son of Blue Eagle by its crew TV shows were broadcast on Channel 11 for afvn the American forces Vietnam network and on Channel 9 for thvn TV the official station of the Republic of Vietnam these aircraft were also known as blue eagles and operated Under the Umbrella project Jenny the controversy had not ended there however DX has talked about the mysterious Blue Eagle for several years afterwards as late as 1969 there were those who were still searching out the story behind the story and were expressing some doubts as to whether the Blue Eagle of 532 kilohertz and shortway fame was in any way at all connected to the Blue Eagle of Santo Domingo and Vietnam One the exit in the April May 1969 issue of radio TV experimental magazine flatly dubbed the entire episode as probably radio's greatest hoax of 1965 and expressed the opinion that the 532 kilohertz Blue Eagle was most likely a garden variety pirate broadcaster whose use of the ID Blue Eagle was only coincidental to the Navy's use of it a few weeks later I guess we'll never know [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Ringway Manchester

Views: 32,371

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Id: dZmt-s8fcbs

Length: 12min 47sec (767 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 22 2023