|
 Oscillators were never my forte. My biggest
exposure to oscillators was unintentional oscillations in amplifier circuits ;-(
. This
Oscillator Quiz, published in the November 1962 issue of Popular Electronics
magazine, would embarrass me if I attempted to complete it. Therefore, I will simply
state that I highly regard your oscillator prowess if you do better than 50% on
it. I guessed correctly at a couple of the more familiar circuits, but cannot even
make an educated guess at most of them. Don't let the presence of vacuum tubes scare
you off; mentally replace them with a FET and move on...
 These letters represent an unfriendly exchange
between The Electrical Experimenter editor Hugo Gernsback and Dr. K.G.
Frank, of the Telefunken System of Wireless Technology, of Germany. Gernsback correctly
accused Dr. Frank of engaging in espionage for Germany and against the United
States of America, during World War I at a time we were not officially at war
with the Axis powers. He was arrested and interred for the duration of the war for
sending out "unneutral
messages" from the broadcast station at Sayville, Long Island, New York. See
"Radiobotage" in this month's (September 1941) editorial...
 "There's an interesting development in amateur
ballooning: using so-called
superpressure
balloons, which float high in the atmosphere indefinitely rather than simply
going up and up and then popping like a normal weather balloon. Superpressure balloons
can last for months and travel long distances, potentially circumnavigating the
globe, all the while reporting their position. You might imagine that an undertaking
like this would be immensely difficult and cost thousands of dollars. In fact, you
can build and launch such a balloon for about the cost of a fancy dinner out. You
just have to think small! That's why amateur balloonists call them pico balloons.
The payload of a pico balloon is so light..."
 Many of the words in this week's
crossword puzzle pertain to radar engineering. All the rest of
the words are related to technology, engineering, science, mathematics, aeronautics,
ham radio, chemistry, etc. There are no names of Hollywierd actors, shoe designers,
or romance novel titles. I will be glad to create a special edition crossword for
your newspaper, newsletter, etc. Enjoy...
 It's time to gather 'round for another story
about fictional radio service shop owner
Mac McGregor and his trusted sidekick technician, Barney. In this
episode, an errantly wired bypass capacitor on a chassis from one of the old AC/DC
radio sets caused Mac to get a 300-volt wakeup call when his hand brushed against
it. After explaining the situation to Barney and apprising him of the danger it
poses to an owner who unwittingly sticks his/her hand into the back of the cabinet,
Mac lists a few other common dangers to watch for. Radios that ran on either AC
or DC power were very common back in the early days because there were homes and
businesses that had both type systems wired in to the premises - in part due to
the famous battle between Thomas Edison's preferred DC electrical distribution system
and Nikola Tesla's preferred AC electrical distribution system. Another reason for
DC compatibility was that prior to the
Rural Electrification Act of 1936, many...
 An incredibly glaring example of the famous
admonishment* that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it, Radio-Craft
editor Hugo Gernsback wrote in May of 1941, a full half year before the United States
of America officially entered World War II, about how current conditions regarding
domestic commercial radio broadcast stations were likely being used by German agents
to send coded messages to offshore vessels (ships, submarines, and aircraft).
In example, he cited, amazingly, an article he himself published in 1915 in
The Electrical Experimenter accusing Dr. K. G. Frank, of the German Telefunken
company, of conducting spy operations from the Sayville, NY, station on Long Island...
 Considering that not much more than a year
before this article was written that the transistor had been invented, it is impressive
that already Raytheon was producing a commercially available
CK703 "crystal triode." That nomenclature was a natural extension
of the preceding crystal diode already being widely adapted in circuit design. If
you have wondered how the transistor schematic symbol came to be as it is, you will
learn why here where the emitter and collector symbols actually both have arrows
on the ends that contact the base, indicating the "point contact" physical arrangement
of the semiconductor junctions. Shortly thereafter the arrow on the collector port
was eliminated, primarily, I suppose to avoid confusion when the E, B, and C labels
are not present...
 "CDimension recently unveiled a technology
that enables conventional semiconductor fabs to use ultra-thin semiconductor materials
to manufacture vertically integrated arrays of extremely small, fast, and efficient
"2D" transistors. It has the potential to change what's possible for both digital
and power devices. According to the company, it's already helping several chipmakers
explore how to apply their technology to produce digital and analog ICs that offer
dramatically higher logic densities, operating speeds, and energy efficiency..."
 Here are three more Radio Service Data Sheets
added to the online archive. As mentioned many times in the past, I post these for
the benefit of hobbyists looking for information to assist in repairing or restoring
vintage communication equipment. These particular radio models -
Emerson Model 20A and 25A,
Pilot Model B-2,
General Electric Model K-40-A - were featured in a 1933 edition
of
Radio-Craft magazine...
 Nationwide commercial
television broadcasting companies wasted no time stringing coaxial
cable and microwave towers from sea to shining sea once the NTSC format standard
was adopted and manufacturers had spooled up production after World War II.
Adoption of cable services was slow because a fee was involved, but once purely
cable channels started being added the perceived value increase convinced consumers
to open their wallets. Eventually cable eclipsed over-the-air broadcasts for all
but extremely rural areas that were not serviced by cable. Along came satellite
TV to take care of filling that void. Once a small, inexpensive, unobtrusive Ka-band
antenna replaced the huge S-band backyard parabolic dishes and subscription prices
dropped significantly, suburbanites and city dwellers picked it up. Soon, cable
companies were feeling the pinch as their customer bases shrunk. Not ones to sit...
 A lot of RF Cafe visitors might not be familiar
with some of the electronic waveforms presented in this
Oscilloscope Quiz by Popular Electronics magazine's ultimate quizmaster, Robert
Balin. The shapes are recognizable to anyone who has done a lot of design, troubleshooting,
testing, or alignments on analog circuits. Electronics repairmen were intimately
familiar with these - and much more complex - waveforms. Modulation of the z-axis
is especially cool as it varies the intensity of the waveform. I always roll my
eyes when, back in the day, a laboratory or medical facility in movies or on TV
had an oscilloscope display with a Lissajous pattern writhing on the display...
 "SpaceX is putting its longstanding focus
of sending humans to Mars on the backburner to prioritize
establishing a settlement on the Moon, founder Elon Musk said Sunday. The South
Africa-born billionaire's space company has found massive success as a NASA contractor,
but critics have for years panned Musk's Mars colonization plans as overambitious.
The move also puts Musk in alignment with U.S. President Trump's shift away from
Mars. "For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing
city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas
Mars would take 20+ years. Difficulties in reaching Mars include the fact that "it
is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months..."
 Life for the blind has always been fraught
with obstacles that we who can see will never be able to fully appreciate. Society
has come a long way in accommodating the special needs of those with no or severely
reduced eyesight. Recent news stories report of experiments with electronic implants
that use implants set into the eye and couple somehow with the retina to send image
information to the person's brain. While in no way close to being able to be called
sight, it has at least allowed the guy or girl with training to detect and avoid
obstacles based on changes in scenery shading. We are probably a century away from
true bionic vision, incremental improvements will thankfully improve
the lives of our thusly challenged brethren. This article from a 1947 edition of
Radio News reports on efforts made by the New York Institute for the Educations
of the Blind to make amateur radio...
 everythingRF, a long-time supporter of this
website, is now, in addition to publishing e-books, putting out an
e-zine which provides
some insightful content, interesting products and expert interviews within the RF &
Microwave industry. Vol. 4, now available, includes articles on Next Gen Adjustable
Q-Band Gain Equalizers, Earth to Orbit:The Important Role of Antennas in NTN, Benefits
for Phased Array Systems Through SM Components, as well as product features, upcoming
industry events, and more.
Download it now.
 Have you ever heard of a
"globar" resistor? They have been around since the early days
of radio and were used, among other things, to protect vacuum tube heater elements
from burning up due to high inrush current when first turned on. Globars have a
negative temperature coefficient (NTC) of resistance so that, opposite of standard
carbon and metal film type resistors, they exhibit a higher resistance when cold
than when hot. Mac and Barney discuss their use in this episode of "Mac's Radio
Service Shop." You might be more familiar with the name "thermistor" for such devices,
but globars are unique elements in that their construction from non-inductive ceramic
material makes them useful at high power levels and high frequencies. Globar appears
to now be owned by Kanthal (aka Kanthal Globar). Interestingly, Keysight Technologies...
 Louis Garner was the semiconductor guru
for Popular Electronics magazine in the 1960s when he wrote this article
attempting to
demystify the proliferation of over 2,000 transistor types. He devised a "transistor
tree," tracing evolution from the obsolete point-contact transistor - unstable with
high gain but noisy - to advanced designs balancing cost, frequency, power, and
reliability. It covers pnp and npn basics, then details processes: grown-junction
(inexpensive, good high-frequency); meltback diffused (similar, better response);
alloyed-junction (popular for power); surface-barrier family (SB, SBDT, MA, MADT;
excellent high-frequency, low voltage); post-alloy-diffused...
 "Gentlemen,
ei*π
+ 1 = 0 is surely true, it is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand
it, and we don't know what it means. But we have proved it, and therefore we know
it must be truth." - Benjamin Peirce
(not to be confused with Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce), 19th century Harvard mathematician.
ei*π
+ 1 = 0 i, BTW, is known as
Euler's identity
- engineers live by it.
 "Scientists have shown that
twisting a crystal at the nanoscale can turn it into a tiny, reversible diode,
hinting at a new era of shape-engineered electronics. Researchers at the RIKEN Center
for Emergent Matter Science, working with collaborators, have created a new technique
for building three-dimensional nanoscale devices directly from single crystals.
The approach uses a focused ion beam instrument to precisely carve materials at
extremely small scales. Using this method, the team shaped tiny helical structures
from a topological magnetic material made of cobalt, tin, and sulfur, known by its
chemical formula Co3Sn2S2..."
 I am constantly amazed when reading stories
about how easily Adolph Hitler rose to power in Germany by encouraging and exploiting
resentment of his countrymen over being forced, among other concessions outlined
in the Treaty of Versailles, to disarm militarily and make reparations for atrocities
committed in World War I. Part of the Nazi (National Socialist) party success
was extensive use of propaganda via print, radio, and the relatively new technology
of television. Government exercised complete control over the mainstream media (i.e.,
not "underground") by dictating content that promoted the proclaimed virtues of
Nazism and the Aryan race and the vices of just about every other form of government
and race. At the height of Hitler's reign of terror during the Third Reich era,
radio and television sets were only permitted to use crystals
tuned to state-sponsored...
 Manmade electrical noise (QRM) and natural
electrical noise (QRN) has been the nemesis of communications
- both wired and wireless - since the first signals were sent. While it is true
that over the last century the amount of "background" noise has increased significantly,
the ability of modern circuits to deal with (reject) it and/or accommodate (error
correction) it has pretty much kept up with the advancement. You might be tempted
to think that "back in the good old days" such problems did not exist, but operators
were plagued by poorly designed and inadequately filtered transmitters as well as
really deficient electrical service installation that spewed noise from transformers,
inadequately grounded transmission lines, lousy connections...
 Please take a few moments to visit the
everythingRF website to see how they can assist you with your
project. everythingRF is a product discovery platform for RF and microwave products
and services. They currently have 354,801 products from more than 2478 companies
across 485 categories in their database and enable engineers to search for them
using their customized parametric search tool. Amplifiers, test equipment, power
couplers and dividers, coaxial connectors, waveguide, antennas, filters, mixers,
power supplies, and everything else. Please visit everythingRF today to see how
they can help you.
 The debate about upgrading electronics service
shop equipment
from vacuum tube to solid-state instruments was raging in the late 1960s, when
this Mac's Service Shop story appeared in Electronics World magazine. Barney
is querying Mac regarding FET-based VOM performance specifications he is considering
to replace a VTVM. He covets the Hewlett-Packard 217A square-wave generator, delivering
clean 1 Hz-10 MHz waves with 5-ns rise time and scope triggering, justifying its
$300-$400 cost for precise scope testing. An electronic counter for 5 Hz-10 MHz
frequencies, with four- or six-digit readouts and line- or crystal-gated accuracy..
 A lot of people like to demean engineers
and scientists for their propensity to want to
conduct experiments and obtain measured, empirical data rather
than "winging it" and being satisfied with "intuitive" knowledge or the contemporarily
popular term "gut." If mankind had not adopted scientific methods and ventured beyond
the "cradle of civilization" on the African continent, we would all still be living
in grass huts, hurling rocks at prey, making clicking sounds for communication,
and foraging for berries. Quantifying and categorizing all things in nature helps
inventors create new and improved implements that help make life better. Early on
it was mostly individuals like Archimedes, Euler, Newton, and Edison who built the
pool of knowledge that fed and evolved into corporations, governments, and universities
doing the vast majority of the work. Bell Laboratories...
 "A new metasurface lets scientists flip
between ultra-stable light vortices, paving the way for tougher, smarter wireless
communication. Scientists have developed a new optical device capable of producing
two different types of vortex-shaped light patterns: electric and magnetic. These
unusual light structures, called
skyrmions, are known for their exceptional stability and resistance to interference.
Because they hold their shape so reliably, they are strong candidates for carrying
information in future wireless communication systems. 'Our device not only generates
more than one vortex pattern in free-space-propagating..."
 You can buy a pretty good metal detector
today for a hundred dollars that will find coins buried many inches deep and larger
metallic items even deeper, and you even get discriminator functions to filter out
unwanted objects like tin cans. They weigh just a couple pounds and can be used
with one arm. Compare that to early
metal detectors that had huge induction coils on a frame so heavy
that shoulder straps were needed just to lug them around. Some models came on wheels
for pushing or pulling like a cart. You could plan to spend a few hundred dollars
(a thousand or more in today's dollars) for one. Even then, they were not as sophisticated
as the $50 models sold in Walmart now. In classic fashion, teen electronics hobbyists
Carl and Jerry use their technical prowess to design and build their own metal detector
and then unintentionally using it to convince...
|
 • Legacy
Memory (DDR2, 3, 4) in Demand but Scarce
• 2026 is
Year of 6G Slop
• FCC to
Exempt Amateurs from Foreign Adversary Reporting
• Continuing
Your Professional Education in 2026
• India Reaches
400M 5G Subscribers
in 3 Years
• EIB Backs
Europe's 1st Gallium Production Investment
 The
RF Cafe Homepage Archive
is a comprehensive collection of every item appearing daily on this website since
2008 - and many from earlier years. Many thousands of pages of unique content have
been added since then.
 With such a good response to the posting
of articles from vintage QST magazines, I figured it would be worth investing
in some copies of other electronics-related magazines because people old and young
enjoy learning about the history of electronics.
Popular Electronics was published from October 1954 through April 1985.
I remember reading the magazine back in my USAF days (1978-1982). A couple batches
of Popular Electronics magazines came up for auction on eBay back in the middle
of 2011, and I managed to snag one set that included the December 1954 issue (Vol.
1, No. 3, which was the third edition ever printed). It also included some editions
from early 1955 and others stretched into the early 1960s. This is the first installment.
Popular Electronics was a hobbyist's magazine, and was chock full articles
on small electronics projects, Ham radio, radio-controlled aircraft equipment, audio
amplifiers, model train control, basic electronics lessons, and useful charts and
tables of data...
 Whenever I see advertisements for electronics
training courses, I think of the line in "Duel in the Snow, or, Red Ryder Nails
the Cleveland Street Kid," where it mentions how during the Great Depression years
the magazines were filled with ads "promising successful careers repairing radios."
That story, which ultimately became the book and movie "A
Christmas Story," was contained in Gene Shepherd's book In God We Trust: All
Others Pay Cash. Jean Shepherd was a radio announcer and story teller who first
read "A Christmas Story," on his WOR (New York City) show in 1970. You can listen
to a 1974 broadcast in the YouTube video embedded below. This reading is slightly
different than the one given to me by a guy who actually recorded it on tape...
 The use of intermediate frequency (IF) coils
and
interstage coupling transformers were a major feature of vacuum tube based receivers.
Both served the dual purpose of impedance matching and frequency selectivity. Resistive
losses in the relatively large passive components required careful attention to
matters that affect signal sensitivity, especially in the front end where losses
add significantly to the overall noise figure. This article appeared in an early
1930s edition of Radio-Craft magazine at a time when superheterodyne receivers
were just coming into popularity and were a new challenge for many designers because
of the variable frequency oscillator...
 Mac McGregor, owner of
Mac's Radio Service Shop, can always be counted on to provide his apprentice
technician, Barney, with a lesson from his own life-long attendance at the School
of Hard Knocks. Barney is your stereotypical young buck whose level of seriousness
needs occasional alignment, just as do the radio and television sets he services.
In this episode, I can't find where Mac actually solved the intermittent electrical
condition believed to be causing the problem - weird. The "Mac's Radio Service Shop"
series ran in Radio & Television News magazine for many years prior
to a similar electronics story series called "Carl & Jerry" that appeared in
Popular Electronics. Both were created by consummate storyteller John T. Frye...
 We don't hear much - if any - talk these
days about a certain weapon type being a "peace maker," "game changer," or a "stale
mate proposition." That is because most nations, or for that matter terrorist groups,
have access to some ferocious weapons. The world has operated for a long time on
the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) principle, where skirmishes have been fairly
local. Many conspiratorialists as well as arguably rational people believe the real
game at hand is Mutually Assured Financial Destruction (no clever acronym for that
one), where world financial powers cooperatively trade off monetary wins and losses
via what was termed by President Eisenhower the
Military-Industrial Complex. You don't need to be one who wears a tinfoil hat
or keeps your savings buried in a jar in the back yard to suspect at least some
form of malfeasance is going on at the expense of we the little people...
 We all know that for the most part television
stinks. Back in 1951 when this article appeared in Radio-Electronics magazine,
the technology was very new and it was considered a miracle not to be wasted on
inane programming. Newscasts actually presented news and not opinion, movies and
sitcoms cast the nuclear family, law enforcement, the military, religion, and patriotism
in a positive light rather than as the purveyors of evil in the world. By the end
of the 1960s to early 1970s a lot of that had changed. Political and social agendas
weaseled their way into nearly all programming to the extent that terms like "boob
tube" and even, yes, "smellivision,"
became common monikers for television. The form of smellivision presented in this
article was granted patent (US2540144A) protection in 1951 under the title, Television
with scent effects..."
 Here is a very nice
primer on capacitors that appeared in the April 1960 issue of Popular Electronics.
A lot of ground is covered including history, form factors, dielectric types (ceramic
mentioned as a new variety at the time), applications, etc. Interestingly, units
of picofarads (pF) were still being referred to as μμfarads. In fact, since not
a lot of work was being done yet in the GHz realm, there was not much use for pF
other than maybe to tune a filter response. Author Ken Gilmore reveals a sense of
humor when writing of early capacitance experiments as he says, "Since they couldn't
think of much to do with the Leyden jar except stand around and shock each other,
they didn't have any need for an accurate system of measuring the stored charge,
or the capacitance, of the jar."
 The early 1960s was evidently a good time
for printing quizzes in electronics magazines. Popular Electronics was
no exception. As I look through my collection I am finding quite a few. Here is
the latest, from the January 1963 edition, that tests basic knowledge of using analog
multimeters (digital types were not around yet). All are pretty straightforward;
however, be careful with question 9. At first I thought maybe it was a trick question,
but the key to arriving at the correct answer is noting that you are measuring a
low resistance. Be sure to consider the properties of a standard multimeter of the
era. Give it a try for yourself to see how well you fare. There was another
Electronic Measurement Quiz in the August 1967 issue of Popular Electronics...
 The Radio Service Data Sheets that were
published in Radio-Craft magazine usually seem to have more information
included than those published in other magazines, at least in the same era (1940-ish).
It might have to do with how much material is provided by the manufacturer rather
than a decision by the magazine editors. Either way, here are the schematics, chassis
layout, and service info for the
Lafayette Model B-100 through B-103. As with most radios built in the era, the
woodwork and artistic design of the cabinet are exquisite. There are still people
searching for such data, but fortunately the Internet is making it much easier to
locate. None of the three models show up on eBay as of this writing...
 This article reporting ongoing research for
auto anti-collision systems and backup warning systems appeared in a 1972 issue
of Popular Electronics has only come to practical fruition within the last
decade and a half. High-end cars were offering such equipment options in the
early 2000s, but it has only been commonplace since around 2010. 1972 components
were still pretty large and power hungry, and digital processing capacity and speed
was significantly less advanced as well. Bendix, one of the early developers of
anti-collision systems, estimated that the option on a new car might add about $200
to the price, which was a really ambitious estimate, even considering that is the
equivalent of $1,492 in 2024 money per BLS Inflation Calculator. The total add-on
cost of both anti-collision and backup warning systems...
RF Cascade Workbook is the next phase in the evolution of RF Cafe's long-running
series, RF Cascade Workbook. Chances are you have never used a spreadsheet
quite like this (click
here for screen capture). It is a full-featured RF system cascade parameter
and frequency planner that includes filters and mixers for a mere $45. Built in
MS Excel, using RF Cascade Workbook is a cinch and the format
is entirely customizable. It is significantly easier and faster than using a multi-thousand
dollar simulator when a high level system analysis is all that is needed...
 "In my judgment, it will be only a few years
before all
police
departments will be equipped with radio," Superintendent A. A. Carroll, Grand
Rapids Police Department. Such a statement could have been deemed risky - or even
career-ending back in the late 1920 to early 1930s when radio communications was
still in its infancy. A lot of public figures denounced radio for anything other
than a means of receiving entertainment at home. After all, the equipment was physically
large and very power hungry. It was considered folly by many people to believe that
an automobile's electrical generation capability would ever be able to power a vacuum
tube receiver, much less a transmitter that would have enough range to be useful.
Still, police and fire departments forged ahead and became some of the leaders in
technology implementation. It was a huge deal in 1930 when a police station installed
radios in its fleet of patrol cars, often requiring special fund raising activities
or raiding of funds originally set aside for other projects...
 All RF Cafe Quizzes make great fodder for
employment interviews for technicians or engineers - particularly those who are
fresh out of school or are relatively new to the work world. Come to think of it,
they would make equally excellent study material for the same persons who are going
to be interviewed for a job. The subject of
Quiz #16 is Antennas. You don't
need to be an antenna expert to score well, but if you do or plan to work with antennas
and cannot answer a question like, "What does dBi, the most often used unit for
antenna gain (or directivity), stand for?," then maybe it is time for some review...
Sunday 17
 For two decades, I have been creating custom
engineering- and science-themed crossword puzzles for the brain-exercising
benefit and pleasure of RF Cafe visitors who are fellow cruciverbalists. This November
17, 2019, puzzle uses a database of thousands of words which I have built up over
the years and contains only clues and terms associated with engineering, science,
physical, astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, etc. You will never find a word taxing
your knowledge of a numbnut soap opera star or the name of some obscure village
in the Andes mountains. You might, however, encounter the name of a movie star like
Hedy Lamarr or a geographical location like Tunguska, Russia, for reasons
which...
 Since 2000, I have been creating custom
technology-themed crossword puzzles for the brain-exercising benefit and
pleasure of RF Cafe visitors who are fellow cruciverbalists. The jury is out on
whether or not this type of mental challenge helps keep your gray matter from
atrophying in old age, but it certainly helps maintain your vocabulary and
cognitive skills at all ages. A database of thousands of words has been built up
over the years and contains only clues and terms associated with engineering,
science, physical, astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, etc. You will never find a
word taxing your knowledge of a numbnut soap opera star or the name of some
obscure village in the Andes mountains. You might, however, encounter the name
of a movie star like Hedy Lamarr or...
 When Charles Feldman published this article
on
thin-film transistors (TFTs) in a 1964 issue of Electronics magazine, he had
no idea that the devices would eventually play a major role in liquid crystal displays
(LCDs) in everything from wristwatches to large screen television and computer displays.
Materials and fabrication techniques have evolved considerably since 1964, but the
fundamentals remain the same. Other than LCDs and some solid-state sensors, I am
not familiar with any other applications that are heavy users of TFT technology.
This 2016 paper titled, "Review on thin-film transistor technology, its applications,
and possible new applications to biological cells," gives a little historical perspective
and a comparison of CMOS versus TFT...
 For the sake of avid cruciverbalists amongst
us, each week I create a new
crossword puzzle that has a theme related to engineering, mathematics,
chemistry, physics, and other technical words. You will never be asked the name
of a movie star unless he/she was involved in a technical endeavor(e.g., Hedy Lamar). Enjoy...
 It is probably safe to say that most people, especially
today, believe that the United States was suddenly and unexpectedly thrust into involvement
in
World War II on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese navy launched a
surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The fact is the U.S. was "unofficially" engaged
for over a year beforehand by "lending" both equipment and personnel to British,
Russian, Chinese, French, and other militaries as part of their effort to drive
back invading German, Italian, and Japanese Axis forces. World War II actually
began in the Fall of1939 with Hitler's invasion of Poland. Americans, being
safely separated from the front lines by the Seven Seas, knew little of and were
concerned little about the goings on "Over There." Once the call to arms was
sounded with the Pearl Harbor attack, the country quickly and enthusiastically
converted to full wartime mode. Manufacturing plants... |
