Re.: https://mediumwave.info/2024/01/25/germany-27/
Information missing from the Radio Magazine article:
“The trading pawn in the hands of the U. S. had been the megawatt long wave transmitter located in Munich. The record shows that when the Soviets stopped jamming the VOA Russian programs in June of 1963, the VOA megawatt transmitter in Munich shut down very soon thereafter. In August 1968, when the Soviets resumed jamming of the VOA. […] the megawatt in Munich returned to the air. Again, in September of 1973 Soviet jamming against the VOA stopped and a month later the megawatt transmitter on 173 kHz went off the air. This off again-on again relation was rooted in the 1948 European Broadcasting Conference at Copenhagen where medium wave and long wave frequencies were assigned to the participating countries within Europe. Under the plan, 173 kHz was assigned to the USSR. […] The presence of the VOA megawatt transmitter in Munich appearing on the same frequency caused an acerbic reaction – the Soviets took the position that their 500 kW signal on 173 kHz from Moscow was being jammed”. (W.Edwards. Longwave Duel)
“The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had a good laugh about what the State Department thought it was doing with the Munich transmitter in the hearings on the future of RFE and RL in May 1971. It broadcast on the same frequency as Radio Moscow but Martin Hillenbrand, assistant secretary for the European bureau of the State Department denied that the VOA was jamming in a technical sense. “They were merely broadcasting a perfectly intelligible programme on the same wavelength.” he said. The frequency, 173, had been allocated to Radio Moscow by the 1948 Copenhagen agreement but the State Department argued that because Germany was not a party to the Convention it was in order for the VOA to use it.” (War of the Black Heavens, Broadcasting in the Cold War, Michael Nelson)
Mike Barraclough (2024-01-26)