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Frances - were you able to turn up any direct links or photos of the radio towers at Camp Funston? -

Just sharing some interesting links below myself - when I tried to track down documentation of the installation of radio towers at the Camp Funston US Army barracks (built in 1917 & torn down soon after WW1 ended) as Frances mentions. Can't seem to find any links or photos of the radio towers, just aerial Camp photos with telephone poles & tall cylinder structures.

Folks should check out all the info on the WW1 war vehicles with radio structures on top (army vehicles) & actual WW1 "radio buildings" supposedly built for surveilling/intercepting the enemy messages. Very interesting information. Radio antennas ON the US army WW1 trucks/vehicles??

Some of the links I found:

March 4 - First known case of what will later be called Spanish flu: Private Albert Gitchell at Camp Funston, Fort Riley, Kansas. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_World_War_I

Photo - Camp Funston - (April 12, 2018) Kansas Historical Society

https://www.kansasmemory.org/item/218816/page/1

Article: "Chut, J’ecoute: The U.S. Army’s Use of Radio Intelligence in World War I" - Written By: Betsy Rohaly Smoot [no date given] from The [US] Army Historical Foundation

https://armyhistory.org/chut-jecoute-the-u-s-armys-use-of-radio-intelligence-in-world-war-i-2/

Caption under one of the article's photos showing the radio antennas on top of the WW1 vehicles:

"In September 1918, the AEF began mounting equipment on vehicles (referred to them as "tractors") to provide the mobility required for a war of movement. This photograph shows a radio goniometric tractor near Verdun, 26 September 1918. Radio goniometric stations conducted direction finding against t enemy radio traffic." (National Archives) [Assuming that refers to the US National Archives?]

"The United States entered World War I with minimal experience in radio intelligence and cryptologic work. Between mid-1917 and the Armistice in November 1918, the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) develped a creditable radio intelligence effort, not just by hard work but through substantial contributions of hardware and experience from their British and French allies. By the end of the war more than 500 men were operating a complex, cross-organizational collection, analysis, and reporting effort and they had established operational techniques that would influence the future of American Signals Intelligence (SIGINT)."

How mainstream history explains the beginning of the 1918 "flu" in Jan 1918 Haskell County, Kansas >

Smithsonian explanation doesn't pass the "smell" test - "[Haskell] KS hogs may have caused the flu," >

And we know now that viruses have never been proven to exist, so this "flu" narrative can't be true.

This article is listed under the mag section: The Next Pandemic - A Smithsonian Special Report >

November 2017 -John M. Barry - The toll of history’s worst epidemic surpasses all the military deaths in World War I and World War II combined. And it may have begun in the United States

Excerpt: How the Horrific 1918 Flu Spread Across America

Article says: "We cannot say for certain that that happened in 1918 in Haskell County, but we do know that an influenza outbreak struck in January, an outbreak so severe that, although influenza was not then a “reportable” disease, a local physician named Loring Miner—a large and imposing man, gruff, a player in local politics, who became a doctor before the acceptance of the germ theory of disease but whose intellectual curiosity had kept him abreast of scientific developments—went to the trouble of alerting the U.S. Public Health Service. The report itself no longer exists, but it stands as the first recorded notice anywhere in the world of unusual influenza activity that year. The local newspaper, the Santa Fe Monitor, confirms that something odd was happening around that time: “Mrs. Eva Van Alstine is sick with pneumonia...Ralph Lindeman is still quite sick...Homer Moody has been reported quite sick...Pete Hesser’s three children have pneumonia ...Mrs J.S. Cox is very weak yet...Ralph Mc-Connell has been quite sick this week...Mertin, the young son of Ernest Elliot, is sick with pneumonia,...Most everybody over the country is having lagrippe or pneumonia.”

"Several Haskell men who had been exposed to influenza went to Camp Funston, in central Kansas. Days later, on March 4, the first soldier known to have influenza reported ill. The huge Army base was training men for combat in World War I, and within two weeks 1,100 soldiers were admitted to the hospital, with thousands more sick in barracks. Thirty-eight died. Then, infected soldiers likely carried influenza from Funston to other Army camps in the States—24 of 36 large camps had outbreaks—sickening tens of thousands, before carrying the disease overseas. Meanwhile, the disease spread into U.S. civilian communities."

When were radio towers first built in Kansas? This info is according to a Kansas history source. >

KSAC Radio Tower - Kansas Preservation Alliance

https://archives.kansaspreservationalliance.org/ksac-radio-tower/

The KSAC radio towers on the Kansas State University campus are an excellent example of early radio towers built in the United States. At the time of their construction in 1924, they represented the finest available radio technology. The original towers remain intact, the only remaining towers of their type in Kansas, and among a very few left in the US.

Excerpt: "In 1912, the physics department of Kansas State licensed a one-kilowatt transmitter and began daily weather broadcasts in Morse code. Radio technology was not advanced to the point that voice transmissions were possible. Many farmers had crystal detectors and learned Morse code well enough to receive these weather reports. In 1922, Professor Eric Lyon established a new 100-watt radio telephone station (WTG) capable of broadcasting the human voice and music. Remote broadcasts from Kansas State Agricultural College began on February 11, 1924. Three K-State faculty members each contributed $50 of their own money to lease telephone wires to link the university’s remote studio to a commercial radio station, KFKB.

On August 20, 1924, construction of a new 500-watt radio station began with call letters KSAC (Kansas State Agricultural College). The towers operated until the radio signal generated by KSAC was modernized in 1947 and a new 424-foot antenna was built on Denison Avenue. In 1974, the north tower of the original KSAC Radio towers was pressed into service once again, and has been used to microwave the studio signal on campus to the transmitter on Denison Ave. since that time.

Source: Kansas State Historical Society

National Register of Historic Places – Nomination Form

I'll keep searching for any links regarding the construction of the Camp Funston radio towers in 1917-1918 as this is very interesting to me personally. I spent some of my growing up days in sma;ll Kansas towns & my husband's parents both grew up in the center of Kansas & attended K State Univ ) where the early radio towers in this last history article were constructed in 1924.

The sentence that says - "In 1974, the north tower of the original KSAC Radio towers was pressed into service once again, and has been used to microwave the studio signal on campus to the transmitter on Denison Ave. since that time." - is frightening, isn't it? "Microwave the student signal"? Holy shit.

All of this information/background history is intriguing & raises many more questions than it answers.

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