Address
Post Office Box 408 – or "Casilla de correos cuatro cero ocho, GPO, Londres, Inglaterra" as it was given out over the air – was the address to which Radio Atlantico del Sur invited its listeners to write.
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| I received this card – eventually. Note the address. |
Why did the station announce an address, given that its target audience – members of the Argentine forces on the islands – would be unlikely to be able to write in?
The answer is that everything aired by RAdS had one of two purposes:
2. Establishing the station's credibility with the target audience so that the latter would be receptive to the messages in Point 1.
Announcing an address served the second purpose: winning and reinforcing credibility. It did this in three ways:
Authenticity: Even if they don't wish to do so, listeners expect a radio station to provide a means of contacting it.
Cover: The address helped to explain the bogus dedications that were read out to named members of the Argentine forces on the islands.
Transparency: A London address refuted any suggestion that the station was an unavowed black operation.
As a bonus, it might provide feedback. Which radio station doesn't want to hear from its listeners?
Win a candle-lit dinner with Mariana
Soliciting mail from listeners was neatly combined with the psychological tactics of RAdS's sole female presenter, Mariana Flores, whose work I have already discussed.
In an article on the station, the Times reported (5 June 1982):
There is currently a competition, offering a candle-lit dinner with Mariana to the sender of the letter that comes from furthest away from Ascension Island, though quite how the letters will reach her is not clear.Mariana, the Times explained, was the station's "star" presenter, "the Tokyo Rose of the 1980s":
"I have not yet met the man of my dreams," she told the troops enticingly recently.
I write to the station
I heard Radio Atlantico del Sur give out its address on 20 May 1982 (its second day on the air). I wrote to it, describing what I had heard (a so-called reception report), explaining my interest as a shortwave radio enthusiast, wishing the staff success in their work and asking if they could send me their card. [1]
I addressed the letter to PO Box 408 - and back it came to me about 10 days later.
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| The address was correct – but it was returned to me |
The envelope had been stamped INCOMPLETE ADDRESS with a penciled addition: "Not a Box No". I was amused to see that someone else had written "Try Bush House" (the HQ at the time of the BBC External Services). [2]
What had gone wrong? Perhaps the PO Box address was so new that not all sorting offices knew about it.
I heard that other radio enthusiasts had received replies from the Ministry of Defence's Main Building in Whitehall, and so the week after the end of the conflict I wrote again, using that address rather than the PO Box number. This time (and I still have a copy of my letter) I was able to congratulate the staff on a job well done and note that their work might have saved lives on both sides.
About 10 days later I received the card shown at the top of this page.
Who else wrote to them?
An MoD report written soon after the war said:
Listener response started slowly after about a week’s broadcasting, quickly rose to a steady stream and is still being received. More than 100 letters have been received from all over the world. Of most interest are those from Latin America which currently total 26. The vast majority speak in favourable terms of RAdS broadcasts which are generally described as informative and interesting. What emerged clearly is the dislike of most Latin Americans for Argentina and hence their approval of RAdS. Not surprisingly the five responses from Argentina are not favourable although they have confirmed the ineffectiveness of the attempts to jam and a keen awareness of RAdS in Argentina.
Three quarters of the letters, therefore, came from outside Latin America. It's likely that most of them were from shortwave radio enthusiasts (the jargon term is DXers) such as me.
That's not to say that some of the enthusiasts were not also interested in the political and military aspects of the station's operations.
When my friend and fellow DXer Mike Barraclough sent in his reception report he added that he felt press criticism of the station was unfair and that psychological warfare was justified if it was effective. In reply, he received the following note:
That's not to say that some of the enthusiasts were not also interested in the political and military aspects of the station's operations.
When my friend and fellow DXer Mike Barraclough sent in his reception report he added that he felt press criticism of the station was unfair and that psychological warfare was justified if it was effective. In reply, he received the following note:
Thank you for your letter and helpful comments. If you feel sufficiently strongly it would help our cause if you conveyed the same sentiments to the press. The Times and Observer have written articles which appear very prejudiced to us. You will appreciate that we cannot reply directly ourselves as MOD employees. Thank you again for writing.
The British press
The articles in the Times and Observer mentioned in that MoD reply to Mike were probably those published on 5 June and 30 May respectively. Both portrayed RAdS's broadcasts as amateurish.
The piece in the Times was particularly harsh. Headlined "The ultimate weapon – Radio station could be last straw for invaders", its opening sentence set the tone:
The Observer's article – headlined "What Britain tells the enemy" – was more measured, reporting that RAdS's broadcasts were exploiting differences within the Argentine junta, in particular criticisms by the air force of the inaction of the Argentine army and navy.
But the Observer also spoke of RAdS's "crude and occasionally comic attempts at demoralisation".
A helpful civil servant?
My reply from Radio Atlantico del Sur came in a standard OHMS franked buff envelope stamped with a return address in the MoD's Main Building.
But fellow DXers John Campbell and Gordon Darling reported that their replies came in envelopes postmarked, respectively, Hemel Hempstead and Chesham & Amersham (all three are commuter towns to the north of London), suggesting that an interested member of the MoD's staff who lived in that area took it upon themselves to handle mail from hobbyists in a private capacity, rather than as part of office business.
The articles in the Times and Observer mentioned in that MoD reply to Mike were probably those published on 5 June and 30 May respectively. Both portrayed RAdS's broadcasts as amateurish.
The piece in the Times was particularly harsh. Headlined "The ultimate weapon – Radio station could be last straw for invaders", its opening sentence set the tone:
If the British artillery does not blast the Argentinians out of Port Stanley, or the RAF's leaflets cow them into surrender, it is just possible that the 8,000 Argentine troops in the islands will still give up just to get away from Radio Atlantico del Sur, the Ministry of Defence's propaganda service to the beleaguered troops.The Times would not have known that the RAF leaflets to which it referred were prepared by the same MoD unit, the Special Projects Group (SPG), that ran Radio Atlantico del Sur.
The Observer's article – headlined "What Britain tells the enemy" – was more measured, reporting that RAdS's broadcasts were exploiting differences within the Argentine junta, in particular criticisms by the air force of the inaction of the Argentine army and navy.
But the Observer also spoke of RAdS's "crude and occasionally comic attempts at demoralisation".
A helpful civil servant?
My reply from Radio Atlantico del Sur came in a standard OHMS franked buff envelope stamped with a return address in the MoD's Main Building.
But fellow DXers John Campbell and Gordon Darling reported that their replies came in envelopes postmarked, respectively, Hemel Hempstead and Chesham & Amersham (all three are commuter towns to the north of London), suggesting that an interested member of the MoD's staff who lived in that area took it upon themselves to handle mail from hobbyists in a private capacity, rather than as part of office business.
Notes
[1] At the time, most shortwave radio stations solicited reception reports from listeners. The stations would generally reply with a "verification card", also known as a QSL card, confirming the listener's reception, and often other promotional items (pennants, stickers, leaflets).
[2] What is now known as the BBC World Service (operating in English and many other languages) was in 1982 still referred to as the BBC External Services – and in internal BBC bureaucracy as External Broadcasting (XB). At that time, the "World Service" name was reserved solely for the service in English. This distinction was abandoned in 1988 when the "External Services" name was dropped and all international broadcasting by the BBC came under the World Service brand.
© 2018. Material may be reproduced if attributed to Chris Greenway and any original source.
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