Is This a Frankenmonster?

[tom thomas]

Found E*ay offering 280703579007 yesterday purporting to be "Pacemaker Speed Graphic. "Signal Corps PH-47-J, the FIRST olive drab military Speed Graphic made between 1949 and 1952." Comes in a Haliburton case, with some accessories and three wooden tripod legs. The case has a Signal Corps number on it dated April '63 or '68, not 49-52. The tripod is wood, not olive drab metal as it should be in a KS-4A(1) outfit.

Something looks/smells fishy about it. There isn't any military metal label on the front cover, has springback not graflok back, silver faced, not black-faced lens, on and on. I messaged the seller about it and the sale ended.

Any ideas of what model camera it really is? If someone painted the outer case olive drab,they did a good job of it.

Tom

[TheDeardorffGuy]

Ok, I have an original kit. Packed away now so I'm working on memory. My camera is identical to this one. My tripod is a Grown #2 wood but in green OD paint. I do think this kit has been assembled from Frankinflex parts.

[Sirius Glass]

I emailed the seller when it was on eBay previously and pointed out the the serial number is inconsistent with the dates the seller claims. The seller never responded.

Steve

[tom thomas]

Ken, it sure would answer a lot of questions if you'd had a few moments to snap some photos of the kit and contents to post. While browsing, I've found many questions about these old military kits but few answers. I even found a web site in France devoted to them. Nice but this kit and camera aren't described their either.

Being an old military guy, have worked with so much old Army Signal Corps equipment myself and my interest about this Graflex has been piqued. So I'm being curious about the kits. Long ago while stationed in France, I unpacked a long stored Signal Corps emergency radio, opened the case, noticed a destruct switch (wired down luckily) and notified my supervisor. The EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) team showed up on our mountaintop site, gently opened the radio and found a functional phosphorus grenade ready to do it's job. Poor radio got destroyed as the grenade was so old and unstable.

Here is a photo I found posted somewhere supposedly of the Signal Corps PH-47-J kit. It doesn't look much like the one being offered at the moment. An aluminum frame green tripod is visible in the photo. Photo is very small but even the Signal Corps ID plate is visible on the top of the camera itself. Not there on the this one but the remnants of a Signal Corps red triangle is visible on top where the plate should be. Also the reinforcement frame around the rangefinder is missing so the label that could have been there is also gone. Field stripped for lightness? Even the viewfinder has been removed.

Ken, I realize you are busy getting your Deardorf busines up and running again. They are out of my price range but it's sure nice to see that someone cares enough to revive an old product that has such a following. Thanx.

Tom

[Ash]

That's amazing the radio had a destruct switch. Was the facility well used in wars?

[Sirius Glass]

That's amazing the radio had a destruct switch. Was the facility well used in wars?

Some military equipment is designed with destruction capability or zeroization to prevent the enemy from reverse engineering the equipment. Reverse engineered equipment can be used against the military of origin.

During World War II, neither the Japanese nor the Germans were able to figure out FM broadcasting. Without that ability they could not listen into the Allies transmissions.

[TheDeardorffGuy]

Hello Tom
I have two mini warehouses that I took a quick look at today. I did not see the kit. It is mostlikely in the way back of the building. I put parts I need up front and crap in the rear. By the way my business is not getting "up and running again". It has never stopped since 1982. ..............



Ken, it sure would answer a lot of questions if you'd had a few moments to snap some photos of the kit and contents to post. While browsing, I've found many questions about these old military kits but few answers. I even found a web site in France devoted to them. Nice but this kit and camera aren't described their either.

Being an old military guy, have worked with so much old Army Signal Corps equipment myself and my interest about this Graflex has been piqued. So I'm being curious about the kits. Long ago while stationed in France, I unpacked a long stored Signal Corps emergency radio, opened the case, noticed a destruct switch (wired down luckily) and notified my supervisor. The EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) team showed up on our mountaintop site, gently opened the radio and found a functional phosphorus grenade ready to do it's job. Poor radio got destroyed as the grenade was so old and unstable.

Here is a photo I found posted somewhere supposedly of the Signal Corps PH-47-J kit. It doesn't look much like the one being offered at the moment. An aluminum frame green tripod is visible in the photo. Photo is very small but even the Signal Corps ID plate is visible on the top of the camera itself. Not there on the this one but the remnants of a Signal Corps red triangle is visible on top where the plate should be. Also the reinforcement frame around the rangefinder is missing so the label that could have been there is also gone. Field stripped for lightness? Even the viewfinder has been removed.

Ken, I realize you are busy getting your Deardorf busines up and running again. They are out of my price range but it's sure nice to see that someone cares enough to revive an old product that has such a following. Thanx.

Tom

[E. von Hoegh]

Some military equipment is designed with destruction capability or zeroization to prevent the enemy from reverse engineering the equipment. Reverse engineered equipment can be used against the military of origin.

During World War II, neither the Japanese nor the Germans were able to figure out FM broadcasting. Without that ability they could not listen into the Allies transmissions.

Most, if not all, Allied military radio was AM in WWII. There were various forms of encryption, also word codes in use. The Germans and Japanese understood FM technology perfectly well, it having been patented in the US in 1933 (IIRC).

The purpose of the phosphorous grenade was to render the radio unuseable in case it had to be abandoned.

[tom thomas]

Thanx for looking Ken. Sounds like you have a veritable Alladins' Cave. About your company being back up and running, I guess I was confused as I'd been looking at this site too.

http://www.deardorffcameras.com/

Ashe, we were a military hilltop microwave terminal/repeater site near Strasburg. US troops did free the area in 1945 before our site was built. We had to close it down in 1966 when Pres DeGaulle requested (demanded) the occupying forces leave France when he dropped out of NATO. Our site was then occupied by the French military, and it is still in use today as a microwave repeater/satellite uplink site. Using Google Earth, I can still see our buildings and the antennas there.

This was a small patrol sized battery powered radio, about 16 inches square, 12 inches deep, watertight metal box. The extension antenna was stored in the watertight lid as I remember, screwed in the front of the radio panel near where the destruct switch was. It was stored in a dusty room along with our emergency food rations, which as it turned out, were also WWII era. We'd been ordered to destroy all the old rations as they were outdated before getting an updated supply in 1963. That's when I found the radio behind some C-Rat cases on a dusty shelf. Batteries dead too.

We did find Green pack Lucky Strikes and I kept a pack of 1944 Camels cigarettes. One a day was about all I could handle, geez, they were strong and burnt as fast as a dynamite fuse. The chocolate bars were still edible, the Chiclets were dry but chewable. Toilet paper was green.

In the mid -60's while stationed in the Azores, I worked on WWII AN/TRC-1 FM line of sight radio setups connecting 3 islands. Weird stuff but it worked. It was difficult to intercept the signals which is what probably confused the enemies someone mentioned. One had to first locate the path of the signals, then stick a monitoring antenna in the beam without interrupting the bi-directional signal. Tough to do.

We replaced it with Korean War era AN/TRC-24 equipment. It was also FM line of sight in the 225-400MHz freq range. That was some good equipment, I'll bet there is still some in use by our military forces. Tube type equipment though so perhaps gone now. Replaced by IPods and cell phones.

Well, back to the Graflex.

Tom

[MMELVIS]

Take a look at this pdf from graflex.org. This pdf has an article about the military graflex cameras by Bruce Thomas. I noticed that your graflex seems to missing a top view finder mentioned in the article. You can search google GRAFLEX HISTORIC QUARTERLY VOLUME 15 ISSUE 4 to find this document. Hope this helps you some.

http://graflex.org/GHQ/GHQ-15-4.pdf