JACK HEATON, WIRELESS OPERATOR [Illustration: “‘Boys, you have done your duty. Now save yourselves’”] JACK HEATON, WIRELESS OPERATOR BY A. FREDERICK COLLINS Author of “Inventing for Boys,” “Handicraft for Boys,” “The Boys’ Book of Submarines,” etc. WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS BY R. EMMETT OWEN NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1919, by Frederick A. Stokes Company Copyright, 1919, by The Sprague Publishing Company All rights reserved TO DONALD DELMAR ZEITLER CONTENTS I How I Learned Wireless II My First Job as an Operator III When the “Andalusian” Went Down IV Catching Seals by Wireless V My Adventures in the Tropics VI Working with Marconi VII A Government Operator at Arlington VIII Aboard a Warship at Vera Cruz IX On a Submarine Chaser X A Signalman on a Submarine XI With the Field Artillery in France XII Mustered Out ILLUSTRATIONS “‘Boys, you have done your duty. Now save yourselves’” “‘The _Republic_ is sinking and is sending out C Q D’s’” We were catching seals by wireless! “‘I whipped out my gun just in time to spot a couple of snipers’” “A bright flash of blue fire shot up through the hole” Our torpedo passed through the raider’s hull and exploded inside “The airplane signaled down to us in code” “But for every one the boches sent we put over two or three” JACK HEATON, WIRELESS OPERATOR CHAPTER I--HOW I LEARNED WIRELESS It happened out at sea about five hundred miles as wireless waves fly from Montclair. But perhaps you don’t know where Montclair is and maybe you don’t particularly care, but as it is my home town I must tell you about it. First, it’s in New Jersey a short way from South Orange, where Mr. Edison, the great inventor, has his laboratory, and about twelve miles from New York City. So you see it is pretty favorably located. If you were a stranger going through the place you’d have been surprised to see the webs of wires strung around every other house in town and on first sight you might have taken them for telegraph or telephone lines, or as I once heard a man remark to my father, “They look like lines on which to hang the family wash.” But, nay, nay, these wires, on the contrary, were not used for any such commonplace purpose but they were, instead, _aerials_ put up by wireless boys for sending and receiving messages. Just about half of the fellows in our town at that time were wireless bugs and they ranged anywhere from thirteen to nineteen years of age, though every once in a while a full fledged man would be found with an outfit. Some of the fellows had elaborate equipments with aerials containing upwards of a thousand feet of wire and with them they could send messages to distances of a hundred miles or so and receive them from powerful stations a thousand miles away.