Changi POW camp....courage shown....

[Voltigeur]

© IWM (COM 567)
Improvised receiver associated with the Second World War experiences, as a prisoner of war in Changi Gaol (Singapore), of Flying Officer Jeffrey Skinner (Royal Air Force). This item was concealed in a teak beam. The parts were 'liberated' and scrounged by working parties of POWs, or traded with Singaporean Chinese. The beam formed part of Flying Officer Skinner's prison bunk. To be caught in possession of a radio was punishable by death, yet the radio was used during most of the war.

History note
This radio receiver was built into a teak beam at the head of Flying Officer Jeffrey Skinner’s bunk in F3 Hut, Changi prisoner of war camp, Singapore from 1943 to 1945. The cleverly concealed radio was operated by Skinner, who occupied the top bunk, and Flying Officer Thomas Dudley Boyce, who occupied the bottom bunk. Skinner tuned and operated the radio by inserting a screwdriver into three small holes in the top of the beam and both listened through stethoscopes that were inserted into a fourth small hole in the front of the beam. When not in use, the holes were concealed with nail heads. Boyce wrote down the news that they received from London, Delhi and Melbourne on a glass slate and the news was spread throughout the camp by a carefully organised word-of-mouth distribution system. A glass slate was used because the text could be very quickly erased if necessary. The power for the radio was taken from a secret plug in an electric clock and the aerial was disguised as a clothes line which, to avoid detection, was always hung with clothes. The punishment for keeping radios was severe, probably resulting in death, and so the radio was kept very secret. Only two other men in the sixteen man hut knew of the existence of the radio together with perhaps one or two other men in the camp. News from home and information about the progress of the war was vital in maintaining the morale of the men in the camp. The radio allowed the prisoners to learn of the Japanese surrender long before the Japanese forces in Singapore did. After the war, Skinner and Boyce were both mentioned in despatches and received letters of commendation from Lord Mountbatten, who inspected the radio during a visit to the Changi camp in 1945. Both also received certificates from the Dutch forces in Changi acknowledging their courage and self-sacrifice.

http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib...&cat=equipment

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