Jimmy Tells the World

Talbot G. ("Jimmy") Bowen is a Massachusetts-born ex-doughboy who has knocked around considerably in his 43 years. Before he landed his present job, representing Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer pictures in Montevideo, he used to manage the American Club in Buenos Aires. Visitors from the States knew expansive, bouncy Jimmy well. Last Sunday the whole world got acquainted with Jimmy Bowen's voice.

When the Nazi Admiral Graf Spee limped into Montevideo harbor last week to bury its dead, patch up, await orders, NBC-RCA's representative there, Bill Clark, signed up his friend Jimmy Bowen to keep watch on her. Jimmy, who had once broadcast a Montevideo opera opening for NBC, found himself with a microphone, headphones, and the job of periodically reporting the comings & goings of the Spec's officers, the feverish activities of her men, the vague rumors that drifted down to the docks.

Sunday afternoon, at 3:45 p.m. E.S.T., Jimmy came on the air to report that the Graf Spee was weighing anchor. At 5:15, he was on again, to report that the Spee had steamed out into the Plata Estuary. Before leaving, she had transferred many of her men to the Nazi cargo steamer, Tacoma. "The commander," Jimmy hazarded, "may try to scuttle the ship about five miles out." He was covering, he said, from a dock, in the midst of a crowd. "They are doing a lot of talking," he shouted. NBC cut him off the network.

But the studio engineers kept talking to him over the hookup (a telephone line from Montevideo to Buenos Aires, short-wave radio to New York), just as reporters covering important stories used to file the Bible over the wire between developments to keep control of their telegraph connections. At 5:55 p.m. E.S.T., Jimmy shouted into the phone: "Hello New York! Hello New York! Gimme the air, gimme the air. She's exploding, blowing up! She's just been scuttled."

Network programs going over 175 stations were cut off; programs on the NBC international short-wave stations (WNBI and WRCA) were silenced. Then Jimmy's voice, without a splutter or a wasted word, told the world: "We have just seen the Graf Spee explode five miles off the coast: the ship has been scuttled."

What Jimmy Bowen watched through his glasses and told about, flash by flash, for the next 13 minutes filled everyone's front pages next day--"The ship is moving now, rolling from side to side. There goes another explosion! The after turret has gone up. . . . She is going down, going down by the stern. . . . Flames are still shooting up into the air. . . . The boys evidently are going to make a good job of it, and leave nothing but the pieces. . . . She is going down still. The bow is under. . . . The only thing showing now is her superstructure, the stack, and part of her control tower. .

"We have just received information here which is not official, and will possibly need a long time to be confirmed . . . that the explosion of the Graf Spee was done at the dictation of Mr. Hitler. Absolutely!"

Absolutely, Jimmy Bowen had done a sweetheart of a reporting job, the first of its sort the world had ever heard. President Roosevelt heard it in his library at Hyde Park. A United Air Lines pilot, flying 11,000 feet over Nebraska, picked it up with his auxiliary receiver, relayed it in bits to his passengers. Jimmy's story reached Timbuctu and Berlin as well, putting the Propaganda Ministry's nose completely out of joint. In Washington, Jimmy's mother heard his voice--for the first time in years.

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