Loop Sailors

There went those gobs again. This was getting monotonous, Chicagoans thought--kind of funny, too. Twice a day the sailors filed smartly out of the Naval Armory, 100 of them, headed for the Loop. (Hup, two, three, four! Column right, hutch!) The Navy must have gone nuts. There weren't any ships in the Loop.

Last fortnight Chicago newspapers discovered who and what the Loop sailors were: they were the first primary class in aircraft detecting devices.

Classrooms for the Navy's primary school are studios of Television Station W9XBK, which smart, rich theater chain men John and Barney Balaban (of Balaban & Katz) offered free to the Navy, a week after Pearl Harbor. After 90 days at W9XBK (which continues to televise for Chicago's 200 receivers), Loop sailors will move on to advanced schools near Washington, at Noroton Heights, Conn., or San Francisco.

Before Pearl Harbor, the Navy fed its advanced schools with hand-picked graduates of commercial radio schools. Now it grabs up hams at recruiting offices, tests them in mathematics, electricity, shop practice, radio; those who pass get ratings (radioman, second or third class), are shipped to W9XBK. They live at the Naval Armory, half a mile away, work nine hours, six days a week, five hours on Sundays, cram in another two hours of "homework" nightly.

Masterminding W9XBK's school was one of the strangest geniuses ever to wear the Navy's gold braid: gaunt, towering, post-deaf Lieut, (j.g.) William Crawford Eddy, U.S.N. Retired, who went from NBC's Manhattan television studio to build and operate W9XBK for Balaban & Katz in the fall of 1940.

Bill Eddy read lips to pass his physical examination at Annapolis, got the highest I.Q. rating ever recorded there. He served ten years as a submarine commander before the Navy discovered in 1934 how deaf he was. To hide his deafness, he had invented a submarine detector that put sound on a dial where he could see it; now it is standard Navy equipment.

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