In a recent column, I wrote about my friend, Lt. David Pingenot, who joined the U.S. Navy in 1965 partly to see a body of water larger than the Iowa stretch of the Cedar River. Pingenot became a technician for the sound surveillance system, which utilized a system of hydrophones that monitored sound channels in the ocean. He listened for Soviet vessels, especially submarines. His main duty in the Navy was all about sound. However, stationed in Keflavik, Iceland, a lot of his off-duty time also involved sound — the sound of rock and roll.
International radio broadcasting for U.S. military forces began during World War II. It expanded in the 1950s to include television, so by 1967, when Pingenot arrived in Iceland, the service was known as the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service. Since American military humor, especially among the enlisted, hasn’t always been the most mature or sophisticated, the men pronounce AFRTS “A-Farts.”
A-Farts was OK. Some music was better than none. But in the late 1960s, there were still plenty of WWII vets in leadership positions in the Navy, and they were happy with the big band, WWII, and Korean War-era music the station played.
“We didn’t like that stuff,” Pingenot said. “We wanted the Stones and Beatles.”
But this was before streamed music, iPods, or even Walkmans. What could they do?
As happens so often in the U.S. military, the biggest (though not always best) ideas materialize when service members are off duty and drinking. They were sonar techs with electronic training. If they wanted a radio station that would really rock, they’d have to build one.
“That’s a bold enterprise,” I told Pingenot.
“We’d had a few beers!” Pingenot laughed. “We were pretty bold!”
So they scraped up enough scrap electronic gear and, in a small storage room, constructed a 10 milliwatt AM radio station with an improvised antenna on the roof. One of their guys, George Elias, was from the tiny town of Rock Hall, Maryland. He worked at a radio station before joining the Navy and reached out to his old radio friends, who sent spare rock and roll 45s and LP promotional records.
Soon enough, Naval Facility Radio Station went on the air, broadcasting in a 200-foot range across the entire building they lived in. They had no money, no fixed programming or DJ coverage schedule, and since they were transmitting at such low power, they had no broadcast license. Many of the sailors owned cigar-box-size, battery-operated transistor radios. Plenty of them spun the tuner dials away from A-Farts in order to rock with NFRS.
Pingenot’s middle name starts with a J, so when he was off duty and on the air, he became “DJ the DJ,” always introducing himself with the classic 1963 Henry Mancini jazz number “The Pink Panther Theme.”
“We pretended like we weren’t in the Navy,” he said. “All we wanted to do was play music. Tell a few jokes.”
NFRS played great 1950s and 1960s music. It went downtown with Petula Clark and swam with the Beach Boys. It played the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Righteous Brothers, Monkees, Bob Dylan, and Elvis.
I was a little surprised the Navy allowed this station. The military usually likes things done through official channels. However, instead of meeting resistance, NFRS was praised. “Hey, you’re DJ the DJ!” people would sometimes say in the chow hall or commissary. The station was so popular that its creators were persuaded to increase power and build a larger antenna to enable the station to transmit to the entire base.
NFRS was still going strong when Pingenot left.
“We just did it because we wanted to hear some good music,” he said. “Once in a while, you come up with good ideas when you’re drunk. This was one of them.” Rock on!
Trent Reedy, author of several books including Enduring Freedom, served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.
