The SCR-536 Radio was a hand-held radio used by the United States during World War II.
Description[]
It was the first "Walkie Talkie" and it was extremely useful due to the fact of its portability. The radio was powered by a 1.5 volt, BA-35 dry battery and a 103.5 volt, BA-38 dry battery. The battery life of the SCR-536 Radio was generally around a day of average use.
It was also designed for short range, two way communication and the radio was turned on simply by pulling out the antenna.[1] It was the exact opposite process to turn off the walkie talkie. The actual operating distance the walkie talkie could transmit was around 91.4 meters to 1.6 km.
To talk, one must press a button on the radio and frequencies that the radio operated in were between 3.5 mc to 6.0 mc.[2] The SCR-536 Radio could operate in 50 different channels as well. The length of the antenna was 101.6 cm and the weight of the total radio without batteries was 1.75 kg.
Variants[]
The SCR-536 Radio had several variants which were the models A-F. There were only some minor difference between each different model of radio. All of them had the same basic functions such as how to turn it on and off along with the frequencies that they operated in.
History[]
The SCR-536 Radio was manufactured by Motorola and was developed in 1940. It was originally nicknamed the "handie talkie" not "walkie talkie" and production grew tremendously in 1941. They were issued to many different companys and one notable unit that was issued with the SCR-536 Radio was the 29th Infantry Division.
There were also many US Marine divisions issued with the SCR-536 Radio and some of the battles they were used in include the Battle of Guadalcanal.[3] A number of SCR-536 Radios were captured by German forces during fighting on Sicily.