RECORD CLAIMED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26540, 15 August 1947, Page 5

RECORD CLAIMED

BATTERY TRANSMISSION KON-TIKI RADIO OPERATORS Rec. 10 p.m. NEW YORK, Aug. 13. Thor Heyerdahl, the leader of the Kon-Tiki raft expedition which landed on Raroia reef in the Tuamotu Archipelago on August 11, claimed in a radio message to-day that his two wireless operators, Torstein Raaby and Knut Haughland, had set a world’s record for battery-operated transmitters by establishing communication with Norway direct from the raft three days before reaching the reef. The original batteries ran down so the operators reassembled smaller cells inside a 45volt battery and with this makeshift power source sent messages direct to Norway from the exact antipodal position on the earth's surface. Raaby and Haughland. like most of the .party, were heroes of the underground war against Germany, Both parachuted into Norway twice and were awarded the Norwegian War Cross—Norway’s highest gallantry award—and the British D.S.O. Raaby radioed back vital information about the battleship Tirpitz’s location and Haughland participated in the action against the German atomic experimental station at Rjukan.