In Case of Emergency

For a married couple flying over vast stretches of water and wilderness in the early 1930s, reliable radio equipment was a necessity.

We don’t know if she ever needed to use it, but if her main aircraft radio stopped working, Anne Morrow Lindbergh had a backup.

Lindbergh was the copilot and radio operator aboard a Lockheed Model 8 Sirius floatplane, and she and her famous husband Charles were making a series of overseas survey flights (the first ones in 1931 and a second set of flights two years later). At the behest of Pan American Airways, the Lindberghs were exploring possible airline routes from North America to Asia and Europe.

Pan American had provided radio equipment designed and built by H.C. Leuteritz, chief of the company’s radio division: a 15-watt telegraph transmitter, a dynamotor, and a receiver. The emergency radio, a Model TR-A transceiver (above), was stored in the airplane’s baggage compartment—to be brought out only in case of damage to the installed set or a need to abandon the downed aircraft.

The Model TR-A—a combination transmitter and receiver—is a metal box covered by a black wrinkle finish, its solid craftsmanship validating its worth as the museum piece that it is.

Before the survey flights, Anne had earned her pilot’s license and a commercial third-class radio license, which required her to master Morse code. In a 1974 book based on her diaries, she wrote: “I was amused but also inordinately proud to hear about the comment of a Pan American radio operator who, after sending me a 150-word message in code through heavy static, made the astonished remark: ‘My God, she got it!’ ”

Dorothy Cochrane is a curator for the National Air and Space Museum’s aeronautics department.