Communication with ships at sea

The last transmission by Radio Scheveningen before the capitulation of the Dutch army was on 14 May 1940. It was an instruction to all ships to ignore further broadcasts. Thanks to this message, ship crews ignored the German occupier’s call to return to a Dutch port. Radio Scheveningen’s equipment was hidden just in time to prevent it falling into the hands of the enemy.

The Germans renamed Radio Scheveningen Küstenfunkstelle Scheveningen. Here, coded messages were exchanged with German ships and aircraft. Allied messages were also intercepted here. Although the station regularly came under fire from Allied aircraft for this reason, the station remained on the air for the largest part of the occupation. It was the Germans themselves who destroyed the building and the equipment at the end of the war.

Radio Scheveningen only returned to the air on 29 June 1945, initially broadcasting from a ship in the port of Amsterdam and later from IJmuiden. The station never returned to Scheveningen.