Updated 2008 April 26

EE-8 Field Telephone

One of ours is in a leather bag and is model EE-8-A. Others are in a canvas bag and are EE-8-B. All have handsets with the butterfly push-to-talk lever.

The EE-8-B has a handset TS-13-E with transmitter 141914 W.E.Co. 6/42 and receiver D-141915 WECO 7 10 42

The EE-8-A handset TS-9-F has a receiver made by American Microphone Company Ltd. Sep 1943 type 113. The transmitter is type 1118.

Some advise for purchasers of EE-8 phones:

The biggest thing that can go wrong is corrosion. Next would be the handset cord. That can be easily fixed if you're not trying to make it appear original. The rest of the insides is pretty tough. I'd be real surprised if you can't get them to work. One little feature which some people don't know is when you turn the crank only the OTHER phone rings. Yours doesn't ring. The handset has a butterfly switch which you must press in order to talk. While you have this switch operated the battery is being used. Otherwise, the batteries have no drain. It will not talk without batteries, but it will crank, ring and listen. There is one more switch. It is labeled CB or LB. This switch changes the mode from Common Battery to Local Battery. In CB mode, the hanger for the handset is in the circuit. You could connect the phone as an extension to your household telephone line and answer calls. It will ring and talk (provided the batteries are in it - yes in CB mode the batteries are still required to talk). In LB mode, the handset hangup switch is disabled for normal magneto phone operation. The schematic is available below and is a photo of the one inside one of my units. It may help illustrate how the CB-LB switch works. One caveat, if you hook it up as an answer-only extension to your home phone, it is very easy to NOT hang up the handset properly making your line appear busy to callers.

Remember to oil the things that turn in the magneto. It will help a whole lot.

Here are the schematic drawings from the A model phone:


telephonesee8etc.jpg EE-8 telephone manual cover
telephonesee8etc2.jpg EE-8 telephone
telephonesee8etc3.jpg EE-8 telephone
telephonesee8etc4.jpg EE-8 telephone
telephonesee8etc5.jpg EE-8 telephone schematic


EE-8 in custom wooden enclosure mounted on SCR-528 radar console.

e-Bay is a good place to search for phones for sale. Just enter "field phone" or "field telephone" into the title search.

Handset Cords for EE-8

My personal home page with more telephone info.

Kodiak Military History main index page