No doubt. But most of the serious 80M dxers in those days ran "suds", a
lotta power, not just a lotta power but 'WAY too much power. Back then
the max allowable power was one kW input vs. today's 1.5kW output.

Have heard what is likely an urban legend of a ham (who was
also a broadcast chief engineer) using the 50KW AM transmitter in his
charge to work some rare DX on some HF ham band. Late at
night when it was off for maintenance. Seems unlikely as the
power amp would have circuits tuned for the MW AM broadcast
station's frequency and low pass filters to block harmonics
in the SW spectrum. That's not something one can modify
in a few minutes.

Oh, you could connect a ham transceiver to the broadcast
antenna tower to work some 160m DX, but that would be
legal.