[ARC5] The Army Ship that became another Navy ARC-5? ... and ARINC?

Dean Billing [email protected]
Sat, 26 Jan 2002 21:04:44 -0800


Does this sound like an nomenclature oxymoron?

If you go into a search engine on the web and put in ARC-5, one of the
URL's that is returned is:

Mine Warfare Ship Photo Index Auxiliary Minelayer (ACM)
... ACM-9 Trapper / ARC-5 Yamacraw.

at:  http://www.navsource.org/archives/11/0109.htm

and there it is:

Chimo Class Auxiliary Minelayer: Laid down for U. S. Army Coast
Artillery Corps, Mine Planter Service as Major General Arthur Murray at
Marietta Manufacturing Co., Point Pleasant, WV; Launched, (date
unknown); ...
Reacquired by the Navy, 17 May 1959; Converted to a Cable Repair Ship,
Recommissioned USS Yamacraw (ARC-5),

with a picture of a ship with a huge ARC-5 painted on the bow.

A ship built for the Army, apparently operated by the Signal Corps
(http://patriot.net/~eastlnd2/army-sc.htm) that became a Navy ARC-5.

I actually ran across this while researching another issue about early
aircraft radios and companies, in this case ARINC.

Anyone care to comment on the following on the ARINC Web page:

"The trials were held in the summer of 1938 on flights between New York
and Pittsburgh, with TWA aircraft using ARINC VHF radios to talk to
ARINC ground stations using ARINC radios. The success of the trials
allowed ARINC to report to the FCC that the industry could begin VHF
voice air/ground services. ARINC then contracted with Western Electric
Company (a subsidiary of AT&T) to build the aircraft radios, which were
given the nomenclature ARC-1 for ARINC Radio Communication Set One.

The first production run of these new radios was delivered in the fall
of 1941 for commercial airline use. In a few months, the attack at Pearl
Harbor sparked U.S. military interest in VHF radios, too. The Navy found
a factory already building the ARINC-designed ARC-1, took the entire
lot, and stepped up production for the duration of the war�retaining the
ARC-1 nomenclature. Of course, the military took a lot of commercial
aircraft, too, for the war effort.

More than a million ARC-1s were produced as the standard U.S. airborne
VHF radio. When a joint Army-Navy standardization group met during World
War II to develop a standard nomenclature system for all military
equipment, they retained the ARC nomenclature to represent Airborne
Radio Communication devices. Today, military airborne radios are still
called ARCs."

ARINC coined the acronym ARC?  The military decided to use it?  What was
the competabive relationship between A.R.C. and the other companies of
the period?  If more than one million ARC-1s were produced, where are
they?  (I don't see them in the 1960's ads of Fair Radio Sales [New
BC-451 $1.00, New BC-450 $1.50, FT-220-A $1.50] or Barry Electronics
[New MD-7 modulator w/dynamotor $9.95] or G&G Radio Supply Co [New
BC-453 $14.95, New BC-456 $4.24].)

Regards -- Dean  WA6IKJ