[ARC5] history

[Gordon White]

  I saw a number of transport-category USAF planes with the BC-453 
receiver well into the late 1960s and, possibly the 1970s, used when 
flying in places where the 4-course Adcock ranges were still the way to 
navigate. As a reporter I flew in  C-47s, C-130s, C-124s, C-54s, C-131s 
(I think that was the designation of the Lockheed Constellation) etc. My 
only flight in a fighter was in an F-100 and I don't recall the 
equipment in it.

    There is little in the Signal Corps histories, neither "The 
Emergency" nor "The Outcome," (I have both of them before me) that 
helps.  I had to go deep into the archives when I was writing for CQ on 
the subject. The Signal Corps came up with the designation SCR-274 for 
an airborne command set to replace the SCR-183/283 and only Bendix bid 
on it. The Bendix set was too heavy for fighters and the Chief of the 
Air Corps, Westover , ruled that the Corps should use the old TRF 
SCR-283 because of weight. He was not one of the good-buddies who sat 
around Lewis Hull's stone fireplace in Mountain Lakes, N.J. and talked 
radio gear.  (The Bendix set was also designated SCR-240, but, again, 
did not go past the prototype stage.)

    The Navy had adopted the RAT and RAV  receivers and then the ATA/ARA 
system. Yes, Arnold , when  he became chief of the Air Corps after 
Westover's death,  got  the  Army to adopt the Navy equipment under 
Signal Corps nomenclature SCR-274-N (for Navy) because there wasn't 
anything better. And the shortage of crystals worked in favor of its 
tuneable design.

- Gordon White