[ARC5] history

[D C *Mac* Macdonald]

The "Constellations" were C-121.

Mac, K2GKK/5


----Original Message Follows----
From: Gordon White <gewhite at crosslink.net>
To: Bob Macklin <macklinbob at msn.com>
CC: David Stinson <arc5 at ix.netcom.com>, ARC5 at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [ARC5] history
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 07:18:31 -0400

  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


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