[ARC5] Re: VHF SCR-274-N

[Mike Morrow]

>Well, no one seems to have any docs related, or at least they haven't piped 
>up, but I'm more inclined to surmise that much the same thing happened as 
>apparently happened with the ARA-1/ATA-1.  The project was rolled over into
>the new AN/ARC-5.  Even to the extent that some of at least the BC-950's were
>either converted to or finished as T-23's.  I've had several of those.

It is odd that the USAAF would drop interest in the BC-942/BC-950 in favor of keeping the SCR-522-A, waiting for the AN/ARC-3.  Western Electric must have convinced some USN folks, but apparently not USAAF folks, that there was value to the system and apparently there was.  Perhaps the need was greater in the USN, since only the AN/ARC-4 was in VHF service for them until the VHF AN/ARC-5 arrived.  Well...the USN did also make some use of the SCR-522-A, just like they sometimes used the SCR-269 ADF instead of that archaic DZ RDF. 

Has anyone information about when the USAAF's AN/ARC-3 and the USN's AN/ARC-1 reached deployment?  I'd guess it was mid-1945, if then.  I like the compact size and guard channel feature of the AN/ARC-1, but that AN/ARC-3 automatic tune-up following crystal change must have saved USAAF radio techs a lot of time after frequency plans were altered.  One WWII USAAF radio tech I know said that the SCR-522 always required a lot of effort to change a channel's frequency when that had to be done to a fleet of aircraft.

WRT the BC-942, I wonder if any still exist.  I traded off an R-28 with an early frequency selector mechanism and a tube cover with diagram that designated tube locations by "VT-xxx" numbers and the dynamotor as a DM-32.  Almost certainly it had been a BC-942, but I don't know of anyone who has ever seen a real live BC-942.  If even a small number had been installed in USAAF aircraft (and never returned to factory for USN R-28 conversion), one suspects that once in a while one should show up.  But they never do.

Mike / KK5F