[ARC5] 274N's in 1942

[Robert Eleazer]

Folks, here is something to think about.


A book on the 347th Fighter Group in WWII that covers its action on Guadalcanal says that "Cheap radios in the P-39's and P-400's had to be set on frequency daily with a frequency meter." There is even a picture of a USAAF technician with a BC-221 performing that task; unfortunately you can't see the radios.

This could not have been with SCR-274N radios. They did not drift that much, did they?

I can only conclude that they were SCR-283's, those TRF sets with the changeable coil sets. Now, I had thought that the 283 was limited to the home front, and have seen installations of training and test aircraft that had them, even rather late in the war, both in person and in books. My pilot's manual on the P-40 says the D model had the 283 and the E model the 274N.  And finally there is a rather poor photo in the book of troops listening to air combat over a radio they salvaged out of a wrecked P-39, and it looks more or less like a 283 as much as anything.

So, how early or how late did the 274N get into the war? Some of my early Navy stuff has 1940 contract dates on it. Was the USAAF that much later in getting it?

Happy Independence Day, everybody! 

Wayne, WB5WSV