[ARC5] 274N's in 1942

[David Stinson]

After a big competition, starting in 1939,
 by the major mil-radio players over who was 
going to supply SCR-274 (none of the designs
were successful),
the Army Air Corps adopted the SCR-274N, direct from the
ATA/ARA drawings save for tagging and fewer "BC-" type parts,
in September of 1940.   
Gordon White has a photo copy of the cover sheet
(and, one would hope of the other sheets) of the original
A.R.C. order for SCR-274N.  He kindly sent me a copy, 
along with many more invaluable references,
but I seem to have mis-filed that sheet in my documents.  
Any chance you could give us the date on the contract, Gordon?
And do you have more than just the cover sheet on 
that contract?

The first production run of SCR-274N was order # 1470-NY-41,  
contract # W-227-SC-2576.  That means the contract was let 
on fiscal 1941 money, which would have been spent late 1940 
or early 1941.  An unknown number of the sets were completed 
under A.R.C. nomenclature before A.R.C., having their hands full
with Navy work, sub-contracted Western Electric to build 
the set, the first W.E.Co run of which was 
order # 1509-NY-41, contract #W-227-SC-2586, 
which was let in May of 1941.
(Interesting aside: The first production order of SCR-287
 transmitters was # 1508-NY-41, so these two sets
 were "joined at the hip" early on).
 
There is some controversy over whether A.R.C. ever actually
built any of the sets, beyond the usual first 50 sets built 
for evaluation and modeling, or if Western Electric actually
built them all.
I know of no documentation one way or the other, but there
are subtle differences in quality points between
a 1470-NY-41 and the following W.E.Co 1509-NY-41.   
My personal belief is that A.R.C. did build at least some of the
production sets, but I have no way to prove it.
And there is no indication if it was done a the Boonton mill,
or if their sub-contractor you've never heard of,
Foote, Pierson and Company, actually built the sets under
A.R.C. supervision and inspection.
Preliminary manuals and the scarcity of surviving 
1470-NY-41 units vs. 1509-NY-41 units leads me 
to estimate that A.R.C., if they built any of the first sets,
built no more than about 2000 of them.

A.R.C. sent the evaluation/model sets to W.E.Co
in May of 1941 as well.  By June, they were delivering
800 sets a month on a total order of 28,142 sets
(split among several subsequent W.E.Co orders).
These weren't going into warehouses; they were 
going into aircraft, so you can count the entry of 
active service of SCR-274N as June, 1941.

An Aircorps Production Engineering document, 
provided through the kindness of either Mr. White 
or Mr. Raimey, shows that by November of 1942, 
the set was ordered installed in fighter aircraft being sent 
just about everywhere except the U.K.
Even there, it was specified to be installed
in U.K.-bound fighters until December of 1942, 
when quantity production of SCR-522 was supposed 
to be ready.  All medium and heavy bombers
in use in the AAF at this time were ordered 
equipped with SCR-274N, according to the 
issued orders.

Important side note:
Neither of these early sets, 
nor the 6375-NY-41 or the 293-PHILA-42 sets 
included a BC-696.
Then as now, the leaders in Washington were thinking of 
fighting the last war and, with visions of a war of Jutlands,
gave the gravy to the Navy and the crumbs da bums.
The "Peace-Time Army" had to pinch pennies.
The Army Airways was generally on, IIRC, 4495 KC.
The civilians were on 3105 KC, and the Army bean-counters
(then as now) decided they knew better than the pilots
and that talking to civilians was undesirable and expensive.
Took awhile to figure out that there were a lot of civilian
airfields that would be very useful to Army flyers.

The first SCR-274N BC-696s were built after the PHIL '42
run, when they stopped using the big tags on the tops and 
started using the small tags on the side.  As usual, not everyone
got all the "words" at the same time, and you can tell a 
first-run BC-696 because it is painted black, has 
the four rivet holes in the top for riveting the large tag
in place, but has instead the small tag, screwed to the 
top in the center of the tag location
 with four phillips sheet metal screws.  IIRC, the back
is not marked with an order number as was done with
the earlier sets; it's just marked "BC-696" in yellow stamp
ink, but I'd have to go dig it out to be sure.

73 DE Dave AB5S