[ARC5] Korean War HF Command Set

[David Stinson]

Tim: 
While I have no firm documentation on what a USMC
fighter bomber like a Corsair during Korea carried,
 it's very likely to have been carrying what it was 
at the end of WWII.
Early in the Korean Conflict, the U.S. and U.N. forces used
what they had left-over from WWII. There had not been a
lot of spending for "new" military systems so soon after 
the largest conflict in history. 
At the end of WWII, a Corsair might have had:
AN/ARC-5 HF, Range & VHF or 
AN/ARC-5 VHF with R-23 range or
AN/ARC-1 with R-23 range or similar.
AN/ARC-3 became available in large numbers later.

If your USMC troop was talking on a GRC-9 to 
aircraft, it was likely a utility or transport 
like a C-47 or C-54, an observation, ferrying 
or liaison ship.  Many of these all still had HF primaries.

As in WWII, so in Korea:
There was no hard "we changed to VHF on this date."
The two systems were concurrent in use (and still are today).
The majority of aircraft that had HF, kept HF 
until it broke or the plane wore-out. 
If an aircraft had ART-13 installed, it probably stayed
in that aircraft and in regular use well into the 1960s.
New equipment generally went into new aircraft.
Whole squadrons of combat aircraft might get new
radios all at once, but aircraft actually in regular combat
were only a fraction of the aircraft actually in use.

I helped outfit "radio" jeeps
for the "Mosquito" forward air observers vet group.
They tried to have the same equipment in the jeeps as
the aircraft to which they were talking.  
Early jeeps had SCR-287 and SCR-522.
Later in the conflict,  as newer equipment and newer 
aircraft arrived, the jeeps were outfitted with 
AN/ARC-8 and AN/ARC-3.
Both HF and VHF remained in active service 
throughout the conflict.

73 OM DE Dave AB5S