[Boatanchors] Aircraft carrier radio operations

[Al Klase]

William L Howard wrote:
> ......Now my question is: Can anyone confirm the use of Long Wave by the
> Japanese navy?
> 
> Did the US Navy of WW II use the same sort of transmissions?

Bill,

I didn't see anyone speak up, so here's what I know:

According to 
http://www.j-aircraft.com/research/gregspringer/radios/radio_systems.htm
Jap planes, such as the Zero carried radio direction 
finders, such as the Type 1 ku Model 3 that tuned the 
160-385 KHz range. This set is based on the Fairchild Aero 
Compass, a US product, and Fairchild RDF's were found in 
downed Japanese planes early in WWII. (Technically the 
division between medium-wave and long-wave is 300Khz, but 
most of us count everything below the broadcast band as 
long-wave.)

US Navy aircraft generally carried receivers that tuned down 
to about 190KHz, and were equipped with directional loop 
antennas.  This was in keeping with almost universal 
practice of using long-wave non-directional beacons (NDB's) 
and A-N ranges for radio navigation.  Also, civilian airport 
control towers transmitted on long-waves (aircraft talked 
back on 3MHz-ish freq's.) and weather broadcasts were also 
available in this band.

Of course, running a homing beacon on your ship when you're 
trying to hide from the enemy, is a dicey proposition.  The 
US Navy developed a VHF system operating on about 250MHz. 
The early implementation used the ZB/ARR-1 receiving 
converter in the aircraft that fed into a broadcast=band 
receiver.  This explains the 560-1600KHz band on the 
ubiquitous ARB receiver and the large number of 
broadcast-band ARC-5's that turned up in surplus.

I'd expect that both navies were prepared to use long-wave 
beacons to recover aircraft in difficult circumstances.

Hope this helps,
Al


Al Klase - N3FRQ
skywaves at webex.net
Flemington, NJ 08822
Web Page:  http://www.webex.net/~skywaves/home.htm