[Milsurplus] New Insight into RAT and RAV

[William Donzelli]

> TBW was not an aircraft set like the GO, RU and RAT sets,
> but was "air transportable" (not sure what they meant by that).
> It was a "beach" set, meant to provide first contact between a 
> landing party and the support ships according to my docs here.
> Provided the "high power" rig until permanent equipment and
> housing for it could come ashore.

Clearly Westinghouse was looking at the GO when they made the TBW.

It appears that the TBW was in competition with the GE TBR for the Marine 
Corp's new high power set (previously, the USMC had TAV and TBO for lower 
power HF operation). It seems that TBW won, but the TBR was reborn as the 
TCM/TCU.

Along with the TBR/TBW fight, the TBX and TBY were born from TBO and TBP. 
Good year for the Marines, I guess.

> However, it was procured in the same time frame as RAT and did 
> tune up to 18000 KC.  The first TBW was contract 1939,
> meaning it was probably built in 1938.

I suspect this goes the other way around. I have noticed with Navy sets, 
contracts seem to get dated, then the equipment is built over the next 
six to 12 months. You can see this, inspecting some of those handy 
"ACCEPTED BY THE NAVY" tags that the Navy sometimes bothered to stamp. I 
suspect that most of the time, prototypes are already built, and the 
contracts we see are pure production type. Many, however (and *which* 
many) may include the original engineering and prototyping - sonar sets 
show this thru the whole war (late war sets were made under late 1930s 
contracts. Perhaps the sound contracts were far more open ended.).

William Donzelli
aw288@osfn.org