[Milsurplus] Re: Milsurplus Digest, Vol 28, Issue 18

[Hue Miller]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rian Robison" <krrobison at earthlink.net>


>Have an old Navy book that tells how they used to home-in to find their way.  Planes with a gunner/
radio or radio operator used a DF attachment that had a sense antenna and thus could tell which way
the station was.  However, fighters only had a loop (which was installed in that round headrest pad
behind the pilot's head).

Regardless of the loop type, WW2 era DFing was still done on LF and MF.
The Type DU  loop unit you mention, also only tunes to 1500 kHz, in the
model installed in WW2 planes.

As for Breck's question, if there was an instruction NOT to use HF for DFing,
my answer is in most planes, you couldn't even if you wanted to. The Navy
either had the DU or DW loop unit, which only tuned to 1500 kcs, or the
aircraft of  either force had onboard something like the SCR-269 RDF which
only tuned to 1500 kcs. For the radios that tuned both DF and "COM" bands,
the manuals and the training stated that the LF was for DF, the HF was for
communication.

> This was what the book said to do but if you think how HF signals travel, I wonder how good this
really worked in practice.  That training flight that was lost off of Florida back in WWII could
most likely tell us it didn't work too well if they were trying it.

That flight was post war, late 40s, and the loss was due to the incompetence of
the instructor, flight leader. That has been documented pretty well. There's a book
on the case published a few years back, i read it at one time. If you want to find it
i'd just go to ABE books and do a search on keyword something like "Flight Nine"
or some such combo. It's not an obscure book.  -Hue Miller