[Milsurplus] Pearl Harbor additional thoughts

[Ray Fantini]

Couple thoughts about December 7th and Pearl Harbor, if you are around Baltimore and Washington a couple things that are worth seeing is first the National Electronics Museum located right next to BWI. In their collection is a reconstructed SCR-270 trailer along with the antenna trailer for the 270 with its antenna. Amazing if you never saw a first generation A scan VHF radar system and just how primitive that system was. In order to obtain azimuth readings you had to look outside at the base of the antenna trailer and read the azimuth from a large ring on the base of the antenna support.
In the movie "Tora Tora Tora" they had a SCR-270 for the radar scenes, not like the later Perl Harbor movie that used a couple shots of something with a PPI display, something that did not exist at the time.
I think Info Age up in New Jersey may have a SCR-270 but I have not been there in several years and the last time I was up there saw no sign of it. The significance would be that the SCR-270 was developed at Fort Monmouth.
The National Electronics Museum web site is:
http://www.nationalelectronicsmuseum.org/

Down 97 and over on 32 next to the NSA/CSS facilities you can find the National Cryptologic Museum that among other items has the Red cipher decoder that allowed us to read Japan's diplomatic traffic before Pearl Harbor.
The NCM has a collection that's well above anything else considering they have not only the Red and Purple systems but also a huge collection of Enigma systems, components of SIGSALY and the U.S. Navy Cryptanalytic Bombe along with exhibits covering everything in the world of cryptology from the Civil War to today.

National Cryptologic Museum website:
https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-heritage/museum/

Ray F/KA3EKH
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