[MRCA] Nems Clark in C-119

[Ken Krausgill]

Thanks Ray, very interesting.

 

Ken

KD2GFM

 

From: mrca-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:mrca-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On
Behalf Of Ray Fantini
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2021 11:49 AM
To: mrca at mailman.qth.net; MMRCG at groups.io; milsurplus at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [MRCA] Nems Clark in C-119

 

With the show out in Hagerstown at the old Fairchild plant have been looking
at C-119 Flying Boxcars a lot. To support the CORONA satellite program a
group of especially equipped C-119 with  boom attachment that was used to
capture a Satellite Return Vehicle (SRV) as it reentered the atmosphere
attached to a parachute.

Back in the sixties and late fifties when the CORONA program was developed
video scanning technology and live video images were too poor quality to use
for intelligence so the Agena launch vehicle was used with a film camera to
do phot recon over the USSR with the film being packed in the SRV and that
dethatching upon mission completion and returning to earth for processing.
Later missions had several SRV that would allow for extended operation. 

The attached picture shows the radio operators station on one of the boom
equipped C-119 that in addition to the usual ARC-8 set up and loran receiver
you can see the Nems Clark rack that has a VHF Telemetry receiver that would
be used to pick up the VHF beacon on the SRV along with a scope that I am
assuming was set up to chop between the two antennas on the ship to give an
idea where the payload was falling. 

At the top of the rack is a crystal signal generator that I thin was
switched on to set the receiver at the correct frequency of the SRV beacon.

They have pictures of the pilots and co-pilots station but don't see any
methods to assist them in locating the chutes and just assume they were
given gross coordinates of the reentry and using the beacon receiver with
instructions from the radio operator they would fly around until they saw
the chutes and then move in for the capture.

>From 1959 to 1972 over one hundred fifty successful recoveries were
accomplished for both the publicly known Discovery payloads and the secret
KH-1 thru KH-4B and KH-5 satellite programs by the USAF 6593 Test Squadron.

Thought the picture would be interesting to the group to see the ART-13 and
BC-348 in its natural setting along with the often less photographed Nems
Clark gear.

 

The USAF Museum has a page with a bunch of the photos at:

 

https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/
Article/197556/fairchild-c-119j-flying-boxcar/

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/mrca/attachments/20211028/231a7de0/attachment.html>