[Milsurplus] Who used the ZB/BC-946

[Hue Miller]

I did some googling for that aircraft loss Marty related but did not come
up with anything. However, a couple interesting tidbits i did see:

" I've come to the conclusion that the coastwatchers and similar 'spy' missions were conducted to
give the Japanese a decoy away from our use of signals decodes, which provided far better
information over the entire SWPA than could be seen by a few people watching a few military bases.
There's probably a Ph.D there for someone."  From:

http://www.pacificwrecks.com/people/authors/mcaulay.html

"Now, the plane goes to sea and there is no tower, and no surface weather station to provide
pressure altimeter corrections. So, for these letdowns at sea one looks to the radio altimeter and
is more confident if that instrument has been recently calibrated. If the radio altimeter reads 500
feet and the plane is still in the soup and needs to go down further to examine a radar "contact,"
the pilot shallows his rate of descent and goes down 50 feet at a time and looks hard for a cloud
opening. How far down to go before calling it off? It is up to the pilot and the extent of the need.
For all these over-water missions we streamed our trailing wire antenna to get extra range on our
radio communications equipment. This wire had a "pig"(a cast metal weight) on the end to make sure
the wire streamed fully and did not just flap around outside the plane. The pig and its connecting
wire stream behind the aircraft, and down. If the radioman under these circumstances discovers that
he has lost his pig, one conclusion is that it hit the water and was jerked off. The plane is then
below safe minimums and should certainly ascend at once. No one would recommend a descent on
instruments to such a level but it has happened and the plane involved has pulled itself up from
this dangerous altitude. "  From:

http://www.daileyint.com/flying/flywar12.htm

Via: Hue Miller