Milt, You asked, “What was the function of the springs and what would fail when one broke?”
Difficult to describe, but here goes! Red Steer was the fighter intercept warning radar housed in the radome at the back end of the aircraft. The AEO was the operator and had the display/control in front of him. The ‘area of interest’ behind the aircraft was a cone of about 60 degrees, centred rearwards from the centre line. The Mk I simple parabolic scanner sent out a very narrow beam but it needed to (rapidly) investigate every angle of sky within the cone. To do this the scanner started a cycle which began with the beam pointing directly aft then began a spiral to describe larger angled cones out to the limit. Once there it reversed the process to come back to dead astern, then began another cycle. This was a mechanical scanner and all this was done through electric motors, hinges, cams – and springs. The problem was, a complete cycle took under 2 seconds!
You really had to see a scanner operating in the workshop to understand the stresses it was under! The spiral springs, I think, about 4 inches long by a half inch, tried to keep everything ‘tight’ against the cams, and mechanically connected. They didn’t stand a chance! When they broke the scanner simply flopped with gravity - and looked at the ground you’d just flown over.