Originally Posted by
Fris B. Fairing
My thanks to Peter Clukey at Lockheed Martin for providing the definitive answer:
The receiving antenna can be seen under the name "Smith" in this image. This type of antenna was common to many other types.
Thanks to all who contributed.
I thought that's what it was, but I remembered "Rebecca" as the Air Force name for them. I worked on Rebecca systems, in the Bristol Freighter and the DC-3, in 1968.
Evil device: the transmitter was a power oscillator (!!) tuned with a motorised Lecher line (go on, get the manuals out and look them both up, you won't find such evil devices anywhere these days...)
Packed a wallop: about 250 watts or 1 kW peak, I seem to remember. And "reliability" was not in their lexicon.