Word: shoran
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...European segment ended at Crete, and the U.S. Air Force was called in to jump the arc across the Mediterranean to North Africa. The job was done by Hiran (High Precision Shoran), an electronic surveying system...
...research headquarters at Princeton, N.J. Dr. Zworykin (who joined RCA in 1929) and his colleagues, under Vice President C. B. Jolliffe, brought many other startling developments : the electron microscope, the infrared "sniperscope" which enabled World War II G.I.s to knock off skulking Japanese troops at night, "shoran" for accurate blind-bombing. In World War II, RCA turned out an estimated $500 million worth of devices for the armed forces. Now it has big defense orders, many for products no one else can make...
...bomber equipped to use Shoran carries a radio transmitter that sends out short pulses of ultra high frequency (above 300 megacycles) waves. Two ground stations at well-separated points behind friendly lines pick up the airplane's pulses and echo them back greatly amplified. Apparatus on the plane measures the time it took for the pulses to make round trips to each of the stations. This gives a continuous picture of the airplane's distance from the two stations-and therefore its position on the map. The system is accurate enough to show the position of the plane...
...darkness or clouds, the crew figures out how the Shoran instruments should read when the airplane reaches the bomb release point just short of the target. They set some dials. A computing mechanism that takes account of wind drift, altitude, etc. helps them reach the selected point. A red light flashes, and the bombardier drops the bombs...
...Shoran was used toward the end of World War II. The Air Force has more advanced systems that are still secret, but figures that Shoran works efficiently enough for its Korean operations...