Can anyone explain why so many Lancaster’s were fitted with Rebecca aerials? Providing that I’m looking at the right part, there seems to be a lot of wartime pictures showing the forked nose aerial associated with ‘Rebecca’.
From my limited knowledge, Rebecca was used in conjunction with the Eureka beacon by paratroops and resistance members so that supply aircraft could home in on the signal during supply drops which doesn’t seem like a common use for the Lancaster.
My only thought is perhaps the Eureka beacons were installed at airfields to aid navigation or were they ever used as a bombing technique?
By: PeterVerney - 29th August 2012 at 14:37
Rebecca/Eureka was pretty standard equipment in the ’50s. I was taught to use it at nav school and it was our main aid used for homing and for BABS blind approaches. Transport Command also used it and we had it fitted to our Meteor NF13s in the Muddle East.
So I guess it was a fairly standard fitment from late war on, and very useful I might add.
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August 29, 2012 at 2:03 pm