DZ203
United later sold off their fleet of 247's, and NC13344 was part of a set of eight that was purchased by the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) on 10 August 1940 for light transport duties.
In August 1940, during the Tizard Mission, the Canadian National Research Council (NRC) was introduced to the British work on radars.
The mission continued on to Washington, DC, where the cavity magnetron was revealed and US agreed to build versions of the AI Mk.
It was the first design to combine all-metal construction, a low-mounted cantilever wing, fully retracting landing gear and an autopilot.
This required the entire design to be scaled down, leaving an opening in the market for other companies to use larger engines and offer more seating and resulting in more economical operation.
1 Air Observer School wrote that "After careful inspection and thought we have rendered our reports and put them at the back of the hangars in the hope that a garbage remover will take them away some day.
121 Squadron RCAF, which operated a wide variety of aircraft including the 247's, Grumman Goose, Westland Lysander, Avro Anson, Noorduyn Norseman, Bristol Bolingbroke and Lockheed Hudson.
[10][b] While NC13344 was arriving, a group of scientists from the United Kingdom formed what is today known as the Tizard Mission to introduce researchers in the US to the advances in electronics being made in the UK.
Among these devices was the cavity magnetron, which US historian James Phinney Baxter III later described in his Pulitzer Prize winning book as "the most valuable cargo ever brought to our shores".
The RCAF test-fit the system in 7655, and when this was found to be successful, offered the aircraft to the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force (RAF).
Newer ASV designs operating at shorter wavelengths, 3 cm in the case of the X band, offered higher resolution from the same antenna units, allowing them to pick out smaller targets.
[14] It was initially intended to send it to the TFUs Communications Flight, but it was instead picked up to test experimental automatic blind-landing equipment also being developed by the TRE.
The SCS-51 formed the basis for the modern instrument landing system (ILS), which offers enough accuracy to bring the aircraft to an altitude of 200 feet (61 m) above the ground.
[18] In 1945, the TRE formed a separate Blind Landing Experimental Unit at RAF Martlesham Heath but there are no records of DZ203 flying there.
[19] A 30 October meeting of the Aircraft Establishment Committee at Defford decided to reduce the size of the fleet, and DZ203 was struck from the list.
It was ultimately scrapped, reportedly after being damaged in a hangar collapse during a snow storm,[10] by Number 34 Maintenance Unit at RAF Sleap[20] in August 1947.
