A select group of SPAR officers and enlisted personnel were assigned to work with the Long Range Aid to Navigation at monitoring stations in the Continental United States. Better known under the acronym LORAN, it was a top-secret radio navigation system developed for ships at sea, and long-range aircraft. The first monitoring station staffed by SPARS was at Chatham, Massachusetts, after they had received two months of instructions at M.I.T. on the operation and maintenance of LORAN. The unit at Chatham is believed to have been (at the time) the only all-female staffed one of its kind in the world.