Radar and German ships, Radar Equipment of Germany - NavWeaps
BoB Mathematical Modeling of Alternative Outcomes
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In truth RADAR was never invented it was developed, from the earliest days of radio transmission it was noted that signals bounced off things, were affected by weather and later interfered with by aircraft. The challenge was to develop this phenomenon into something useful. The first demonstration by Watson Watt of a system used a standard BBC short wave radio transmitter and Watson Watt had first become involved in the science as a way to track thunderstorms.
Shortround6
Major General
Agreed, and part of the plan would be to establish new airfields or take over suitable French ones for the bombers. A He 111 could hold 762 imp gallons (3460 liters) in it's wing tanks.
36 He 111s could hold 27,400 Imp gal (124, 560 liters) so you need rail transport or a lot of trucks. A fighter field might not have enough fuel storage. You need bombs (and bomb storage), quarters for the men (including ground crew), again a bomber base might need more housing than a fighter base (Ok tents work for a while).
A bomber offensive involving hundreds of bombers is not something to be thrown together in a few days or even a few weeks.
I believe the Germans were making sporadic attacks into eastern England before Aldertag.
Units also had to repair, reinforce, replace after the losses suffered in the Battle for France before starting the attack on England.
Token
Senior Airman
No nation or service "invented" radar. Radar was a technology who's time had come, the right supporting tech was in place at the right time, and the need was recognized at about that same time. So the development of radar happened independently in several nations at about the same time. The Germans, English, Americans, Russian, Japanese, French, and Italians all were working on radar, generally in secret or at least without much acknowledgment. It can certainly be discussed, and argued, who got there first, but since all of the efforts were isolated and independent that really does not matter. They all basically got there on their own, building from the work of the same people before them.
For example, the Japanese may not have developed radar until after the Germans, the British, the Americans, or the Russians, but they did develop working systems on their own, without the benefit of knowledge gained in the other nations developments. They "invented it" on their own, just like most other major players in the field did. And what is really odd is that in the very early days of radar it can be argued the Japanese had several advantages, and were ahead of every one else in several key areas. But for whatever reason they did not appear to recognize the military significance of it, and so it became less important than other things., slowing, in a relative way, the development by the Japanese.
However, I think you have some of the dates wrong, possibly confusing 1933 for 1934. Kuhnhold did not succeed in ranging a target (the 400 ton NVA research vessel Grille, detected at a range of 2100 meters) with a pulsed system until early May, 1934. And the only reason that target was detected was because it was in motion, the Doppler shift made it visible. Stationary targets were not detected. As new systems were developed and tried they pushed the detection range out further. By early November of 1934 they were detecting the Grille at 7 km. In an October, 1934, attempt to detect the Grille at 12 km they accidentally detected a Junkers W-34 flying boat. To the best of my knowledge this was the first German detection of a flying aircraft. However, it gave range only, and no other information.
Of course, this still pre-dates the British Daventry Experiment, which intentionally detected a flying Hendley Page Heyford bomber, by several months, since that event was late February of 1935.
In 1930 Hyland, Taylor, and Young detected a flying aircraft in US Navy testing. But this was not pulsed radar and range detection, this was Doppler based detection, they detected it but could not yet use the information. Several probable flying targets were detected using the pulsed ionospheric radar that Breit and Tuve had been using in the Carnegie Institute since 1924. However the first intentional and planned detection of a flying aircraft with a pulsed system giving range and location was by Page, Taylor, and Young in December of 1934. This was a month and a half after the accidental Junkers detection by Kuhnhold, however this was a more complete "track", with all the data required, it was intentional, and it was repeatable. For this reason they are often given credit for being the first to show the capability of pulsed radar.
National pride is all well and good, but realistically almost all of the large players in the game "invented" radar themselves.
T!
The only important issue at the time was what was in service and working. All nations had systems under development. Comparing various frequencies, PRFs and other metrics ignores many important issues. The Chain Home (and Chain Home low) system and the "Dowding System" behind it was in service in 1939-40, it was primitive by the technology of the day because technology was advancing quickly, but it worked. It was low tech. but that was part of what it was, it was expected to be attacked and needed to be readily replaceable.
And to add what Pbehn stated above, the radar was only a part of the overall GCI system, which included the Observer Corps, telephone networks, centralised and dispersed plotting system, prominent and strategically placed airfields and fighter squadrons etc. It was the first integrated air defence system incorporating modern technologies, such as radar and telecommunications network of its kind and was very up-to-date for the time.
The UK had been thinking and working on it long before any RADAR system was developed. As soon as the Acoustic mirrors were installed on the Kent coast started the question "what do we do with the information". It obviously was behind any RADAR system so to actually make use of the information and get aeroplanes in the air to do anything time was "of the essence". The first operational acoustic mirrors were installed on the Kent coast in 1917. Three acoustic early warning devices 2360m east of Jack's Court, Lydd - 1005119 | Historic England
Shortround6
Major General
The idea that the Germans could cobble together such a system, especially using ship mounted radar sitting in French/Belgian ports takes an awful lot of Kool-aid.
British aircraft are not approaching the target areas over water, they are approaching over land so they fly at even moderately low levels the Germans are blind until it is too late.
This assumes the Germans can even get ship mounted radar to the desired areas. Radar on ships in Wilhelmshaven does them no good at all, ships spread out in penny packets along the French/Belgian side of the channel doesn't give the needed coverage and just invites destruction in detail, assuming they can even get from Wilhelmshaven to the desired areas, Some will/might, but all?
RN subs did pretty well in the Norway campaign after all.
Same if they try to put one/two ships off each invasion beach. The ships cannot detect the planes over land until it is too late and they cannot direct the German fighters to make intercepts in time.
British aircraft are not approaching the target areas over water, they are approaching over land so they fly at even moderately low levels the Germans are blind until it is too late.
This assumes the Germans can even get ship mounted radar to the desired areas. Radar on ships in Wilhelmshaven does them no good at all, ships spread out in penny packets along the French/Belgian side of the channel doesn't give the needed coverage and just invites destruction in detail, assuming they can even get from Wilhelmshaven to the desired areas, Some will/might, but all?
RN subs did pretty well in the Norway campaign after all.
Same if they try to put one/two ships off each invasion beach. The ships cannot detect the planes over land until it is too late and they cannot direct the German fighters to make intercepts in time.
Yup. this one is just outside of Capel le Ferne, on the cliff face off the road to Dover. That's its OP in the background.
For comparison, a few miles down the road on the other side of Dover at Swingate are these surviving Chain Home aerials, now repurposed as mobile towers and television transmitters.
Admiral Beez
Major
And the fools repeated this same mistake in preparing for Barbarossa, where they surmised that the Russians had about 4,000 combat aircraft, when they actually had over 10,000. The failures of situational awareness, accurate intelligence on enemy capability, shoddy/negligent planning, and weak cryptography led the Germans to make so many own goal errors.
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Token
Senior Airman
It was "good enough" and it was there, no doubt about it. The British had the first, and best, in its day, integrated system of radar defense, I don't know too many that would argue against that.
The Germans also had an interesting ability in radar pretty early on. And the Klein Heidelberg was just flat out slick.
The Americans, at least during WW II, never really bought into the wall of radar protection the homeland or routes to the homeland approach of Germany and England. Generally, there was no need. They certainly integrated radar into their tactics and defense well enough, but never faced bombers striking home targets.
So US radar tended to be mobile, and tactical, sets. The SCR-268, SCR-270, CXAM, the SCR-584, things like that. Early prototypes were in the field and on ships by 1937 and 1938. The US certainly was in the same kind of timelines for development as the other nations, but because the pressures of war were not a thing yet there was less of a push to "get it out now!" Once a working model was developed there was little push to get it in production. The US had multiple working radars before it entered the war, and it had models on hand that were not yet in the troops hands but were 100% ready to go into large scale production. Once the build up started in 1940 they could, and did, start to push the new tech out, as rapidly as not-yet-in-the-war funding would allow.
T!
I was making a slightly different point. "Chain Home" started to be deployed in 1937 and was operational in 1938, but that is the first 5 stations. From the earliest days Dowding saw the real problem as not the technical aspect of detecting an incoming aircraft, but what is done with the information. From 1937 to 1940 the whole system was constantly upgraded changed improved or whatever word you care to use but without any major technical or scientific leap in tech. It takes longer than anyone wanted to get a technical improvement that works in a laboratory type experiment in service, reliably, 24 hours a day serviced by technicians with 3 months training not whiz kid engineers with years in electronics. The first Chain Home stations were on approaches to London. There are lots of towns there with road, electricity, water and what you need to live. The nearest CH station to my home was up on the top of a moor, there is nothing there except snow in winter. What they now call "rolling out" a RADAR system for defence took much longer than just the invention of a new technical "gizmo". Thousands of people had to be trained in some very demanding but boring "stuff". There is nothing at all remarkable about the Dowding system apart from the fact that it actually worked, it just needed a huge number of people with telephones and training, doing a specific job. To this end 1,300 people trained in electronics were imported from Canada alone (according to wiki) just to man and operate the system.
In the United States radio echo location was used as early as 1925 in an experimental radio altimeter. There was an international geophysical year, I think 1930, where many folks were using it to take ionosphere soundings. The first 'proof of principal' test Watt did was to detect an aircraft flying between a transmitter and receiver.
The German Navy was running two radar development programs at once. One through the company Pintsch attempted to use 13.5cm microwaves using a Barkhausen Kurz Oscilator tube. This was the doppler based system but they were trying to use it as a pulsed system as well. The other program used a split anode magnetron, Initially from Phillips and then a more powerful unite from Telefunken. This produced a 50cm wavelength radar operating at 4kW. It was produced by the company GEMA which had started off producing sound recording equipment for sonar operators and then started making sonars for the German Navy which lead to the radar work. Here is an interesting aside: companies speciality in sound recording actually lead the director to travel to Malaysia to record Malay Folk songs.
The Split anode magnetrons (basically 2 cavity) were not entirely satisfactory due to instabillity and it was found using acorn tubes at 60cm was much better. This lead to the Famous Seetakt series that began deployment as a mass production product on Germany Navy Destroyers, Cruisers and Capital Ships from 1938. The short wavelength meant that a German Destroyer could detect a surface submarine or periscope.
The Japanese did receive help from the Germans. A Japanese delegation travelled to Germany in 1938 and was shown Seetakt and Freya equipment and told they better get a move on. Latter the Germans gave them designs for the calibration equipment needed to align aerials and range pulses accurately. This allowed the Japanese to move their equipment from Cruisers to Destroyers.
The Japanese also had the multicavity magnetron (with circular cavities and narrow slits) BEFORE Randall and Boot did by 1 year. They simply put a fraction of the effort into developing it. They even rationed the nickel needed for the magnets. Fairly silly as one magnetron would barely cost 1 ton of spall free armour steel. They also didnt tell the Germans.
The Germans did have multicavity magnetrons with narrow slits but the folks making the decisions didn't think to make radar out of them despite opposition by some such as Kunhold.
Token
Senior Airman
Previous test involving aircraft or ships passing between the transmitter and receiver were primarily looking for interference. The Daventry Experiment was looking for that interference, but also basing detection on Doppler shift. If the Doppler shift was detected that meant the same technique could be used when the target was not flying between the transmitter and the receiver.
That is why shortly after the limited test at Daventry they had moved the range out to ~100 miles. The original test showed the concept was valid, and it was worth putting effort into developing some enhanced, specific, hardware, to see what kind of range could be had using similar techniques.
I have used the same detection techniques myself in showing the basics of the technique to various people. I can track aircraft in and out of Los Angeles International airport (LAX) from my location 100 miles away in the desert, using a local Los Angeles TV transmitter as my illumination source. Detecting only the Doppler shift results in a nice visual representation.
The following image is the Doppler shift of various aircraft flying into LAX. This sample was taken from my house, at a range of about 100 miles from the area and aircraft in question. The illumination source is the KABC, Channel 7, Los Angeles, TV transmitter operating on 174 MHz. The geometry involved means that physically the aircraft are a significant distance on the far side of the transmitter facility from my location, although, naturally, much closer to the transmitter than I am. The transmitter is between me and the aircraft, but shaded by a range of mountains between us.
For some reason I thought that visit happened in early 1940. Regardless, by 1938 the Japanese already had the basics of radar figured out, the big problem was that they were not pursuing it with much emphasis. They had most of the individual pieces / parts, the major issues, figured out, but not in one big piece. The real result of the German visit was to press the importance of radar or related technologies.
T!
You'd think that Wilhelm Canaris was a British Intelligence Double Agent!
DerGiLLster
Airman
- 70
- May 1, 2015
Someone (his name isn't coming up to me now) believed that Hitler was a British Double Agent, for not pursuing the Mediterranean Strategy.
I wonder how much better the Abwehr would have been with anyone else as the head.
Admiral Beez
Major
The General Staff must have scratched their heads when nearly 350,000 Allied troops were allowed to embark mostly unmolested at Dunkirk.
Is this BS?
"Hitler later claimed, at the end of the war, that he had let the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to get away simply as a gesture of goodwill and to try to encourage Prime Minister Winston Churchill to make an agreement with Germany that would allow it to continue its occupation of Europe."
Hitler's Mistake at Dunkirk
fastmongrel
1st Sergeant
There were several reasons the BEF was rescued.
1. The French army fought to the last round to cover the evacuation. Taking very heavy casualties.
2. The German Panzers were almost out of fuel after advancing too far from the logistics train.
3. The RAF and FAA flew thousands of sorties even sending obsolete biplanes to dive bomb the Germans.
4. The German generals were too keen to get to Paris.
1. The French army fought to the last round to cover the evacuation. Taking very heavy casualties.
2. The German Panzers were almost out of fuel after advancing too far from the logistics train.
3. The RAF and FAA flew thousands of sorties even sending obsolete biplanes to dive bomb the Germans.
4. The German generals were too keen to get to Paris.
yosimitesam
Airman 1st Class
Quite correct. The most important contribution to "radar" made by the British, IMO, is their realization that it can be the basic tool to create an entire "air defense system." The administration, communication, and control structures they set up, practiced, and perfected was nothing less than a "mini NORAD." This showed great foresight and was followed with excellent execution of the first complete air defense "system." As important as it was, radar alone was not the "winner". The "system" that FC created and practiced gets the technical laurels, in my opinion.
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