Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules
A WWII era AWACS would be equipped with WWII era radar. Not the radar available during 2010.ground search radar although good didn't have a lot of the refinements like MTI (moving tarhet indicator) that later radar did .
As I was aying an airborne radar would be far less prone to errors of ground search radar, such as ground clutter , inversionA WWII era AWACS would be equipped with WWII era radar. Not the radar available during 2010.
However I have been reading Confounding the Reich a book on the night fighter war of 100 Group over Germany. In the book it makes only a passing reference to a He177 that was shot down while acting as an Illumnator when operating with Me 109 and FW190 aircraft.
I can only guess that it was an attempt at an AWACS as the concept of a flying searchlight was obsolete.
I admit its totally new to me and any information would be appreciated
As I was aying an airborne radar would be far less prone to errors of ground search radar, such as ground clutter , inversion
In June 1915 the W/T Command 6 reported another success: the new three-digit Allied Fleet Code had been broken.19
By then Roubaix had a mechanical device that facilitated the finding of Gronsfeld keys and the decrypting of its messages: a rack that resembled a multiple slide-rule. It held 20 slides, on each of which were written one full and one incomplete alphabet, starting with the letter q, continuing with a full alphabet after z, then starting anew and going on to the letter j. Thus it was possible to visualize finding Gronsfeld keys: laborious counting of letters up and down the alphabet was replaced by moving the slides up and down till the new key had been found. Then a stencil was cut with square openings in the keying positions and inserted in fittings on both sides of its stand. Afterwards reading a Gronsfeld telegram was easy: once the key was known it sufficed to set the ciphertext at the baseline immediately beneath the stencil. The plaintext appeared in the square openings of the stencil.
A second mechanical decryption device at Roubaix was designed by lieutenant Hoffmann. A wheel carried vertically arranged bigrams, turning under a transverse-mounted strip carrying a vertically arranged alphabet. No information could be located in the archive as to how the wheel was operated and what results were obtained by it, if any. But its existence proves that Roubaix developed mechanisms to find unknown keys.
By 1915 German W/T Command 6 was using custom made mechanical calculators to read British ciphers.
That isn't quite correct. There were analog computers as far back as WWI. They were used for things like computing naval gunfire and torpedo firing solutions.
By 1915 German W/T Command 6 was using custom made mechanical calculators to read British ciphers.
GERMANY'S FIRST CRYPTANALYSIS ON THE WESTERN FRONT: DECRYPTING BRITISH AND FRENCH NAVAL CIPHERS IN WORLD WAR I - page 5 | Cryptologia
If the Luftwaffe or RAF fielded AWACS during WWII they would almost certainly design analog or mechanical devices to assist with calculations.
Of course.Would that give them the ability to know the Grand Fleet sailed prior to Jutland?
Of course.
Per Massie (Castles of Steel) Admiral Scheer received the below intelligence messages on the mornng of 31 May 1915. Taken together they paint an unmistakable picture that the RN Grand Fleet and BCs were at sea.
Message 1.
U-32 sighted two British dreadnoughts, two cruisers and several destroyers off May Island, 60 miles east of Firth of Forth.
Message 2.
U-66 reported 8 British battleships accompanied by cruisers and destroyers 60 miles east of Cromarty on an easterly course.
Message 3.
W/T Command 6 reported intercepting British wireless messages indicating that two British dreadnoughts or groups of dreadnoughts (call signs did not make clear) had left Scapa Flow.
Makes me wonder what Admiral Scheer hoped to accomplish (besides getting his butt kicked by superior British naval forces).
Powering a search radar would be the major factor they do suck up the Amperage.In some cases for WW II airborne radar (early) the max range was the same as the altitude of the aircraft. Ground clutter totally swamped the radar. The lower the plane flew the lower the range the operator had to set the outer 'gate', if I have the term right.
With zero computer power to filter the signals the operator often had to set range 'gates' manually for the set to ignore. ANY return below the minimum distance set or any return over the max would be ignored.
It would be many years before real "look down" radar would be developed.
Late WW II radar might be quite capable of picking up a target flying at 5,000ft with the radar plane flying at 15,000ft if the gates and other filters were set right but picking up a plane flying at 500ft might well be impossible.
I agree.
Germany was on the defensive in the west from June 1940 onward. Hence ground and ship based radar works just fine.
AWACS are more of an offensive weapon. They give you benefits somewhat similiar to ground based radar while operating over enemy territory.
The British AWACs were used defensively to intercept He111s from Holland launching V1s.
There was an article in Flypast in April 1987 entitled 'The First AWACS' which described a Wellington with a modified ASV equipment whch was used as an airborne control for Beaufighters trying to shoot down Heinkel He 111s which were air-launching V1s.
However, there was also a Wellington equipped with a specifically designed radar for controlling interceptions. This was known as ACI (Air Controlled Interception) as opposed to GCI (Ground Controlled Interception) which was the name for the ground radar stations which guided night fighters. This Wellington, R1629, was equipped with a rotating dorsal aerial array, the purpose being to try and counter the threat from Fw 200 Condors in the NW Approaches. TRE designed the radar with the design, manufacture and installation of the aerial blade with mouting and turning gear the responsibility of RAE Farnborough. Trials were carried out off The Lizard in April 1942.
A change of role came the following month, with plans to use the aircraft to control interceptions of E-boats by MGBs or aircraft. Trials were carried out from Bircham Newton. With the introduction of 10 cm ASV from January 1942, the project was considered obsolete and was dropped. A full account appeared in the Air-Britain magazine, Aviation World, in Spring 2004 and in 'Air controlled interception' by R Hodges in Radar Development to 1945 edited by R W Burns.