Usage of radars at Russian front (1 Viewer)

Glider said:

For content I rest my case, as for the tone, I let others make up their own mind.

If you want to go back to the first days of Cathode Rays I suggest you check up on J J Thompson an English physicist.

Development was international with varying degrees of co operation but turning Radar into a weapon of was started in the late 1920's and from about 1930 each country tended to keep their progress secret. How each country proceeded differed but to pretend that the UK copied anyone, a claim you have yet to substantiate, is far from the truth.

Your implication that the first CXAM-1 antenna first going to sea in 1938 on a US warship was some kind of breakthrough is of course totally wrong. The list of UK examples given clearly demonstrates that and those examples are easily checked with some research. It the use by you of that as an example which I didn't understand. If you could clarify your intention it would clear things up.

If you want to send me a PM to keep this from cluttering up the thread I am happy to supply details of books, web sites etc to help you look into this further.

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Sorry mate I missed post.. Regarding CRT only one name emerges everywhere you look as the pioneer and inventor , especially in France and its the German Ferdiand Braun but anyway everybody is entitled to his or her opinion .Yes CXAM-1 is generally considered one of the breakthroughs, among many of course. I never denied that turning radar into a real weapon that made difference in the war was British achievement but everything else from 1886 until 1940 wasn't . Thanks for your offer but I have all the means and sources I need to come to a conclusion of my own . I rest my case as well.

I rest my case as well

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You might be resting your case, but is a case resting on foundations of sand. you have proved nothing, added nothing and base your opinions on very loose and suspect interpretations of history

The generally accepted history leading to the development of the CRT includes the following

1855 - German, Heinrich Geissler invents the Geissler tube, created using his mercury pump this was the first good evacuated (of air) vacuum tube later modified by Sir William Crookes.
1859 - German mathematician and physicist, Julius Plucker experiments with invisible cathode rays. Cathode rays were first identified by Julius Plucker.

1878 - Englishmen, Sir William Crookes was the first person to confirm the existence of cathode rays by displaying them, with his invention of the Crookes tube, a crude prototype for all future cathode ray tubes.

1897 - German, Karl Ferdinand Braun invents the CRT oscilloscope - the Braun Tube was the forerunner of today's television and radar tubes.

1929 - Vladimir Kosma Zworykin invented a cathode ray tube called the kinescope - for use with a primitive television system.

1931 - Allen B. Du Mont made the first commercially practical and durable CRT for television.

But again, this is an invalid line of argument. CRTs, antennae, all the other bits and opieces that make up the componentry of WWII radar is still not radar, and certainly not a functional centiemetric radar.

Ill ask the question again. in all the world in 1940, which nations had functional operatrional radars that they could take to war and which would make a difference. Which nations had functional airborne radars. in the cadee of the latter, the answer is two nations. Of those two nations, whose airborne radar was superior, more reliable and possessing greater range.

Arguing that the british were not world leaders in the development of radar in 1940, is just a silly argument, that does not hold any water at all. Arguing that they made no contribution, or made just minor tweaks ....sorrt of cheating their way to world leadership in radar technologies, is just a baseless and spurious claim by someone desperate to deny any credit for Britain helping to win the war.

Thanks for your comments. As for J J Thompson he was the person who came up with the theory that Cathode Rays existed and undertook three experiments to prove the case. The attached may help J. J. Thomson 1897

As for the idea that the CXAM - 1 was a breakthrough I would appreciate your source to support that idea. I find it hard to believe that a design that had its first six examples delivered in 1940was ahead or an advance of any kind over the range of radars of considerably superior performance that were in service in the RN at or before the CXAM - 1 was delivered but am willing to be educated. SO if you could send me the details of your source it would be appreciated.

I would suggest that, if our friend has nothing else better to do than put forward his sadly pathetic attempts at illustrating how anti-British he is, rather than make genuine and useful contributions to this forum, that he b*gg*r off and find some more receptive, sad people to off load his narrow-minded views upon.
I'm frankly fed up with this attitude, from him, and a couple of other members on these boards, who seem to just want to provoke argument, among an otherwise friendly, knowledgeable and helpful membership.

I am tempted to agree with you but think he should be given the chance to support his ideas with some evidence. If he does then everyone gains and we all learn something. If not, then the silence will speak volumes both for now and the future. The piece that he has stated more than once is that the CXAM - 1 was a breakthrough, that is the one that interests me most and the one that I would like to see evidence about.

The lesson about giving someone a chance to prove their story is one I learnt many years ago. At work we had an old boy, who dithered over everything, couldn't make a decision to save his life and had an irritating habit of flicking a false front tooth whilst telling us stories about his motor racing exploits. One day I cracked and told him that I couldn't believe his stories and that I had work to do. Big, no make that a Huge mistake, two days later he came in with photos of him racing Jaguar C and D types and a program with him in the same race as Stirling Moss. Turned out he had been a test driver for Jaguar in the 1950's and 60's and sometimes raced if one of the works drivers was unavailable.

Oh, I agree. I'm all for anyone having the chance to support their claims or statements with evidence. But I have the feeling this member is only here to present his own views, provoke argument, and declare his anti- British feelings.
There have been a number of instances where this individual has had the opportunity to present himself in a less confrontational and insulting manner, none of which have been actioned.
I don't suffer fools, bullies, or self-opinionated 'revisionists', but I'm willing to give all individuals one chance.

well said, and hopefully we can move on

This is what wiki has to say regarding the development of the cavity magnetron. The emphasis is mine


The first simple, two-pole magnetron was developed in 1920 by Albert Hull at General Electric's Research Laboratories (Schenectady, New York), as an outgrowth of his work on the magnetic control of vacuum tubes in an attempt to work around the patents held by Lee De Forest on electrostatic control.

Hull's magnetron was not originally intended to generate VHF (very-high-frequency) electromagnetic waves. However, in 1924, Czech physicist August Žáček (1886–1961) and German physicist Erich Habann (1892–1968) independently discovered that the magnetron could generate waves of 100 megahertz to 1 gigahertz. Žáček, a professor at Prague's Charles University, published first; however, he published in a journal with a small circulation and thus attracted little attention. Habann, a student at the University of Jena, investigated the magnetron for his doctoral dissertation of 1924. Throughout the 1920s, Hull and other researchers around the world worked to develop the magnetron. Most of these early magnetrons were glass vacuum tubes with multiple anodes. However, the two-pole magnetron, also known as a split-anode magnetron, had relatively low efficiency. The cavity version (properly referred to as a resonant-cavity magnetron) proved to be far more useful. In 1937-1940 a multi-cavity magnetron was built by the British physicist Sir John Turton Randall, FRSE, together with a team of British coworkers, for the British and American military radar installations in World War II.

While radar was being developed during World War II, there arose an urgent need for a high-power microwave generator that worked at shorter wavelengths (around 10 cm (3 GHz)) rather than the 150 cm (200 MHz) that was available from tube-based generators of the time. It was known that a multi-cavity resonant magnetron had been developed and patented in 1935 by Hans Hollmann in Berlin. However, the German military considered the frequency drift of Hollman's device to be undesirable, and based their radar systems on the klystron instead. But klystrons could not at that time achieve the high power output that magnetrons eventually reached. This was one reason that German night fighter radars were not a match for their British counterparts.

In 1940, at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, John Randall and Harry Boot produced a working prototype similar to Hollman's cavity magnetron, but added liquid cooling and a stronger cavity. Randall and Boot soon managed to increase its power output 100 fold. Instead of abandoning the magnetron due to its frequency instability, they sampled the output signal and synchronized their receiver to whatever frequency was actually being generated. In 1941, the problem of frequency instability was solved by coupling ("strapping") alternate cavities within the magnetron. (For an overview of early magnetron designs, including that of Boot and Randall


So much for the British piggy backing in on the research of other.....

I think people can show him he is wrong, without lowering themselves to his live and remain civil.

The model I built of the Russian night fighter Pe-3 bis supposedly had a radar. The following is from wiki so I don't really trust it but it might be useful to research.

The Gneiss-2 airborne radar was evaluated in the Pe-3 beginning in July 1942 and it was sent to both Moscow and Stalingrad for combat trials in late 1942. Another round of trials was conducted by aircraft of the 2nd Guards Fighter Corps of the PVO in Leningrad between February and May 1943 and it was approved for service the next month. Very few appear to have been deployed as only fifteen were fitted on Pe-3s.