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How Britain was saved by radar

14 May 2000

A Radar History of World War II: Technical and Military Imperatives
Louis Brown
2000 Institute of Physics Publishing 553pp £27.50/$38.00

I was recently 60 feet underground in the museum attached to the old operations room of 11 group at Uxbridge, one of the nerve centres of the Battle of Britain, staring at pictures of senior Royal Air Force officers like Sir Hugh Dowding and Sir Arthur Harris. Why, I wondered, were there no pictures of scientists like Sir Henry Tizard or Sir Robert Watson-Watt? After all, it was Watson-Watt who in 1935 first suggested to the Tizard committee, which had been set up by the British government to evaluate scientific air-defence techniques, that radio waves could be used to detect enemy aircraft. No-one who reads this book on the history of radar during the Second World War could possibly fail to agree to the addition of those pictures of Tizard or Watson-Watt; it makes it quite clear that without radar the allies would have lost the Battle of Britain.

Radar was not simply a new gadget; it was a radical extension of human vision. In the Second World War it empowered us to see our enemies coming from afar in the dark and fog, so that we could defend ourselves more easily. It also helped us to seek them out at night for attack. In peacetime, radar empowers our aircraft and ships to find their way about the world in much greater safety. Indeed, its importance to navigation was as vital as that of the chronometer.

In the first two chapters of this book, Louis Brown sets the scene into which radar was born and gives us an account of its conception in Britain, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands. Most of this material can be found elsewhere, but it has not been collected and presented in such an admirably wide perspective as this one.

In the section on the origins of radar, we are left in no doubt that any discussion of the question “who invented radar?” is as futile as asking which of the many votes won an election. The more interesting question is “who made radar into a weapon that really mattered?”, and on that topic the book sheds some light by comparing what happened in different countries. It shows that the early British experiments at Orfordness on the detection of aircraft by radar were turned with remarkable speed into a highly effective defence system (Chain Home – CH) in time for the outbreak of the war by the combined efforts of Watson-Watt, Tizard and Dowding.

An essential factor in this achievement was the development of an extensive system of communications, special display equipment and, importantly, new military procedures. It is particularly instructive to compare the operational results of this work with what happened in the Japanese attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbour, where there was adequate radar but no effective plan for using it. The comparison shows perfectly the difference between developing radar and making it into an effective weapon.

The basic problem in developing a new weapon is to put the person who knows what can be done technically in touch with the person who knows what needs to be done militarily. One major difficulty in doing this is to overcome the barrier of military caste, which, so often, has frustrated innovation. Another difficulty is, of course, the scientists’ lack of information about military operations.

In Britain both these difficulties were overcome by Watson-Watt and Tizard, and later by A P Rowe’s “Sunday soviets” – weekend meetings at which scientists and air-force officers got together at the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) at Swanage and Malvern – and by establishing “operational research”. Reading in this book about what happened in other countries, including the US, it is clear that this close co-operation between the scientists and the military was a distinctive feature of the development of radar in Britain and that it paid off.

Even so, I was left wondering how it was that Fighter Command and the TRE failed to foresee that the development of radar coverage inland (Ground Control Interception – GCI) would be as essential to the air defence of Britain at night as the development of radar coverage out to sea (CH) was to air defence by day. The introduction of radar (GCI) to control fighters was delayed until late in 1940, and the use of radar in night defence (Air Interception – AI + GCI) did not therefore become an effective weapon until early in 1941 – sadly too late for the night raids by the German air force on British cities in 1940.

I was also surprised to read that the idea of putting a powerful lamp in the nose of anti-submarine aircraft (Leigh Light) arose rather late in the war from a casual conversation between two junior Royal Air Force officers. Had the idea been put into practice sooner, it would have increased the efficiency of airborne radar (Air-to-Surface Vessel – ASV). One can’t help wondering why those concerned with anti-submarine warfare failed to see that in the last stages of attacking a submarine in the dark you needed to see it!

In the next seven chapters, Brown surveys the application of radar in all the major theatres of war, starting with the Battle of Britain and ending with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. In each case he tries to present the use of radar in its operational context and to include all types and nationalities of radar – marine, airborne and anti-aircraft. Given the large number of military operations and the astonishing variety of radar equipment, such a survey is, necessarily, rather confusing, and some of the more interesting operations could do with more space. Nevertheless, if you want to know more about a particular operation there are copious references.

Given the breadth of his canvas the author does a pretty good job, and I came out of the book with a much better understanding of the use of radar in the last war, particularly in the Pacific and Mediterranean, than I had gathered from the dozen or so books already on my shelf. The final chapter, entitled “The Measure of Radar”, includes a brief account of the application of radar techniques to navigation, air-traffic control and radio astronomy; a discussion of the effects of secrecy; and an attempt to evaluate the use of radar in the last war. There is a short appendix on radar techniques, which had me wondering whom it was written for! Finally, there is a comprehensive list of sources, an index, and plenty of interesting pictures of different types of radar.

I am glad to welcome this edition to my family of books on radar.

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