Birth of Radar Memorial at the site of first successful RDR (radio detection and ranging) experiments by Robert Watson-Watt and Arnold Wilkins near Daventry, 26 February 1935. At the time, there was no plaque and no publicity; the first British radar experiments were so secret that only three people witnessed them on the ground. What is not obvious is the fact that this British effort took place two years after the development of a practical radar in Germany .
[kintalk, via Wikimedia commons]
British and Allied memoirs and histories have contributed to the rise of three myths concerning the discovery and employment of radar. These myths are as follows. The first myth is that Sir Robert Watson-Watt is the father and sole inventor of radar. The second is that Germany’s discovery and realization of radar’s military worth occurred after 1940 following exposure to British systems. The third myth gives radar the pivotal role in the defeat of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. To deflate these myths the origin of radar is traced from James Maxwell’s discovery of radio waves to early radar theorists and inventors. Their role in the story of radar illuminates and contributes to the deflation of the radar myths. Both the rebirth of the Luftwaffe and evolution of the RAF during the 1920’s and 1930’s shows how each service independently arrived at the development of radar technology for different reasons. In 1939 Germany possessed some of the world’s best and most enduring radar designs, as well as essential navigation and bombing aids. England’s Chain Home radar was a dead end technology with serious shortcomings, but was skilfully melded to an innovative command and control system. The illumination of German radar achievements and a balanced analysis of British defensive systems essentially deflates the radar myths.
Wizard War
“This was a secret war, whose battles were lost or won unknown to the public; and only with difficulty is it comprehended, even now, by those outside the small high scientific circles concerned. No such warfare had ever been waged by mortal men.”
Winston Churchill
With those words Winston Churchill immortalized the British and Allied scientific war effort against the German enemy, giving credence to several long-held myths about superior and innovative British radar techniques. Post-war histories and autobiographies have concentrated on what the Allied forces did right against the Germans and tend to favourably promote the success of government programs and their administrators. The sheer destruction, defeat, and partition of post-war Germany has made the other side of the story harder to discover and attribute. In the late forties, the world was not in a mood to praise German scientists and technological innovation, with the sole exception being the German rocket scientists. From the wealth of World War II histories and accounts, a theme has evolved and received support over the years concerning British radar at the beginning of the conflict. These themes, essentially myths, concerning radar are the following.
- The British invented radar and that scientist, Sir Watson-Watt, was the father of this technology.
- The Germans did not have pre-war radar, and failed to grasp the importance of this technology. The Germans only developed radar in response to their defeat in the skies over Britain, or from stolen British plans and equipment.
- The British radar system played a unique and pivotal role in the success of the Battle of Britain.
In order to deflate these myths to their proper size, this material will be organized into four sections. The first section will explain some basic radio theory and history in warfare. Section two will cover the development of German Luftwaffe defensive strategies and then the existence of German radar. The third section will do the same analysis of the British approach. In section four, the radar myths will be re-examined in light of the previous discussions. The focus of this research is on pre-war Germany and Britain; comparing and contrasting tactics and technology that existed prior to hostilities.
The Technology of Radio
The theories and scientific insights into the technology of radar became available to the world in 1887 when Heinrich Hertz in Germany discovered the existence of radio waves. The scientific journey leading to this discovery started with James C. Maxwell’s Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field developed around the 1850’s which theorized that there existed invisible rays, not seen by the human eye, created by oscillatory electric currents. The search for other types of radiation was a fierce scientific competition leading to discovery of Roentgen’s X-rays and culminated with Hertz’s discovery of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Hertz experimented with electric sparks, and in 1888 he found that a spark jumping from two metal spheres in a loop of wire would cause another spark to jump between two other metal spheres in a similar loop, even with this loop being meters away. This simple effect had tremendous implications and gave an alternative to the wire-linked telegraph, the wireless.
In less than a decade later Guglielmo Marconi obtained a British patent for his wireless design, and stations were transmitting across the English Channel in 1898. The needs of the British empire for a means of global communications fuelled and accelerated the use of the new wireless technology. This invention was immediately duplicated or rediscovered throughout the world. Notably in 1909 both a German named Karl F. Braun and Marconi shared the Nobel Prize for their work in the area of radio.
Rival commercial companies arose from their work, with the Marconi Company in Britain and Telefunken in Germany. They supplied equally capable technology to their countries’ military and exported it to others.
A fair analysis of the technologies of 1940.
I’m not so sure that CH’s HF frequency could be considered a “dead end” technology however. The technology is still in use – with significant investment in coastal mounted antenna in current long range “over the horizon” early warning radar. See – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-horizon_radar
Missing from this discussion is the mid 1940′s development by the British of the cavity magnetron which was being flown in early 1941 in night fighters – which coupled to the existing British Command and Control system – quickly made German night bombing less effective – though the German bomber force also left for Russia around the same time. Most histories consider that the Germans had to capture the magnetron from downed allied aircraft to discover how to produce their own airborne radar. In fact the German’s had the Magnetron as early as 1935 but discounted it due to frequency instability. Till they captured magnetrons they did not find out how to stabilize the frequency by observing how the allies had done so.
It has been claimed that the Japanese had the cavity magnetron before WW2 – the ordinary split anode magnetron was well known in the 1930′s.
Nevertheless, 10cm radar relied not only on the cavity magnetron, but also the silicon diode for the mixer and the external cavity klystron developed by Sutton’s group at Bristol University to provide the local oscillator. All of thse, with a Sutton tube type T/R switch were vital components, so to some extent, the magnetron is not so much over rated but over promoted – like Watson-Watt!
Mr Clark does a good job in debunking several of the myths – certainly, the radar story has had an undue amount of spin in favour of the allies, especially in recent years.
My later father, Ernest Putley, would have argued that the term “radar” (more pedantically “RDF” for early British efforts) encompassed the whole system – including the command and control elements like the Filter Room. On that basis the above article could be argued to be incorrectly interpreting the claims made by the British radar pioneers. My father worked as part of TRE from 1942, so he was well acquainted with Jimmy Rowe’s views on the subject.
However I’m sure the technical insights presented are are fairly correct. To the best of my knowledge, the Royal Navy examined and recovered some components of German radar equipment immediately after the scuttling of the Graf Spee. I don’t think they told the RAF about what they found however.
Derek,
Thank you very much for you comment. Yes, the British intelligence had “stolen” the gun ranging radar from the scuttled Graf Spee in Uruguay. The incident is described in “Instruments of Darkness: History of Electronic Warfare” by Alfred Price.
I’m not sure if the Royal Navy kept the intelligence for themselves, my understanding is that the British were pretty good at gathering all technical intelligence in one place.
Finally, yes, I believe that the greatest achievement of Dowding in applying technological advances or the time wasn’t coupled with any particular invention, but putting them all together – the radar, the monoplane fighter, the telecommunications, the ops room, the radio – into a cohesive system, which encompassed the entire chain from information gathering through command to execution.
So…….Watson-Watt did NOT cry out, “England is an island once more!”, when he saw the radio wave reflection when the airplane flew into range? Pity. I’m thinking that the English are one great happy family and if I visit it will be “us”. Or is the entire world our home and it is “we”?!