Radar in WWI

What if the technology for a useable, reasonably compact radar was around in WWI?

Specific applications I could see would be proximity fuses for artillery shells (which makes the trench gridlock even bloodier) and of course fire control for ships. Radar for ships would make fighting in the cloudy North Sea a somewhat easier affair and would probably allow for the Royal Navy to root out the High Seas fleet more easily (unless the British happen not to embrace the new technology).

Airplanes of that era are too light to carry radar sets, but radar equipped zeppelins could be used as primitive AWACS to discourage casual reconnaissance and provide early warning.
 
What if the technology for a useable, reasonably compact radar was around in WWI?

Specific applications I could see would be proximity fuses for artillery shells (which makes the trench gridlock even bloodier) and of course fire control for ships. Radar for ships would make fighting in the cloudy North Sea a somewhat easier affair and would probably allow for the Royal Navy to root out the High Seas fleet more easily (unless the British happen not to embrace the new technology).

Airplanes of that era are too light to carry radar sets, but radar equipped zeppelins could be used as primitive AWACS to discourage casual reconnaissance and provide early warning.

Radar in WW1 is, oddly, practical.
Reasonably compact (actually, you seem to be asking for very compact!!) simply isnt within the tech of the period. Take a look at the size of a typical vacuum tube of that era...:)
But land based (maybe even ship based) radar would be possible. Ironically the wood and fabric planes of the era would give terribly poor returns, so its even less useful against aircraft :)
 
Radar proximity fuses? It took what were cutting edge developments during WW2 to miniturise and toughen electronic components to the point they could fit in a shell while leaving enough space for a useful load of HE and survive being shot from a gun. Doing so in WW1 is quite a stretch to put thing slightly. Optical or accoustic proximity fuse systems mounted on rockets may be doable, but even then I've got my doubts.
 
Considering aircraft are made from wood and canvas, wouldn't radar's naval application be more useful. Imagine its use at Jutland.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
In the autumn of 1922, Albert H. Taylor and Leo C. Young at the U.S. Naval Aircraft Radio Laboratory were conducting communication experiments when they noticed that a wooden ship in the Potomac River was interfering with their signals; in effect, they had demonstrated the first multistatic radar, a system that uses separated transmitting and receiving antennas and detects targets due to changes in the signal. In 1930, Lawrence A. Hyland working with Taylor and Young, now at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C., used a similar arrangement of radio equipment to detect a passing aircraft. This led to a proposal by Taylor for using this technique for detecting ships and aircraft.

A simple wave-interference apparatus can detect the presence of an object, but it cannot determine its location or velocity. That had to await the invention of pulsed radar, and later, additional encoding techniques to extract this information from a CW signal. When Taylor's group at the NRL were unsuccessful in getting interference radio accepted as a detection means, Young suggested trying pulsing techniques. This would also allow the direct determination of range to the target. The British and the American research groups were independently aware of the advantages of such an approach, but the problem was to develop the timing equipment to make it feasible.
Robert Morris Page was assigned by Taylor to implement Young's suggestion. Page designed a transmitter operating at 60 MHz and pulsed 10 μs in duration and 90 μs between pulses. In December 1934, the apparatus was used to detect a plane at a distance of one mile (1.6 km) flying up and down the Potomac. Although the detection range was small and the indications on the oscilloscope monitor were almost indistinct, it demonstrated the basic concept of a pulsed radar system.[10] Based on this, Page, Taylor, and Young are usually credited with building and demonstrating the world’s first true radar.

From Wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_radar

Looks like unless you move up the time frame of radar development a lot, it will be of limited use. The issue with being on a ship is that it would be easy to triangulate with the land stations picking up radio traffic, and not add much information to the user. I don't see being put on ships except on an experimental basis, like maybe the British put on a couple of pick line cruisers.

I could see some use on land based radar to detect ships near port, and given enough time, one might be able to figure out a range/speed if one start making assumptions, but it looks like with this level of tech, it would take 2 radars miles apart, linked by land lines, doing manual triangulation calculations. And to give you an idea of the margin of error, it was often 50 miles triangulating radio communications, so I am not so sure triangulation using radars would have been much more accurate. If you can't pinpoint a broadcasting radio, how are you pinpointing ships from very primitive radar systems?

I love the concept of radar Zeppelins, and I think they would show up if Germany won WW1, in the 1930's or more likely the 1940's. The only way I see it being a WW1 type item is to have someone throw major funding into the idea of radar at least a decade before the war. In the first years of the 20th century, they were putting radios on ships, and even at the start of WW1, using radios for ship communication still had some major command and control bugs. Like most things on this board, depends on the POD.
 
Wouldn't have helped much at Jutland, the Failure was of the British Ammunition and handling procedures, not their aiming.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Wouldn't have helped much at Jutland, the Failure was of the British Ammunition and handling procedures, not their aiming.

Only people it could have helped was the Germans, if they knew the main fleet was coming, then they pull off after sinking a few BC with light losses. And with luck, the British Fleet pursues them towards Germany, and the torpedo boats and U-boats can engage the Grand Fleet that night. Or maybe the Grand Fleet hits a minefield.
 
Military Innovation In the Interwar Period

P265

Yet already by 1904, a young German named Christian Hulsmeyer claimed his patented ‘telemobiloscope’ could transmit radio waves and receive their reflections off a passing object. He suggested such a device could prevent collisions at sea or aid navigation. Representatives of shipping lines flocked to various demonstrations in Germany and Holland and were impressed that the device could detect objects up to a range of approximately five kilometres. But there were no buyers.

Huelsmeyer's "telemobiloscope" on display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. At left is the antenna, in the middle the receiver, and at right the transmitter. After 90 years (1904) the unit was connected to a battery and it still worked flawlessly. Range is 3000 m. A description in English on how his radar system worked is detailed in his US patent 810,150 dated Jan. 16, 1906.

http://www.radarworld.org/huelsmeyer.html

On the 30th April 1904, Christian Huelsmeyer in Duesseldorf, Germany, applied for a patent for his 'telemobiloscope' which was a transmitter-receiver system for detecting distant metallic objects by means of electrical waves. The telemobiloscope was designed as an anti-collision device for ships and it worked well. His interest in collision prevention arose after observing the grief of a mother whose son was killed when two ships collided. After a period teaching in Bremen, where he had the opportunity of repeating Hertz's experiments, he joined Siemens. In 1902 he moved to Duesseldorf to concentrate on his invention. He became acquainted with a merchant from Cologne, was given 5,000 marks and founded the company 'Telemobiloscop-Gesellschaft Huelsmeyer und Mannheim'. The first public demonstration of his 'telemobiloscope' took place on the 18th May 1904 at the Hohenzollern Bridge, Cologne. As a ship on the river approached, one could hear a bell ringing. The ringing ceased only when the ship changed direction and left the beam of his 'telemobiloscope'. All tests carried out gave positive results. The press and public opinion were very favorable. However, neither the naval authorities nor industry showed interest. In June 1904 he was given the opportunity by the director of a Dutch shipping company to display his equipment at various shipping congresses at Rotterdam. His was detecting ships at ranges up to 3,000 m, and he was planning a new 'telemobiloscope' which would function up to 10,000 m. He received a fourth patent on the 11th November 1904 in England. In 1955, he was honored at a congress in Munich on Weather and Astro-Navigation (Flug-Wetter-und Astro Funkortungs-Tagung). His 'telemobiloscope' operated on a wavelength of 40-50 cm. The transmitter used a Righi-type spark gap (part of which was immersed in oil) from an induction coil. The radiated pulses were beamed by a funnel-shaped reflector and tube which could be pointed in any desired direction. The receiver used a coherer detector and a separate vertical antenna, which, because of a semi-cylindrical movable screen, was also directional. Basically, the apparatus was designed to detect the presence of an object in a particular direction. The question of determining distance was later solved, by a modification which aimed at beaming the radiation at any desired angle of elevation. Knowledge of the height of one's own transmitting antenna above the surface of the water and of the angle of vertical elevation at which an object was detected would, by simple calculation, give the range of the object. Perhaps the most ingenious aspect of the inventor's later apparatus was his awareness that the equipment might respond to other than its own transmissions and his safeguarding against it by a time limiting electromechanical mechanism. The receiver responded to a first transmission's signal only if, after a predetermined interval, it received the signal from a second transmission.

Some claims are made that Heulsmeyer had built a second set, a much larger demonstration unit which he is supposed to have build in two month and is claimed did not work! There is no support for this claim. His unit worked and it was in competion with the Marconi spark transmitters. The Marconi Wireless Company had the control of the Naval communication industry in those days and would not tolerate any competition.
 
The trouble with early radar is that its a conceptually simple system, and its relatively easy to show something working.

Turning that into something useful is FAR more difficult, and much of the tech simply wasnt there in usable form until the 30's. There are all sorts of bits and pieces you need available (ie not in the lab), in a form robust enough to withstand operational use.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
The trouble with early radar is that its a conceptually simple system, and its relatively easy to show something working.

Turning that into something useful is FAR more difficult, and much of the tech simply wasnt there in usable form until the 30's. There are all sorts of bits and pieces you need available (ie not in the lab), in a form robust enough to withstand operational use.


Agreed. All the Heulsmeyer radar would be good for is a port control device, and this is AFTER it had extensive teething problems. A lab result is successful if it works one day with very high skilled techs or scientist using the system. To be a practical device, it then has to be made robust enough to be used by the everyday man. Often when going from lab to production model, many new issues are found. For an example of the issue, he uses a Spark Gap transmitter. Today we would call a spark gap transmitter something else, a Radio Jammer.


Now, this would make an interesting POD if it had received heavy funding by the German Navy.
 
Agreed. All the Heulsmeyer radar would be good for is a port control device, and this is AFTER it had extensive teething problems. A lab result is successful if it works one day with very high skilled techs or scientist using the system. To be a practical device, it then has to be made robust enough to be used by the everyday man. Often when going from lab to production model, many new issues are found. For an example of the issue, he uses a Spark Gap transmitter. Today we would call a spark gap transmitter something else, a Radio Jammer.


Now, this would make an interesting POD if it had received heavy funding by the German Navy.

Exactly, the implications if someone did go 'mmmmhh'
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Exactly, the implications if someone did go 'mmmmhh'

Most likely, you have a stationary network on the German coast that can see a 100 or so miles out, and detect ships at the start of the war. Later in the war, it will be put on cruisers and probably Zeppelins to detect the Royal Navy. I am not sure you can get a system that works well enough, but if you do, it means things like Betty BC raid is detected and probably ends badly for the British. And the German navy is more aggressive in the North Sea. The RN loses some more ships, but the blockade is still enforced. War ends the same.

The big unknown would be the morale and diplomatic issues. If the RN losing a big battle, decisively, then maybe a country like Italy does not enter the war. or Maybe if British leadership is shocked enough by a loss, then there are some peace offers.

If I had to guess, my over under would be 4 extra capital ships lost by British or not lost by Germans, war ends withing 60 days of when it does in OTL.
 
Wouldn't have helped much at Jutland, the Failure was of the British Ammunition and handling procedures, not their aiming.

It would help with Jellicoe having a better idea about the state of things before he deploys the Grand Fleet. His subordinates weren't passing on information to him in a timely fashion to give him an idea of the strategic picture.
 
And with luck, the British Fleet pursues them towards Germany, and the torpedo boats and U-boats can engage the Grand Fleet that night. Or maybe the Grand Fleet hits a minefield.
Jellicoe didn't fall for it OTL, I doubt he'd do it here.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Jellicoe didn't fall for it OTL, I doubt he'd do it here.

Good chance he would not, but if the Germans had radar, they might well have headed home before the Grand Fleet arrived forcing him to chose between accepting a defeat of Betty unit or trying to fight nearer to German.
 
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