WI no radar in WWII

Blair152

Banned
Inspired by The Men Who Invented Radar on The Military Channel last night.
Robert Watson Watt, the British scientist who led the team, discovered it by
accident. What if there was no radar in World War II?
 
Its not like Watt was the first. A lot of countries were working on developing RADAR at about that time. Tesla defined a lot of the basic principles about two decades earlier, and Im not sure if he was even the first. Heck, removing Watt from the project doesn't do too much to change the British project. So you can delay radar, but can't just handwave it away.
 
Riain said:
Wasn't there an experimental radar 'tripwire' at the mouth of Hamburg harbour in 1908?

Could be. As far as I recall, it was already discovered in 1906 that electromagnetic waves get reflected by metal surfaces.
 

Blair152

Banned
Wasn't there an experimental radar 'tripwire' at the mouth of Hamburg harbour in 1908?
I don't know. All I know is that in 1935, Watson Watt improvised an experiment with a borrowed truck and the BBC's radio towers. Watson Watt
concluded that that a death ray would be impossible.
 
Some inventions simply can't be delayed. It's a phenomene you see every so often in science that several teams all over the world make the same break-through at the same time.
Radar was one of them. Or to be more exact, all the parts existed it only needed someone to pick them up and put them together. And so they did. Several countries did in fact, not just the British. If you delay the invention of the British radar it will only lead to the Americans or someone else helping them out there. It might slightly affect the Battle of Britain, but nothing that would make a difference in the big picture.
 
Oh dear god....even wikipedia is more accurate than The History Channel which is really saying something.

Try looking at radar in 1904 courtesy of Christian Huslmeyer and there are probably a few sooner than him that just kept their thoughts to paper.
 

Blair152

Banned
Oh dear god....even wikipedia is more accurate than The History Channel which is really saying something.

Try looking at radar in 1904 courtesy of Christian Huslmeyer and there are probably a few sooner than him that just kept their thoughts to paper.
Try the Military Channel. There was an article in Smithsonian magazine sometime back in the 1980s. The year escapes me but it mentioned Robert
Watson Watt and Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh "Stuffy" Dowding. Last night's
program gave the background for it. The experiments that were done in the 1920s and all but the one that really counted was in 1935 when a British
Handley Page bomber interrupted the radio signal of the BBC's local transmitter. The experiments in the period between 1904 and 1935 were more centered on creating a death ray to protect Britain and not a radio based detection system which is what Britain ultimately ended up with. The Germans had to scour concentration camps for scientists who could work on radar.
 
Try the Military Channel. There was an article in Smithsonian magazine sometime back in the 1980s. The year escapes me but it mentioned Robert
Watson Watt and Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh "Stuffy" Dowding. Last night's
program gave the background for it. The experiments that were done in the 1920s and all but the one that really counted was in 1935 when a British
Handley Page bomber interrupted the radio signal of the BBC's local transmitter. The experiments in the period between 1904 and 1935 were more centered on creating a death ray to protect Britain and not a radio based detection system which is what Britain ultimately ended up with. The Germans had to scour concentration camps for scientists who could work on radar.

Hulsmeyer’s system was a ship collision avoidance system – nothing to do with death rays and in Britain alone there were at least three suggestions prior to Watson Watt’s suggestion.


The first of these suggestions was made on 4 August 1926 by O F Brown, a scientist with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, to the Anti-Aircraft Research Committee. He suggested to the committee a variety of ways that a cathode-ray oscillograph, a precursor to the CRT, could be used to enhance existing acoustical mirror technology. He added that it was ‘possible that a method of location in the azimuth could be based on the use of the cathode-ray direction-finder or short wave radiation excited in the metal of aircraft by magnetos or by secondary excitation in a strong filed emitted from a ground transmitter’. Unfortunately for Lindemann, he either did not see Brown’s paper or missed the significance of this particular suggestion. However, Lindemann, in his quest to find an alternative to acoustic mirrors, certainly pursued research into the detection of radiation from aircraft magnetos.


In 1928 L S B Alder of the Royal navy’s Signal School, proposed the development of a device ‘for the employment of reflection, scattering, or re-radiation of wireless waves by objects as a means for detecting the presence of such objects’. The device could be sued as an aid to navigation or a means to detect ‘approaching ships or aircraft’. There is no record that officials at the Signals School took any notice of Alder’s proposal.


The most extensive research by British defence scientists into using the reflections of radio waves for long range detection undertaken prior to 1935 occurred at the Signals Experimental Establishment (SEE), by W A S Butement and P E Pollard. Ironically, Pollard was under secondment to SEE from Tucker’s Air Defence Experimental Establishment. In late 1930 the two conducted a series of experiments using a short-wave radio source and receiver. Based on the results of this work, on 26th January 1931, they proposed the building of an ‘apparatus to locate ships from the coast or other ships, under any condition of visibility, or weather’. The ‘apparatus depends on the reflection of Ultra Short Radio Waves by conducting objects, e.g. ships’. SEE allowed them to conduct a limited series of experiments and they were able to detect a mast at about 100 yds away. However, here too the significance of this work was missed by both the War Office and Admiralty and the research programme was terminated.


In 1933 Dr Rudolph Kuhnold, Chief of the German Navy’s Signals Research Division, began work on a radar detection system. The origins of this work stemmed from Kuhnold’s earlier development of an underwater acoustical device similar to modern sonar. This shows that it was possible to make the transformation from acoustical to radio detection systems. Tests on radiolocation devices began in France in January 1934 and in the Soviet Union in July of that same year.
 

Blair152

Banned
Hulsmeyer’s system was a ship collision avoidance system – nothing to do with death rays and in Britain alone there were at least three suggestions prior to Watson Watt’s suggestion.


The first of these suggestions was made on 4 August 1926 by O F Brown, a scientist with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, to the Anti-Aircraft Research Committee. He suggested to the committee a variety of ways that a cathode-ray oscillograph, a precursor to the CRT, could be used to enhance existing acoustical mirror technology. He added that it was ‘possible that a method of location in the azimuth could be based on the use of the cathode-ray direction-finder or short wave radiation excited in the metal of aircraft by magnetos or by secondary excitation in a strong filed emitted from a ground transmitter’. Unfortunately for Lindemann, he either did not see Brown’s paper or missed the significance of this particular suggestion. However, Lindemann, in his quest to find an alternative to acoustic mirrors, certainly pursued research into the detection of radiation from aircraft magnetos.


In 1928 L S B Alder of the Royal navy’s Signal School, proposed the development of a device ‘for the employment of reflection, scattering, or re-radiation of wireless waves by objects as a means for detecting the presence of such objects’. The device could be sued as an aid to navigation or a means to detect ‘approaching ships or aircraft’. There is no record that officials at the Signals School took any notice of Alder’s proposal.


The most extensive research by British defence scientists into using the reflections of radio waves for long range detection undertaken prior to 1935 occurred at the Signals Experimental Establishment (SEE), by W A S Butement and P E Pollard. Ironically, Pollard was under secondment to SEE from Tucker’s Air Defence Experimental Establishment. In late 1930 the two conducted a series of experiments using a short-wave radio source and receiver. Based on the results of this work, on 26th January 1931, they proposed the building of an ‘apparatus to locate ships from the coast or other ships, under any condition of visibility, or weather’. The ‘apparatus depends on the reflection of Ultra Short Radio Waves by conducting objects, e.g. ships’. SEE allowed them to conduct a limited series of experiments and they were able to detect a mast at about 100 yds away. However, here too the significance of this work was missed by both the War Office and Admiralty and the research programme was terminated.


In 1933 Dr Rudolph Kuhnold, Chief of the German Navy’s Signals Research Division, began work on a radar detection system. The origins of this work stemmed from Kuhnold’s earlier development of an underwater acoustical device similar to modern sonar. This shows that it was possible to make the transformation from acoustical to radio detection systems. Tests on radiolocation devices began in France in January 1934 and in the Soviet Union in July of that same year.
There were plans to use a death ray instead of radar in the 1930s and '40s. Totally ASB to be sure but there were plans for a death ray. I'm not
making it up.
 
There were plans to use a death ray instead of radar in the 1930s and '40s. Totally ASB to be sure but there were plans for a death ray. I'm not
making it up.

Its not the death ray that's the problem, its your statement

Inspired by The Men Who Invented Radar on The Military Channel last night.
Robert Watson Watt, the British scientist who led the team, discovered it by
accident.


Watson Watt did not discover radar.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Try the Military Channel. There was an article in Smithsonian magazine sometime back in the 1980s. The year escapes me but it mentioned Robert
Watson Watt and Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh "Stuffy" Dowding. Last night's
program gave the background for it. The experiments that were done in the 1920s and all but the one that really counted was in 1935 when a British
Handley Page bomber interrupted the radio signal of the BBC's local transmitter. The experiments in the period between 1904 and 1935 were more centered on creating a death ray to protect Britain and not a radio based detection system which is what Britain ultimately ended up with. The Germans had to scour concentration camps for scientists who could work on radar.


HAlf a dozen postewrs give you ACTUAL FACTS that demonstrate that radar was already invented BEFORE WORLD WAR ONE but you cling to the garbled haf truths and spurious "facts" from the Military Channel.

Shouldn't you be getting back to your bridge?
 

Blair152

Banned
HAlf a dozen postewrs give you ACTUAL FACTS that demonstrate that radar was already invented BEFORE WORLD WAR ONE but you cling to the garbled haf truths and spurious "facts" from the Military Channel.

Shouldn't you be getting back to your bridge?
The planes of World War I, if you remember, were wooden. They wouldn't show up on radar. You should know that. Can you prove it? What books say this? I first read about radar in an issue of Smithsonian magazine. The Military Channel wasn't around in the 1980s. Where's your proof? Why don't you stop drinking your Kool-Aid?
 
The planes of World War I, if you remember, were wooden. They wouldn't show up on radar. You should know that. Can you prove it? What books say this? I first read about radar in an issue of Smithsonian magazine. The Military Channel wasn't around in the 1980s. Where's your proof? Why don't you stop drinking your Kool-Aid?

What part of 'ship avoidance system' don't you understand?

Ships tend to have rather a lot of radiowave reflecting material in their construction.

Radar doesn't just detect aircraft.

As for WW1 aircraft not being detectable because they were wooden, well they had this thing called an engine.............

You are the kind of worst product of the mass media age, someone who hears something and can't be bothered to do even a reasonable check but insists it is true.

In an earlier age you would have been called the Village Idiot.
 
The planes of World War I, if you remember, were wooden. They wouldn't show up on radar. You should know that. Can you prove it? What books say this? I first read about radar in an issue of Smithsonian magazine. The Military Channel wasn't around in the 1980s. Where's your proof? Why don't you stop drinking your Kool-Aid?

But WWI Aircraft did carry Iron Engines , steel MG , and steel or tin gas tanks , and Steel wire and some even had steel frames .
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
The planes of World War I, if you remember, were wooden. They wouldn't show up on radar. You should know that. Can you prove it? What books say this? I first read about radar in an issue of Smithsonian magazine. The Military Channel wasn't around in the 1980s. Where's your proof? Why don't you stop drinking your Kool-Aid?


So, based on this, I take it that the Mosquito was undetectable by radar?

I'm afraid them sea pearls are the best I can do for you
 
Several WWI aircraft were constructed of steel. From Junkers corrugated sheet to Fokker's steel tube. I can recall Mythbusters measuring the speed of a Peregrine Falcon by radar. Huh?
 

Blair152

Banned
Hulsmeyer’s system was a ship collision avoidance system – nothing to do with death rays and in Britain alone there were at least three suggestions prior to Watson Watt’s suggestion.


The first of these suggestions was made on 4 August 1926 by O F Brown, a scientist with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, to the Anti-Aircraft Research Committee. He suggested to the committee a variety of ways that a cathode-ray oscillograph, a precursor to the CRT, could be used to enhance existing acoustical mirror technology. He added that it was ‘possible that a method of location in the azimuth could be based on the use of the cathode-ray direction-finder or short wave radiation excited in the metal of aircraft by magnetos or by secondary excitation in a strong filed emitted from a ground transmitter’. Unfortunately for Lindemann, he either did not see Brown’s paper or missed the significance of this particular suggestion. However, Lindemann, in his quest to find an alternative to acoustic mirrors, certainly pursued research into the detection of radiation from aircraft magnetos.


In 1928 L S B Alder of the Royal navy’s Signal School, proposed the development of a device ‘for the employment of reflection, scattering, or re-radiation of wireless waves by objects as a means for detecting the presence of such objects’. The device could be sued as an aid to navigation or a means to detect ‘approaching ships or aircraft’. There is no record that officials at the Signals School took any notice of Alder’s proposal.


The most extensive research by British defence scientists into using the reflections of radio waves for long range detection undertaken prior to 1935 occurred at the Signals Experimental Establishment (SEE), by W A S Butement and P E Pollard. Ironically, Pollard was under secondment to SEE from Tucker’s Air Defence Experimental Establishment. In late 1930 the two conducted a series of experiments using a short-wave radio source and receiver. Based on the results of this work, on 26th January 1931, they proposed the building of an ‘apparatus to locate ships from the coast or other ships, under any condition of visibility, or weather’. The ‘apparatus depends on the reflection of Ultra Short Radio Waves by conducting objects, e.g. ships’. SEE allowed them to conduct a limited series of experiments and they were able to detect a mast at about 100 yds away. However, here too the significance of this work was missed by both the War Office and Admiralty and the research programme was terminated.


In 1933 Dr Rudolph Kuhnold, Chief of the German Navy’s Signals Research Division, began work on a radar detection system. The origins of this work stemmed from Kuhnold’s earlier development of an underwater acoustical device similar to modern sonar. This shows that it was possible to make the transformation from acoustical to radio detection systems. Tests on radiolocation devices began in France in January 1934 and in the Soviet Union in July of that same year.
Hulsmayer's system had no way of judging distance.
 
Huff-Duff could not detect the range of submarines, but resulted in numerous submarine sinkings due to the application of communication and triangulation.
 
Hulsmayer's system had no way of judging distance.

Using triangulation allowed an approximate distance to be determined - it was an additional patent to his original idea.

Not fantastic but a whole lot better than detecting another ship by ramming your bows into it.
 
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