Radar signature of Mosquitos

[Sincraft]

Love the mossy.

FIX THE MOSSY BOMBS!
-------------
FOR THE RAF!

[bozon]

Even if you replace all the wood in the mosquito with thin air, there are enough parts left to give a significant radar signal. Wood or not, it was not invisible to radar.

[Angus]

Just talked to a friend of mine that is in the "business".
He told me that even today, on primary radar, wooden aircraft can be tricky to pick up.
The signal is worse. Same goes to fiberglass. Yet, he sometimes picks up birds, or rather flocks of them.
Now, the radar today is very much better than in WW2. So, I'd put some pennies on that when the Mossie entered operational service, it did cause problems for both the speed and the poor signal. It would also make it more problematic to estimate the strength of the force.
No AH dot-dar in WW2 you see,,,,,,

[Stoney]

Just talked to a friend of mine that is in the "business".
He told me that even today, on primary radar, wooden aircraft can be tricky to pick up.
The signal is worse. Same goes to fiberglass. Yet, he sometimes picks up birds, or rather flocks of them.
Now, the radar today is very much better than in WW2. So, I'd put some pennies on that when the Mossie entered operational service, it did cause problems for both the speed and the poor signal. It would also make it more problematic to estimate the strength of the force.
No AH dot-dar in WW2 you see,,,,,,

Angus, notice in the document presented in the first post that the Germans made no mention of having a hard time tracking the Mosquito--merely intercepting them.  With respect to your friends comments, I'd say there's some context behind his experience with wooden/composite aircraft.  Just from basic radar theory, the Mosquito should have thrown off a radar return equal to a metal aircraft of similar shape and size, and I believe there is adequate documentation to show this.

[Rino]

Always thought that plywood would reflect radar less than a metal sheet...
I'll ask around withing my flight planner guys...

I'm not so sure about that...plywood in the airframe is a pretty solid material.  Add the
paint and the return should be substantial.  Heck, I have locked onto thick clouds
using the F4e's radar...that is automagically tracked..not just seen the return as they
would have in WW2.

[Baumer]

I was an ET in the Navy and we had our basic radar training on a system that was developed shortly after WW2 (about 47-48 if I remember correctly). And it had no problem picking up wood objects on Lake Michigan and the shoreline.

Plus the Merlin QEC is all metal, as well as framework for the canopy (huge radar echo off all those right angle joints), so I really doubt any story about the Germans having problems picking them up on radar. I can easily point to many references' that state the difficulty of catching them because of their speed.

[angelsandair]

GOOD IDEAS ON BOTH...BUT I DON'T KNOW HOW TO find that link again without ending up there......

Do you know what youtube is?

[Angus]

All interesting.
What was the display on the German radars like anyway?
Shades? Blips? Spikes?

[Jester]

Early Wurzburg display was like Spikes IIRC, - not sure about late war.

 

[Stoney]

All interesting.
What was the display on the German radars like anyway?
Shades? Blips? Spikes?

Mostly osciliscope-type displays that the operators were taught how to interpret.  I think almost all of the radars of the era had these types of displays.

If we hadn't had the BBS bust, I'd try to find the last Mosquito stealth thread--there was a link to a website that had the entire developmental history of radar during WWII.  A lot of good information in that.

[Jester]

Early Wurzburg display was like Spikes IIRC, - not sure about late war.

 

Thought the Wurzburg used spikes - not really like an osciliscope - more like a spike on a compass gauge. Most German WW2 radars were like that I believe not many used the PPI.
This link shows what the dial on a WURZBURG looks like:  http://www.radarworld.org/germany3.html

 

[Angus]

So the PPI could not be fooled with Windows?
Nice link anyway.

[Jester]

So the PPI could not be fooled with Window?

One of the German Search Radars could be blinded by WINDOW - Don't remember if it was WURZBURG or FREYA.

LICHTENSTEIN & BERLIN Airborne Radar wasn't affected by WINDOW.

 

[Angus]

On D-Day, Window completely bluffed the German air defences, that much I recall.
One thing to bear in mind though, is when the ops get completely flooded with data.
And on D-day, the allies had thousands of ships sneaking practically within gun range of the German shore batteries, with the first alarm being visual.
Not sure about Arnhem though, but the Allies still got their first waves of para-drops through practically undetected, and I think it was not before wave 3# when there was an interception.
Off the top of my head, but since they couldn't add things together with an airlift with thousands of troops with that equipment, a bunch of mossies would have been much harder....

[bozon]

Window will be just as effective against any kind of display. It is not the display that it is fooling. A very skilled operator of continuous wave (CW) radars - typically short ranged or trackers types, may be able to tell the difference. This is when tracking a single target in ideal conditions. When you have formations, weather, EM noise and planes that cross paths, it becomes much harder to tell which is which.

Even if the operator is good enough to tell the difference between a plane and a window, having many of them in the air wastes much time in filtering the seeds from the chaff.