Actually neither side had a full grasp of what the other was doing. The Bruneval raid was launched because there was this little bend in a track beside this little circle nobody could figure out. It was a 6 foot dish antenna, something undreamed of by the allies at that time, and an order of magnitude smaller than they thought was required for a tracking radar. Later in the war, as the British developed airborne countermeasures to a fine art, the Germans developed the first ever bistatic radar system - using the Chain Home transmitters. The Brits never knew it existed until after the war, but even even if they had, what were they going to do? Switch off their whole air defence system? Or jam it?
This post has generated some lively debate and some good points were made. However, I kept waiting for someone to point out why I made the statement that for the most part, the radars of WW2 were not very effective! CHAFF, or WINDOWs, as the British refered to it, pretty much kept the Germans in the blind on fighter interceptions, especially at night. History has shown that the Lanc's of the Brit's was as helpless against the German fighters and therefore flew mostly at night. While the "Window" was somewhat effective in confusing the Germans at night, they, the Germans, soon learned to fly night fighters into the clouds of "window" and seek out the bombers in moon lite or from ground search radars. Even in 50's and 60's, as I flew all over the U.S. and other parts of the world, departure, approach and center radars were still having trouble with rain, snow and heavy cloud in picking out your image on radar for vectors or separation from other traffic. Even with the development of "transponders", both military IFF and civilian transponders, it took the development of "computers" to finally eliminate the interference with ground based radar signals. Below is a copy of info which can be found on Wikipedia concerning this matter.
Examination of the Würzburg radar equipment brought back to the UK during Operation Biting and subsequent reconnaissance revealed to the British that all German radars were operating in no more than three major frequency ranges, and thus were prone to jamming. "Bomber" Harris, Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of RAF Bomber Command, finally got approval to use Window as part of Operation Gomorrah, the fire raids against Hamburg.
The first aircrew trained to use Window were 76 squadron. Twenty-four crews were briefed on how to drop the bundles of aluminised-paper strips (treated-paper was used to minimise the weight and maximise the time that the strips would remain in the air, prolonging the effect), one every minute through the flare chute, using a stopwatch to time them. The results were spectacular. The radar guided master searchlights wandered aimlessly across the sky. The AA guns fired randomly or not at all and the night fighters, their radar displays swamped with false echoes, utterly failed to find the bomber stream. A vast area of Hamburg was devastated with the loss of only 12 bombers. Squadrons quickly had special chutes fitted to their bombers to make the deployment even easier. Seeing this as a development that made it safer to go on ops, many crews got in as many trips as they could before the Germans found a countermeasure.
When the Mosquito entered production in 1941, it was one of the fastest operational aircraft in the world. Entering widespread service in 1942, the Mosquito first operated as a high-speed, high-altitude photo-reconnaissance aircraft, and continued to operate in this role throughout the war. From mid-1942 to mid-1943 Mosquito bombers were used in high-speed, medium- or low-altitude missions, attacking factories, railways and other pinpoint targets within Germany and German-occupied Europe. From late 1943, Mosquito bomber units were formed into the Light Night Strike Force and used as pathfinders for RAF Bomber Command's heavy-bomber raids, using "window" to mask the approaching bombers. They were also used as "nuisance" bombers, often dropping 4,000 lb (1,812 kg) "Cookies", in high-altitude, high-speed raids that German night fighters were almost powerless to intercept.
Even during the "Falklands" war, chaff was used extensively.British warships in the Falklands War (1982) made heavy use of chaff.
During the war, British Sea Harrier aircraft lacked their conventional chaff-dispensing mechanism. Therefore Royal Navy engineers designed an impromptu delivery-system of welding rods, split pins and string, which allowed six packets of chaff to be stored in the airbrake well and be deployed in flight. It was often referred to as the "Heath Robinson chaff modification", due to its complexity.
Sorry about the long winded post, but thought it important.
