Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: Yossarian on June 25, 2008, 03:23:04 AM
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I was just reading the Horsa glider thread in the wishlist and began thinking about this.
I just googled "radar signature of mosquito", and found this thread in another forum:
http://www.gyges.dk/Anti%20Mosquito.htm (http://www.gyges.dk/Anti%20Mosquito.htm)
Just wondering what you think of this.
<S>
Yossarian
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I dont know but while purusing Mossies on the net I came up with this site, "WARNING the video clip on the web page might give Mossie lovers serious wood"!!!!! http://www.dhmosquito.com/
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I was just reading the Horsa glider thread in the wishlist and began thinking about this.
I just googled "radar signature of mosquito", and found this thread in another forum:
http://www.gyges.dk/Anti%20Mosquito.htm (http://www.gyges.dk/Anti%20Mosquito.htm)
Just wondering what you think of this.
<S>
Yossarian
Notice the author concentrates more emphasis on the altitudes and speeds used by the Mosquito, and alludes to the fact that, on radar, they were easy to track. Even though the standard German night fighters had a hard time getting to them, they could still track them, and apparently from studying the profile, they could easily identify the radar returns as Mosquitos.
I'm sure more educated folks than me will respond in time, but two points:
1) Wooden aircraft will create radar returns just as large as an equivalent sized metal aircraft (basic radar theory)
2) The Mosquito was not passively stealthy (i.e. its shape, materials, and construction did not inhibit the creation of radar returns).
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1) Wooden aircraft will create radar returns just as large as an equivalent sized metal aircraft (basic radar theory)
2) The Mosquito was not passively stealthy (i.e. its shape, materials, and construction did not inhibit the creation of radar returns).
Both correct.
It is a myth that the Mosquito was harder for radar to detect than other, similarly sized aircraft.
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1) Wooden aircraft will create radar returns just as large as an equivalent sized metal aircraft (basic radar theory)
2) The Mosquito was not passively stealthy (i.e. its shape, materials, and construction did not inhibit the creation of radar returns).
I imagine a lot of what they were picking up were the big twin-Merlin engines and the propellers. The props would but out a BIG echo. Plus while radar would have a harder time picking up a wooden built aircraft it would still pick up the metal in the design - it would just be a "softer" return as was stated due to the wooden outer skin. The Mossie even though it is made of wood has some big slab sides in places that are perfect for rader to get a return off of.
:salute
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I was just reading the Horsa glider thread in the wishlist and began thinking about this.
I just googled "radar signature of mosquito", and found this thread in another forum:
http://www.gyges.dk/Anti%20Mosquito.htm (http://www.gyges.dk/Anti%20Mosquito.htm)
Just wondering what you think of this.
<S>
Yossarian
you used google.......i don't know if this is something new or not, but maybe a warning here..........
i was googleing the intro robert deniro did on snl with the suspected terrrorists. i clicked on what looked like a normal/safe page, and it came up on the very first search page. it loaded the page, and i was scrolling down...about 1/2 way down, it stopped scrolling, and my puter started acting weird. then spybot went nuts, as did zonealarm. spybot was blocking multiple attempts to add to my registry, as zonealarm was doing the same and also blocking some .exe program. i couldn't get them to stop, so i reached down, turned off the modem, then rebooted my puter. it took me a couple hours to finally get it started and wroking well enough to run spybot, which found a couple additions to my registry. when i DID get it started, i had a blue screen(like the blue screen of death) with a bright yellow box in the middle that said ""spyware detected. install spyware and clean your computer."" the text was bright red.
so i don't know if this is something new going round, or if i just got some schmuck got into my puter...but for now i think it's fixed........
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hmm you should report that to Google. Why don't you post this in the O'Club as well.
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hmm you should report that to Google. Why don't you post this in the O'Club as well.
GOOD IDEAS ON BOTH...BUT I DON'T KNOW HOW TO find that link again without ending up there......
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Always thought that plywood would reflect radar less than a metal sheet...
I'll ask around withing my flight planner guys...
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Always thought that plywood would reflect radar less than a metal sheet...
I'll ask around withing my flight planner guys...
It will - it will give a different return than a metal plane would - but it would still give off a return and a radar operator trained to know what to look for could pick it up. Wouldn't be as strong but it would be there. Range would be affected I imagine also as you wouldn't get a strong a return.
You are thinking Stealth - but that is a diffrent princeable. There a radar echo is either absorbed, trapped or directed "away" from the receiver so there is NO or almost no return (Echo).
:salute
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Well, ww2 radar equipment wasn't exactly on today's standards...
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So "put it in wishlist" make the mossie only visable to DAR after lets say... 500 feet? And then it makes a dar-bar at 1000 feet? :aok
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"It will - it will give a different return than a metal plane would - but it would still give off a return and a radar operator trained to know what to look for could pick it up. Wouldn't be as strong but it would be there. Range would be affected I imagine also as you wouldn't get a strong a return."
I wonder how WW2 era frequencies and emitted energy levels could handle reflections from wood...
Nice vid BTW.
I have one film called Squadron 688 or something where they ditch a perfectly good Mossie -for some friggin mid budget (romantic) film!!! :mad:
-C+
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633 Squadron http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057811/
I have no idea why I'm replying to this. :D
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The book is on my table, reading it now :D
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Love the mossy.
FIX THE MOSSY BOMBS!
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FOR THE RAF!
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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.
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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,,,,,,
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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All interesting.
What was the display on the German radars like anyway?
Shades? Blips? Spikes?
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Early Wurzburg display was like Spikes IIRC, - not sure about late war.
:salute
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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.
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Early Wurzburg display was like Spikes IIRC, - not sure about late war.
:salute
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
:salute
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So the PPI could not be fooled with Windows?
Nice link anyway.
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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.
:salute
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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....
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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.
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....and there the issue becomes...time.
Anyway, nice Mossie display here, looks like a real lady tome ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRGwfNrnWsc&feature=related