Aces High Bulletin Board

General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: Pei on September 28, 2002, 01:32:32 AM

Title: Tail warning radar?
Post by: Pei on September 28, 2002, 01:32:32 AM: I was just looking through America's 100K and it mentions that a number of late model US Fighters were fitted with tail warning radar e.g. P-38L (pp.146), P-51D-20 (pp. 330). I've never seen this anywhere else and haven't come across it in pilot accounts.
Does anybody know anything more about this?
Title: Tail warning radar?
Post by: Hussein on September 28, 2002, 03:43:47 AM: Probably the pilots didn't live to tell of it since it radiated their bellybutton dead.. :)
Title: Tail warning radar?
Post by: niklas on September 28, 2002, 04:22:55 AM: i once read about mosquitos having such a device, especially those which were flying at night.

niklas
Title: Tail warning radar?
Post by: fats on September 28, 2002, 10:06:42 AM: P-51 pilot's manual makes a mention of such device. I can't recall if the P-47 one does as well. I am too tired to look it up though.

// fats
Title: Tail warning radar?
Post by: capt. apathy on September 28, 2002, 10:54:09 AM: wouldn't this paint you up like a big neon sign for enemy radar?
Title: Tail warning radar?
Post by: DingHao2 on September 28, 2002, 11:14:47 AM: only if they had an RWR, capt apathy. Some of the Ju-88G's and He-219's had a primitive device that homed in on Lancaster tail warning radar.
Title: Tail warning radar?
Post by: Dr Zhivago on September 28, 2002, 11:23:18 AM: Bf109 G-6/N and FW190 A-6/A-8 night fighters got also tail warning radar (Fug 217 "Neptun" and later Fug 218)

Edit:
Fug 221-A "Rosendaal-Halbe", FuG 227 "Flensburg" and Fug 222 "Pauke S" were designed to detect the signals of tail warning radars (Monica, ASV, Rosendaal and Magic Box)

FuG 350 "naxos Z" detected the emissions of the H2S ground-mapping radar...

more info from here:
http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/7404/radars.htm
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/bay/8226/radar.htm
http://www.vectorsite.net/ttwiz3.html
Title: Tail warning radar?
Post by: whgates3 on September 28, 2002, 07:43:16 PM: Quote
Originally posted by niklas
i once read about mosquitos having such a device, especially those which were flying at night.

niklas

in "Pursuit Through Darkened Skies" RAF night fighter R/O Michael Allen DFC** discusses that - it wasn't so much that they had rearward facing A/I RADAR, but that their A/I RADAR was not backstopped, so they picked up rearward contacts as well as the foward contacts the A/I RADAR was supposed to pick up
Title: Re: Tail warning radar?
Post by: worr on September 28, 2002, 08:29:24 PM: Quote
Originally posted by Pei
I was just looking through America's 100K and it mentions that a number of late model US Fighters were fitted with tail warning radar e.g. P-38L (pp.146), P-51D-20 (pp. 330). I've never seen this anywhere else and haven't come across it in pilot accounts.
Does anybody know anything more about this?

All the pilots I've ever heard about or talked to said they turned it off. It was too sensative.

Worr, out
Title: Tail warning radar?
Post by: fdiron on September 28, 2002, 10:32:08 PM: From what I have read about it, the tail warning radar for the P51 was very hard to calibrate correctly. Either an enemy plane had to be 100 feet behind you, or every time your wingman would fly within half a mile of your tail it would set the radar off.
Title: Re: Re: Tail warning radar?
Post by: Guppy on September 29, 2002, 01:36:40 AM: Quote
Originally posted by worr

All the pilots I've ever heard about or talked to said they turned it off. It was too sensative.

Worr, out
You ever talk to any F-5G pilots, Worr? I would've thought the tail warning radar would be handy on solo photo-recon runs...
Title: Tail warning radar?
Post by: HFMudd on September 30, 2002, 09:48:48 AM: Quote
Why not a tail radar that only went off when an enemy approached from behind.

The bright red icon with the range displayed to within a foot isn't enough? :rolleyes:

On second tought Oedipus, I think I'll just spit this hook back out. ;)
Title: Tail warning radar?
Post by: Xjazz on September 30, 2002, 11:31:54 AM: Tail warning radar?

Well, we have two of those allready. d6000yard neored billboard alarm system combinated with "Check 6" cheat works nicely... Almost everytime :)
Title: Tail warning radar?
Post by: Pei on September 30, 2002, 01:43:31 PM: Thanks Guys
I was interested because I hadn't come across a reference to day fighters using tail warning radar before. I know both the LW and the RAF used it on night a/c and the first the LW and then RAF created devices that would allow nightfighters to home in on it. Worr seems to have a very plausable explanation as to why it doesn't seem to have been of much interest on day fighters. My next taks is to find a schematic to see where it was fitted and how. Also does anybody know what the pilot's interface was like? Was it just a light on the control panel?
Title: Tail warning radar?
Post by: Tac on September 30, 2002, 04:45:22 PM: thats why
Title: Tail warning radar?
Post by: Xjazz on October 02, 2002, 08:04:17 AM: LOL TAC!
Title: Tail warning radar?
Post by: Pei on October 02, 2002, 03:53:03 PM: Thanks Oedipus and Tac!

I'm wondering if the tail warning radar might be useful during my lone wolf expiditions in the MA? :)