Way cool examples of the use of radar in WWII

[joeblogs]

Here is a series of posts based on Robert Buderi's "The Invention That Changed the World."

We have all read about the significance of the Chain Radar Network in winning the Battle of Britain, and a bit about the German's use of radar as part of a "defense in depth" system to counter allied strategic bombing.

Buderi goes beyond this to document the many other ways in which radar was used, or jammed, during the war. I had no idea of the sophistication achieved by war's end.

-blogs

[joeblogs]

from Robert Buderi's The Invention That Changed the World:

The proximity fuse was initially developed by the British & mass produced in the U.S. The shell actually contains miniature continuous wave radar (made of 4 thumbnail sized vacuum tubes) that detects an object nearby & triggers the fuse. Imagine those tubes survive the shell being fired from the gun in the first place...

The fuses were initially limited to the pacific, where it helped claim a prodigious number of Japanese planes attacking US ships from 1943 onward. There was a reluctance to introduce it in Europe, for fear the Germans would reverse engineer it and decimate the heavy bombers lumbering over the continent.

They finally got to Europe in late 1944 as a countermeasure to the buzz bombs striking England. combined with new AA gun laying radar system, they claimed 1600 V1 kills, as many as shot down by fast allied fighters.

The fuses could also turn these shells into devastating anti-personnel weapons - detonating at a precise height over enemy infantry. It was used with considerable effect in the Battle of the Bulge.

[OOZ662]

Yup. Saw it on the History Channel a week ago.

[Grendel]

Yup. The night war of WW2 was the first ever purely electronic war. There's lots of interesting books written on the subject.

It was very interesting to chat recently with two German night fighter pilots. The tactics and ways of using both the radar, systems and countermeasures was amazing. Some of the best radar operators coulf "sniff" their way to a target even in middle of chaff clouds - following the chaff "track". Just unbelievable!

[Wotan]

Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine units in Denmark

[Furball]

Wonder if this is the only biplane to have used radar in regular service?

[rshubert]

Originally posted by Furball
Wonder if this is the only biplane to have used radar in regular service?

 

Probably.

[joeblogs]

Some of the swordfish that tracked and damaged the Bismark were equiped with Air to Surface radar.

-B

Originally posted by Furball
Wonder if this is the only biplane to have used radar in regular service?
 

[joeblogs]

from Robert Buderi's The Invention That Changed the World:

Many of us are familiar with the fact that both Germany & Britain used Radar to assist bombers in night time navigation & bombing of targets.

For example, the British used an onboard radar set to illuminate urban targets over Germany for the first time on January 30, 1943 (Hamburg). Over all of 1943, 60 percent of British bombing sorties were lead by pathfinders using radar rather than optical sights. This radar was called H2S

The Germans got their hands on a cavity magnetron (the British invention that permitted a powerful 10 cm radar) very quickly by February 1943. Eventually they began tracking H2S transmissions, and later figured out how to trigger British IFF transponders.

The U.S. developed a better bombing system (H2X) that operated at a 3 cm wavelength. This offered better resolution than the British sets and were less prone to jamming by the Germans.

Now the way daylight bombing was supposed to work was against via precision bombing using the nifty Nordon bomb sight. Problem is that Germany experiences a great deal of things called clouds and especially in the winter. On average that means optical bombing is feasible only half the time. In the winter, perhaps only a few days in a month.

The U.S. first employed H2X in pathfinder aircraft on Nov 3rd, 1943 (Wilhelmshaven) and were delighted with the results. For the remainder of the year the majority of US 8th AF bombing sorties were done using H2X. Over half of 8th AF bombing tonnage was dropped using H2X in 1944.

Microwave radar was also used to great effect in detecting and attacking uboats. The Germans deployed detectors for the longer wavelength radars used by the British anti-submarine aircraft, but did not have a detector for the mircrowave radars in time to prevent the decimation of the uboat fleet.

-Blogs

[joeblogs]

from Robert Buderi's The Invention That Changed the World:

Perhaps the queen of the allied AA gunlaying radars was the SCR584, which identified the azimuth, altitude, direction & speed of a bogey (not all radars could do this at the time - earlu US navy radars could not determine altitude). But it was only part of a great system that incorporated an analog computer for determining the appropriate "lead" to aim for, and ingenious mechanical potentiometers that linked the computer to a batter of 4 AA guns.

These sets began to appear in the UK around May 1943. They made a big splash at Anzio where the allied beachheads suffered under blistering attacks from the air. The British AA radar was being effectively jammed by the Germans. When the batteries directed by SCR584 appeared, everyone could appreciate the difference in results and the German air force paid heavily for their attacks.

These same units were used to great effect in shooting down V1 buzz bombs in 1944 (see part 1 above). They were also used quite effectively in France for artillery spotting (the operator could see where the tanks were moving). When Hitler ordered virtually all his Western theater fighters to engage in a sweep over allied bases in France in late December 1944, most of the planes were detected well in advance by radar and hundreds fell to AA directed by the SCR584.

[Angus]

Up here in Iceland, in 1941 there were already radar equipped Wellingtons which were sniffing out U-boats.
A friend of mine is investigating the crash of one of those, - I will make a thread about it.

[joeblogs]

I am reading another book "Tracking Radar," and one of the chapters talks about the Uboat war in the pacific.

There, the show was on the other foot. U.S. submarines were eventually deployed with radar, which they used to track targets while submerged (the attenae were attached to the periscope). It was quite effective.

-Blogs

Originally posted by Angus
Up here in Iceland, in 1941 there were already radar equipped Wellingtons which were sniffing out U-boats.
A friend of mine is investigating the crash of one of those, - I will make a thread about it.