31-05-2018, 10:49 AM
Doug Self has covered the field rather well.
Acoustic radar never worked very well, even with the best of kit. But until we had real radar it was the best we had for locating otherwise invisible aircraft. That and observers with binoculars. Our original Chain Home radar had a decidedly improvised look about it, but it worked and it worked in time for when it was most needed. The Battle of Britain would have been lost without it. The Germans had no idea what those tall masts were for. They had no idea that such low frequencies could be used for radar.
Chain Home was an excellent engineering example of "we want it working and we want it yesterday". It was expensive and far fromt he best possible solution but it did the job well enough and was worth every penny. Part of the reason it worked is that we had a large pool of skilled radio amateurs who made good radar technicains. By contrast the Nazis had banned amateur radio so had no such skilled reserve. The corollary is that their radar systems were rather better engineered than ours. Their "Wurzburg" radars were superb bits of engineering, later to be used in radio astronomy after the war.
Acoustic radar never worked very well, even with the best of kit. But until we had real radar it was the best we had for locating otherwise invisible aircraft. That and observers with binoculars. Our original Chain Home radar had a decidedly improvised look about it, but it worked and it worked in time for when it was most needed. The Battle of Britain would have been lost without it. The Germans had no idea what those tall masts were for. They had no idea that such low frequencies could be used for radar.
Chain Home was an excellent engineering example of "we want it working and we want it yesterday". It was expensive and far fromt he best possible solution but it did the job well enough and was worth every penny. Part of the reason it worked is that we had a large pool of skilled radio amateurs who made good radar technicains. By contrast the Nazis had banned amateur radio so had no such skilled reserve. The corollary is that their radar systems were rather better engineered than ours. Their "Wurzburg" radars were superb bits of engineering, later to be used in radio astronomy after the war.
www.borinsky.co.uk Jeffrey Borinsky www.becg.tv
