Quote:
Originally Posted by edwest
In 1939 the German and American prototypes were superior to the British except for CD/CHL, which was a typical dipole array on 1.5 m. Neither Germany or the United States had a significant number of operational sets in 1939..."
Please pardon the lack of umlauts. Excerpted from A Radar History of World War II by Louis Brown, published by the Institute of Physics Publishing, Bristol and Philadelphia.
Ed
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This part is not particularly true. I am not sure about the US radar deployement (obviously there wasn't much a threat either), but German radar was deployed and working at the start of the war. Freya's development and deployement went exactly parellel to the CH system, only that Freya was a much superior system, both in resolution and because it covered a much greater area, as it could be rotated 360 degrees. At the start of the war, there were 20 or so Freya sets available, the first wartime interception being made sometime in 1939 against RAF bombers attacking Kriegsmarine targets. At the same time CH consisted of a similiar number of sets, but they had some major limitations, most notable their large 'blind zone' at low altitudes, and the fact that they could only search the area they were facing, ie. the sea, and the whole 'radar coverage' went totally nil and blind asa enemy aircraft passed the radar towers, as they couldn't rotate. Effectively, the whole CH system offered little more than early warning, other than that the British interceptions relied on human observers and telephone wires over England, just like any other country. AFAIK Würzburg was just begun to be deployed in 1939, and some 200 were produced by 1940, if my memory serves me right and if Ian Hogg`s information is correct. Of course, Britain's unique geographical position was a great advantage for building out an early warning radar system, even with primitive radar sets, because of the ease of radar detection over sea.