RADAR buff needed!

[Graham Boak]

I can answer some of your questions: others would need a thesis for an advanced degree.

1. very. It were given the misleading name Radio Direction Finding. On the other hand, how secret were the tall Chain Home masts? Explosive devices were fitted to radar sets in aircraft to ensure their destruction rather than capture.

2. To which pilots, when? To night fighter pilots, very. To others, to a lesser extent depending upon their appreciation of the system.

3. BoB pilots were unhappy about poor altitude guidance. Presumably those with prewar experience would initially be pleased at being directed at enemy formations rather than relying on much poorer information, but the novelty would have worn off rapidly.

4. Yes. The Ventnor attack. Possibly also the Biggin Sector station, but I'm not sure the links were broken.

5. Immensely. There would have been much less warning , poorer guidance, and hence many more raids would have got through unintercepted. Isn't this obvious?

6. Yes. Clearly the Germans planning and running their own radar system knew the value of such a system.

7. The radar stations in themselves were only part of the net. We would nowadays term it Command and Control, and it was the entire integrated system of Filter Rooms at Sector Stations, etc., that made it work. As WAAFs played key roles as operators in this sytem they were important.

8. Not that I know of. The early system could not give valuable returns over land - the stations were at the coast looking outward and movement inland relied upon visual and aural reporting. So such an idea would not have been useful until after the tiome when the whole country could be covered. Do not imagine current levels of performance from early technology. The UK being a small country, with many targets scattered around, this would not be particularly helpful anyway.