Re: Historically Inaccurate Fiction

"Don Phillipson" <dphillipson@xxxxxx> wrote

> German centimetric (high frequency, high
> accuracy) appears to have been better in
> quality than the British...

The Wuerzburg GCI radar used from 1940-45 was a decimetric,
not centimetric radar: it operated on a wave length of 50-53
cm. It was roughly equivalent in performance to the British
type 11 GCI, introduced 1942. The British Type 13, developed
1942 but not deployed operationally until 1944, was a 3 cm
centrimetric GCI radar of very significantly higher
performance than the Wuerzburg.

> thus enabled ground control of
> night fighters which Britain never
> attempted on the same scale:

Britain had no need for ground control of night fighters on
the same scale as Germany, because Britain had centrimetric
airborne search radar and Germany did not (the Lichtenstein
SN2 was a 200 cm radar). The elaborate nature of the German
night fighter control arrangements was due to German
technological inferiority, not superiority.

> cf. also commando raids on Bruneval
> and other Freya radar units
> to aid British countermeasures.

These raids were much more to discover German capabilities
than to advance British radar technology. The British did
not copy and German radar in WW2, whereas the Germans copied
several British radars including H2S.

> JL is right that, regardless
> of technical quality, the British organized
> radar better, cf. the Fighter Command
> control system of 1940.

Not quite. Britain organised its air defences better then
Germany in 1940. By 1942, the Germans had caught up in
purely organisational terms.

> Notoriously, Germans attempted in the summer
> of 1939 to assess British radar research by
> sending an airship (Zeppelin type) up the
> east coast off Bawdsey, first site of TRE.
> It appears that for no particular reason
> Bawdsey was not transmitting when the
> unseen airship was near
> enough, thus frustrating the mission.

No. The British happily tracked the airship on CH, but the
Germans were trying to detect the wrong frequencies and got
nothing in return.


>
> Don Phillipson
> Carlsbad Springs
> (Ottawa, Canada)
> Don Phillipson
> Carlsbad Springs
> (Ottawa, Canada)
> --
>

--

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Liking Obrian (was: It Was a Dark and Stormy Night)
    ... Hitler decides, immediately after Dunkirk, to invade Britain ASAP ... British destroyers gains momentary command of the portion of the ... The big naval battle is between ... of luck or skill on the German side is going to change or even long ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: Mystery German Rocket Gun Identified
    ... Radar and command guidance in that era would have been easy to jam ... German counter countermeasures had overcome window ... its just that they never had the massive bomber force to make use of ...
    (rec.aviation.military)
  • Re: Goering’s Big Bungle: the Me-262
    ... So in other words the change of direction produced more weapons ... early in the war, that would otherwise have been, is that the idea? ... And the allied jamming of German fire control radars was effective ... To give an idea of the difference in radar effort, ...
    (rec.aviation.military)
  • Re: Lucky versus Unlucky
    ... over the British Isles during the Battle of Britain, ... radar ability and secondly, they were easily mislead by it. ... German Lorentz beams and had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with ...
    (sci.military.naval)
  • Re: North American Vigilante
    ... with the German Taube of 1915- designated the "Invisibel Aircraft" at ... "Visual stealth" is called camouflage. ... German "Schornsteinfeger" anti-radar paint was to be applied. ... certainly aware that the German plane was radar invisible in 1945. ...
    (rec.aviation.military)