Thread: Wurzburg Radar
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Old 25th Mar 2020, 11:22 pm   #8
turretslug
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Default Re: Wurzburg Radar

Quote:
Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler View Post
Fascinating is the word for it.

It was a technically-interesting period for the allies as well. It got progressively harder to make much RF energy as you went up through VHF and into UHF, then we had silly amounts of power available at appreciably higher frequencies where the cavity magnetron came into play. The Axis people didn't know of the magnetron but did know of the increasing difficulty with frequency and assumed there was nothing beyond UHF.
Though the Naxos microwave receiver was quickly developed for German night-fighters once H2S wreckage had been sussed and a heavy toll was taken of British bombers- post-war, the Germans said that the way H2S was deployed was one of the biggest mistakes made by the British as bombers became "lighthouses in the sky". Apparently, the powerful blast from H2S magnetrons could be detected when bombers were still over Britain! A few voices had warned that more care was needed over radio emissions but complacency seems to have been common. Famously, forty years later near Port Stanley airfield, H2S was used rather more carefully....
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