I've always been very interested in the developments that occurred in WW2. I think The "Battle of the Beams" is one development that gave us the basis for what we use so much now in general aviation.
The BBC series "The Secret War" is a fantastic series that pulls apart how these discoveries were made. It has a lovely 1970s vibe to it and is very well narrated.
Interesting to realise that the cavity magnetron, providing higher resolution radar, was invented by the British and gifted to the United States. I believe the Germans researched it, but decided it was impossible. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this though.
If you watch "Greyhound", the tools that sunk the U-boats were British inventions, hedgehog and ASDIC. HuffDuff (High Frequency Direction Finding) is mentioned I think in the movie? It was made by a Polish engineer working for the British. Amazing that the Kriegsmarine didn't work out that their mandatory reporting schedule was sinking their U boats. With such a collection of defenses combined with doctrine changes for attacking U boat swarms, no wonder the U-Boat losses became so huge.
WW2 changed the world and brought us forward so much in terms of technology. Fascinating stuff.
It's a great place to explore the physics of it all, since the tools used were sometimes elementary (X-Ray machines to baffle direction beams).
Reginald Jones changed the world. Thanks hi_hi for the links.
Somebody, either Buderi or Rhodes has the magnetron appearing in the MIT Radar labs and somebody saying "oh, thats obvious" and being asked "ok smartass, how does it work then..."
Sometimes, simple things are obvious in hindsight.
Decca navigation gear was common in British boats operating in near coastal waters right up to the 70s and 80s. The fundamentals of how this system worked were not radically different to the beam systems used for navigation in the war.
This is such a fascinating piece of history.
I've always been very interested in the developments that occurred in WW2. I think The "Battle of the Beams" is one development that gave us the basis for what we use so much now in general aviation.
The BBC series "The Secret War" is a fantastic series that pulls apart how these discoveries were made. It has a lovely 1970s vibe to it and is very well narrated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkCW4g8It_A&list=PLV7OedKrXD...
Interesting to realise that the cavity magnetron, providing higher resolution radar, was invented by the British and gifted to the United States. I believe the Germans researched it, but decided it was impossible. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this though.
If you watch "Greyhound", the tools that sunk the U-boats were British inventions, hedgehog and ASDIC. HuffDuff (High Frequency Direction Finding) is mentioned I think in the movie? It was made by a Polish engineer working for the British. Amazing that the Kriegsmarine didn't work out that their mandatory reporting schedule was sinking their U boats. With such a collection of defenses combined with doctrine changes for attacking U boat swarms, no wonder the U-Boat losses became so huge.
WW2 changed the world and brought us forward so much in terms of technology. Fascinating stuff.
It's a great place to explore the physics of it all, since the tools used were sometimes elementary (X-Ray machines to baffle direction beams).
Reginald Jones changed the world. Thanks hi_hi for the links.
Somebody, either Buderi or Rhodes has the magnetron appearing in the MIT Radar labs and somebody saying "oh, thats obvious" and being asked "ok smartass, how does it work then..."
Sometimes, simple things are obvious in hindsight.
For those interested in this topic I can’t recommend the following book enough.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1127842.Most_Secret_W...
Many of the overarching themes and challenges of dealing with technical problems where you have incomplete information will be familiar to many here.
According to the publications section of his Wikipedia, the book is available for free on archive.org. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Victor_Jones
Decca navigation gear was common in British boats operating in near coastal waters right up to the 70s and 80s. The fundamentals of how this system worked were not radically different to the beam systems used for navigation in the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decca_Navigator_System
Loran and then GPS competed and replaced.
Robert Buderi's book on Radar is an amazing read to one side of this, it drives all the way through to VLSI. Fascinating stuff.
https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Invention_that_C...
> The Germans became convinced the British had somehow learned to bend radio signals.
I love learning about theories like this from less advanced times. Feels like a taste of a simpler world.