The History of Air Intercept Radar & the British Nightfighter 1935–1959 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Aviation
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2007-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

CONCLUSIONS

The summer of 1940 marked a significant milestone in the development of airborne radar. The effective disbandment of Bowen’s Airborne Group and the dispersal of all but two of its members to other parts of the Air Ministry’s empire, or into the RAF, was to some extent countered by the restoration of radar research with the establishment of Skinner’s Centimetric Group at Worth Matravers in May 1940. The Air Ministry’s decision to encourage academia and the British electronics industry to become actively involved in the development of components for centimetric radars and the design of equipment, set the trend for the remainder of the war and the post-war period. In these areas, the pioneering work of Oliphant, Randle and Boot and GEC in the development and manufacture of the resonant cavity magnetron would prove to be not only one of the most significant technological inventions of the war, but also the key to the future of British, and, as we shall see in the next chapter, American radar.

With regard to airborne radar, Skinner, and later Dee’s work in leading the Centimetric Group that took Randle and Boot’s magnetron and installed it in an experimental set that would, in a relatively short period, be turned into a reliable prototype, requires our respect and admiration. It is perhaps one of Britain’s better characteristics that usually surfaces in times of adversity, that a cobbled-together group of former academics, engineers, industrial specialists, technicians and administrators could produce the century’s most important breakthrough in high frequency technology.

However, this was achieved at the cost of the man who had done more than anyone to establish Britain at the forefront of airborne radar development, and who, after May 1940, would find himself effectively side-lined from leadership in the field. With no prospect of work in AMRE, Edward Bowen, at the behest of his mentor, Sir Henry Tizard, was to travel to the US, where he would use his knowledge and experience in establishing radar research in America, and, ironically, ensure that country’s pre-eminence in radar before the war was ended.

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