How Chaff helped saved 450 bombers from FLAK destruction - a WWII FLAK Countermeasure Unsung Hero 

Yeah antenna length is crucial for making radios work well. That's why algorithms developed in the 90s were so revolutionary for modern technology because they figured out ways to create tiny weird shaped antennas that allowed good reception, which could then be baked right onto circuit boards and chips.

The circumstances of the frequency correlating with length had another unique occurrence during the cold war when the US would send up spy balloons over the soviet union. The dimensions of a steel rod in the system happened to match the russian radar frequency and thus lit up their radar alerting them.

@@witeshade This is the reason modern cars have tiny antennas on the roof instead of the old wire whip antennas on the fender that people walking by like to break off. The reception is just as good or better. I like listening to AM / medium wave stations 150 + miles away. I am surprised that the tiny antenna works just as good as the old style.

😂😢​@@witeshade

​@@witeshade🎉❤😢😢🎉

There were signaling flare guns that had a sort of air lock for firing out of aircraft that were kind of neat and maybe more what you were imagining

Look up Pressurized Flare Pistols

So early chaff flares

@user-vx2vl9cr5m I think the flares were strictly for signalling as there was no heat or infrared detection equipment but the delivery was more sophisticated than a hole in the wall.

@@Roddy556 I meant the chaff

It was invented by a man named Deez

My mom grew up in the Netherlands during WW II and has mentioned she and her friends would collect chaff to play with.

The Belgians still have the iron harvest every year, so you're not far off...

In the more intensely fought-over areas, in particular the bits of France that saw the heaviest fighting of WW1, the estimated clean-up time of the worst areas is measured in _centuries_.

My buddy in Germany goes metal detecting, finding spent munitions from the 1700s onwards. I don't know if chaff would register.

​​@@twentyrothmans7308it wouldn't - chaff is non-magnetic aluminium, and metal detectors are based on magnetic fields

The foil actually came from the makers of cigarette packages. During the War smokers wondered what happened to the foil liners. They were just told it was for the war effort.

From memory, it took 2-3 months to figure out how to counter WINDOW. The best book I've read on this subject is "The Other Battle" by Peter Hinchcliffe.

Herman Goering went crazy, he demanded a cure saying the Allies would only have used it if they had effective countermeasures ready to protect themselves from copy usage by the Germans.

What do you mean? They did use it, a lot.

​@@davidkavanagh189facts

@@davidkavanagh189 LATER they did. The allies only start dropping chaff after the allies were certain the allied radars could burn through it. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(countermeasure)#Second_World_War:~:text=For%20over%20a%20year%20the%20curious%20situation%20arose%20where%20both%20sides%20of%20the%20conflict%20knew%20how%20to%20use%20chaff%20to%20jam%20the%20other%20side%27s%20radar%20but%20had%20refrained%20from%20doing%20so%20for%20fear%20of%20their%20opponent%20replying%20in%20kind.)

@@davidkavanagh189 They delayed it 18 months.

Where do you think aluminum foil came from after the war? Reynolds Wrap, TV Dinner trays, etc. Before the war aluminum foil was only used to line cigarette packages.

I think the size of the chaff was the result.... They worked out the operating freq off the radar

@@timlucas4014 It also gave them some idea of what if any countermeasures to such things were fitted to the radar (None) and the quality of the operators (Not good) since they captured at least one of those.

The chaff was most useful in keeping heavy AAA from accurately targeting the bomber formations rather than deceiving the defenses as to their location. Some time after the P-51 escorts were available in numbers the USAAF often stopped trying to deceive the Luftwaffe about the locations of the bomber formations. The overarching strategy was to destroy the Luftwaffe, so they wanted to attract the intercepting fighters on to the bomber escorts so they could be shot down.

6:02 They actually did experiment with sending P-38's over the target to lay chaff ahead of the formation.

It would have been shot down by escorts before it came within range of the bombers. If the bombers were unescorted it would have been shot down by them if it came with range of their defensive armament.

There's no dial to select the frequency.

The Germans did not seem to have that ability given the competition

I've not seen any German source saying that. What's your original source?

He has no source, he's just making stuff up to get attention.

@@gort8203 I just made a post, with the source being physicist Freeman Dyson - a statistician at Bomber Command, as to the very short time that this technique worked.

So is war in general if my guess is correct

I feel like you actually learn something