My father was a wireless operator/mechanic flying in Coastal Command Liberators fitted with the Leigh Light. He flew from Scotland to the The patrol areas between Denmark and Sweden to intercept U boats leaving North Germany for the open oceans. He survived the war and lived to a ripe old age. I have his flying log book, a treasured possession.
My father was an RAAF navigator in coastal command Wellingtons - with the chin radar. He got his guys home every time after patrolling far out over the atlantic. He's gone now.
My father was trained on the ASV II radar simulator set up by Watson-Watt at RAF OTU 31, Debert, Nova Scotia. His feeling was that if one truly was properly trained how to adjust and utilize, ASV II was more capable over a longer range than what the specifications indicated.
Thank you so much for this lecture. I've read many books on the Battle of the Atlantic so i already knew the ups and downs of the success rate. Now with your lecture I have a much better idea of the ASV systems and how the operated. I spent twenty years from 1970 to 1990 as a ASW aircrewman running passive and active sonars aboard the P-3 Orion, I was also cross trained on the radar system consisting of the APS-80 receiver/transmitter combined with the APA-125 indicator. We used it primarily for tracking merchant shipping and the MARKET TIME patrols during the Vietnam war. Thank you very much for detailing the RADAR systems used in the U-Boat war, I had always wondered exactly how they worked, indicators and tactics.
My aunt worked for Ratheon here in the U.S. during the war .I remember her telling me how the engineers would heat their lunches using this technology.
Flt Lt Leonard Trigg RNZAF flying with Coastal Command was awarded the V.C. posthumourously on the word on the captain of the U Boat that he attacked and sunk although losing his life and that of his entire crew during the attack. His name is on the memorial wall of the Auckland War Memorial Museum in Auckland New Zealand.
The Lockheed PV-1 Ventura was the first American airplane to come off the assembly line with radar already installed. Used by the Americans in the Pacific and Alaska, and by all of the Commonwealth countries as anti-submarine and coastal patrol. Ventura Memorial Flight Association RCAF 2195/NAVY BUILD#33315/CF-FAV
I was navigator on last RNZAF Sunderland flight April 1967. The ASV 6C radar could detect contacts at night at 3 nm which usually when we charged in at 300 feet and illuminated with the Leigh light turned out to be seabirds resting on the sea.
I worked on surveillance and tracking radars in the MOD for years most of which was 50's tech so I saw quite a few Magnetrons big and small, (even water cooled !). So although this video slightly pre-dates my activities it was very interesting to me.
Thanks for a very interesting video. Excellent! 23:07 I never realised the number of casualties suffered by the allied fliers, very much higher than I'd expected.
Interesting lecture! Must investigate this group further as aside from my interest in aircraft I'm a UK based engineer (well, engineering manager these days) who studied communications and microwaves a very long time ago for my degree.
The Tizard Mission is what tipped the balance in the Atlantic. They carried with them one of the few Cavity Magnetrons in existence at the time. Now back then, they were made with precision machinists, a time and labor consuming process. Numberic machining was not in existence at the time. But when the Americans took one look at the magnetron, they gather together, and came to a most singular answer for the Mission team:Mass Production by stamping. Instead of making them with machines, they would STAMP out layers of components of the unit, then assemble, and solder/braze via baking in ovens, making them whole. All without the fussing over and worry about the unit not being in spec, because the layers were ALMOST always in spec! Spot checks would ensure the stamping of the blanks into the layers of the unit were proper and perfect. If it got out of spec, dump the batch, put another set of dies in, destroy the old set, and keep on churning out cavity magnetron components by the dozen every hour. This mass-manufacturing technique developed and perfected by the GE team, caused massive numbers of centimeter radars to be available for the sub-hunters.
Excellent presentation. When the existence of the Metox warning system became known, were radar transmitters attached to ships in order to "spook" U-boats into submerging, thinking an unseen aircraft might attack them?
The use in a limited area of increased numbers of aircraft with metric radar was tried; it was known as "flooding". The aim was to have so many transmitters in an area that the U-boats could not afford to submerge on every contact and then might be surprised on the surface by an aircraft switching on its radar at the last minute. It was tried for a short time but the advent of centimetric radar made it redundant.
14.14 "giving the technology to the Americans was absolutely essential at this time because we didn't have the capacity to manufacture these devices in the quantities required"
This was a truly vital element in defeating Nazi Germany. May the men and women who developed viable radar equipment rest in peace knowing their contribution to humanity.
Australia manufactured a copy of ASV Mk. II for use in their aircraft, like the Lockheed Hudson; NZ started designing a system based on ASV Mk. I, but then acquired British-built systems. British and US ASV systems were deployed in that region.
By no means, but there is a requirement to be a Chartered Engineer (a UK term for a professionally qualified engineer) or international equivalent (eg PE in US, PEng in Canada), in any discipline of engineering.
21.30 749 Sunderlands produced total. wiki 162 B17's, 2,140 B24's (page 2) and 1,007 A-28 & A-29 Hudson's (page 3) Lend Leased to Britain. Hyperwar Lend Lease shipments Army Air Force 730 Canso's, Catilina flying boats, were made under license in Canada with Lend Lease engines.
