An absolutely great find. It is so important a historical document that I am astonished that this is the first publication on RU-vid. You always have chosen significant vintage films but you have outdone yourself this time.
Except that it has been altered. Great find, like finding a fake Sunflowers painting. It may look "nice" but you know it isn't real. Actually, a good one of those cheap would be cool, videos altered by people on youtube, not cool.
Incredible piece of work. As a life-long student of WW2, I have seen so much I never knew before and new twists on things I was aware of. What a jewel!!! Thank you!
Thanks for posting this! My father was with mobile AMES units in the Middle East. His training was at the CHL at Walton-on-Naze. AMES units were sent to both Malta and Crete in early 1941. Dad was with the two sets sent to Crete but their equipment was damaged during shipping and they were still not operational at the time of the German invasion. He was evacuated, and then helped build the station on Mt. Carmel at Haifa, Palestine (destroyed postwar by Zionist commandos). I hope to show him this film in the coming days. At 103 yrs old his sight and hearing are poor but I hope he will get a kick out it.
I hope your dad found it interesting. Please pass on my sincere thanks to him for his contribution to our freedom. My own dad, now 96 and in poor health, was a humble infantryman in the far east. However his elder brother, my uncle Peter, was a pilot in Coastal Command and used radar for detecting German U-boats.
Fascinating for an electronics nerd. Had no idea how fast and varied aerial electronic warfare had become during WW2, with the mainstream stories focused on the British home defense system and its fighter intercept squadrons during the Battle of Britain and nothing else.
I recommend the book "The Invention That Changed the World: How a Small Group of Radar Pioneers Won the Second World War and Launched a Technical Revolution"
This is a great find. Thanks for uploading. My grandfather worked on radar during the war and after he was on the BIRDSTRIKE committee where he tracked migrating birds (and, since he was an amateur ornithologist he used the radar to determine bird species by the radar return of the wing beat).
Here's a wild fact for you, when Locust are in a swarm they all beat their wings in unison. I was watching a thing on The Discovery Channel one day about insects and they pointed that out along with showing high speed film slowed down so you can see it, talk about something freaky looking, millions of them all beating their wings exactly the same, I can't remember if the scientist's had an explanation or not it's been so long ago that I watched it, probably back in the 90's but I'll never forget that image.
Absolutely brilliant . In books like Jimmy Rawnsley's Night Fighter he mentions and describes all of those AI mks . This film puts the icing on the cake. One must not have the notion that all of this technology made it easy for aircrews . For each UBoat sunk three aircraft were lost. The biggest problem with the Night Bombing offensive was not target marking , but bomber creep-back. A basic explanation , Pathfinders drop their indicators , the following stream bomb those markers , later arrivals bomb the flames made by the previous arrivals , and so forth. It was so bad that the P/F dropped flares beyond the actual mission target. The American updated version of H2S , H2X gave a higher resolution , the RAF version H2S mk2 was actually fitted months earlier then the USAAF. But the 8th had serious problems with finding targets in bad weather , crews given alternatives and targets of opportunity rather then bring the bombs back. The outcome of this was to give the De Havilland Mosquito its highest loss rate of the war. American Mossies fitted with high powered Radar Sets were tasked to ground map enemy territory . Its believed that the sets overloaded the aircrafts electrical system causing the sets to explode . On a happier more successful note . RAF N/F's initially 85 and 151 squadrons tasked with intercepting Germans attacking the bomber stream from April 1944 , shot down 258 for the loss of 70 to all causes. British Scientists were instrumental for the Allies winning against Hitler , and we gave all of that technology to the Yanks for 50 rust bucket Destroyers.
September, 2023. I am now reading Night Fighter. Its about Rawnsley And Robert Wright. Wight was his radar intercept crew member. Published 1957, by Collins.
Well not entirely. American Ship radar was the very first radar. And the American ship radar was ahead in capability to British ship radar throughout the war. But British ground based radar including airplane radar by the British was ahead till about 1944. I refer you to Robert Morris Page, The Development of Radar, 1962. There was considerable cross Atlantic cooperation by 1941.
By first, I mean the first system that had active an real world application. In this case, it was installed in a ship, to avoid collision s. Long before the ground based British systems.
The British paid us back by giving the Commies all of the latest Western jet engine technology. That's why we didn't want the British to have the bomb, for fear they would sell it to Russia. Those 'rust-bucket' destroyers helped assure that the millions of tons of food, metals, planes, trucks, guns and gasoline made it to you so you could even stay in the war.
If you wonder what, towards the end the film, the shot of a machine squeezing out what looks like toothpaste without any comment is all about; it is in fact the production of polythene which enabled the manufacture of low loss coaxial cables for linking transmitters (Tx) and receivers (Rx) to antennas. Polythene (from ICI) was something the Germans did not have and it remained a very closely guarded secret on how to make it during WW2. It was key to get the maximum range possible from the transmitter power available and making installation in aircraft and other mobile platform much easier to achieve.
Keeping the water out of the joints between the aerial feeders and the Aerials on the CH stations was a major problem in 1940, not only did it cause loss of power and receiver sensitivity, it also caused errors in bearing and height finding.
What did it do? Did it shield the wire from radio wave interference (intrusion)? Like the shielding that's woven into modern spark plug wires that keeps it in, in it's case, so it doesn't make the radio in your car hum? In older cars they had the sheet metal covers that the plug wires were routed through to keep it from happening that everyone took off and threw away and replaced with shielded wires as soon as you could buy them as a replacement set because it was such a pain to take apart. In modern coaxial video wire isn't there a layer of some kind of foil wrapped around everything under the covering that does that same thing? It's a shielding?
@@dukecraig2402 The polythene is the dielectric in the coaxial feeder. In a coax the radio energy is not on the wires but between them in the dielectric, so it is important that that dielectric is low loss. The wires allow the termination (boundary conditions) of the fields in the dielectric so it stays inside the coax and goes where the coax goes, until it is released by the antenna. Polythene has very good low loss at radio frequencies. The alternative is to use an open twin wire feeder because dry air is an excellent dielectric but open wire feeders have a whole host of problems when used in restricted spaces. A coax arrangement provides very good shielding with the outer conductor surrounding the fields . The bending radius of the coax is also important so it is possible to install in restricted spaces. Further developments replaced the solid polythene dielectric with ribbed polythene (that looks like a star in cross section). The polythene air mixture has even better low loss performance but still provided the necessary mechanical structure to keep the inner wire centred and hold out the outer mesh at the correct spacing. Spacing between inner and outer is critical in a coax to maintain the impedance of the coax. If it starts to vary along the coax one starts to get reflections of energy coming back towards the transmitter. In the case of spark plugs you are sending an electrical signal along the wire rather than radio energy between the wires as one does in an rf (radio frequency) feeder system. But because the spark voltage is high and the pulses have sharp edges they contain radio frequencies. To prevent them leaking out too much shielded plug leads are used . It is little appreciated that in an rf feeder system the energy is already a radio wave (constrained by the feeder system) once it leaves the transmitter and the antenna is a matching device that launches the energy into space. The incorrect, but widespread, understanding is that an electrical signal in the form of volts and amps is converted into an electromagnetic field when it reaches the antenna. The wires in an rf feeder system do not carry the energy they simply direct where it goes. Rather like a train on a track.
Bravo! A very interesting film and it filled in some blank spots for me. After leaving school I joined the RN in 1973 as a radio/radar maintainer. At that time we were still heavily reliant upon valve technology. I knew that magnetrons were a closely guarded secret during WWII but hadn't realised that klystrons were as well until very recently. Nearly 30 years after WWII much of the technology in use was the same, or essentially similar, to war-time systems which I had not realised till I watched this film. So thank you.
Excellent slice of history, my father volunteered to join the RAF in 1939 after seeing an advert asking for people with experience in radio technology. He was accepted and sent to the station mentioned in Dunkirk to find that he was to be trained on AI which was all hush, hush. Having done his training he was sent to 219 squadron at Catterick to be a Radar mechanic on their Blenheims, before movine to 89 squadron on Beaufighters and finally Mosquitos. After the war he built a TV set in time for the coronation based on old war surplus radar sets. He would have loved this film, thanks for posting it.
Great film. My chemistry and physics teachers worked on this just prior to ww2 as young scientists. One went on to be a commando; tough bloke. Wonderfully they gave us eager students a flavour of those days which nearly 70 years on I cherish and applaud their and their colleagues endeavours. Certainly my father found radar useful when doing mosquito recce flights in ww2.
A rare 'look' into radar & its development thank you. For those interested in this subject you can find quite a lot of eye witness accounts of the development of all the systems mentioned in this video and a lot more in the very entertaining book 'RAF Biggin Hill'. My copy a softback, replaced my earlier 'nicked' copy and cost me 3£ on the internet. It's fragile and I'm very pleased to have it hence the recommend.
The Malvern location is RAF Defford, Worcestershire, UK. There is a dedicated museum of exhibits including photos, maps and radar equipment from that station at the National Trust Croome property.
Many years ago now, when Microsoft were trying to out show Oracle they released a global visualisation that they called TerraServer (sort of a very early google earth) - their big DB was called SQLServer. I was working in Malvern (TRE but not for them, NHS instead) at the time. Microsoft were being cheapskates and had bought all of their satelite images from what had just stopped being the Soviet Union. One could identify areas of interest by seeing which sites had been photographed on the Soviet Satelites. The scan over Birmingham went as far as TRE and stopped. Now it may be they didn't wan't to release the shots over Hereford but I for one, found a certain amount of schadenfreude in the thought that put me and my family pretty much to ground zero for an SS20. When I casually mentioned it to my wife she insisted we moved. After all, one can allways avoid 3*3MT+ warheads by following the USN dictum, "the only defence against an atomic atack is to be somewhere else.". It was a fascinating example of inferred intelligence.
A fascinating film! I had heard of many of these names of the various devices of radar equipment, but there were a good number of those I had not heard of. A rather incongruous piece of German music to this film at the beginning and the end. Probably intended lol " Sheep may safely graze" by JS Bach.
Absolutly fascinating. I have never seen this subject covered so comprehensively before. It answered quite a few of my historic questions on the subject. I must admit i did a double take when it said that the top secret experimental equipment was taken to Dunkirk, not realising thete was a Dunkirk in kent, despite having spent a few years near Folkestone.. I also have never heard any mention of the overseas radar sites before. For those not in the know, there are a couple of the large chain home towers still extant on the cliff behind Dover.
At 4.49, did he say transferred to Dunkirk? If so, why choose France? AH, if I'd waited another minute, there is another Dunkirk in Kent, which was a surprise to me!
Love the video. I had the opportunity of being at Orfordness and the Over-The-Horizon (OTH) backscatter research project (Cobra Mist) in the early ‘70’s. Visiting other sites in the area always intrigued me. I was not totally aware of the history prior and this video fills in some of the gaps.
a fascinating find. thank you for putting this up. as an ex-audio guy, I can remember using the connectors shown in use on those radar sets well into the 2000s. they were known as milspec connectors...can't think of why...smileywinkyface
Yep, you'd clean off those copper buttons inside of them with a pencil eraser and all of the sudden a radio set that had transmitting and receiving issues would clear up and work like new. I can't remember the nomenclature of the components but in the armored vehicle I was a crewmember on we had the big unit that was a receiver/transmitter and the ox, auxiliary receiver only, and the Vincent (but we're not allowed to talk about that one, although by now you can probably but those things in Army/Navy surplus stores and Ebay😅😅).
as a GPO / BT engineer i was responsible for maintaining the remaining DTN “ defence teleprinter Network this was installed over something like 3 years before the war and linked all the Radar stations and Roc posts ( Royal observer Core ) back to the control and analysis centres a tremendous effort ! some Fighter direction centres had feeds from two different directions in case of bombing a brilliant concept and effort the US didnt have anything like it until “ Jaytids “ in 1966 i believe certainly other country had Radar but the integrated system in Britain made it much more usable
Thank you very much for sharing this. It was fascinating. I've read several books on the area of radar and countermeasures, e.g. ref R.V. Jones, 100 (Special Duties) Group, Coastal Command and the Pathfinder Force. It's really interesting to see these covered specifically from the perspective of the electronic technologies that was so much a part of their success. I've also visted the radar museum at Bawdsey, many years ago, not long after it was opened. So it was fascinating to see the film of the manor and some of the techniques employed their. Very useful, too, to see explanations in a visual form. It definitely helps understanding. I had no concept of the vast range of different versions of RADAR and other electronic devices and the vast numbers of applications. The tech industry must have been huge, even at that time to cope with all of those different demands and rapid changes! Does anyone have a recommendation for reading about Robert Watson-Watt? I recall seeing a dramatisation about his life on TV many years ago and would like to learn more about him. Thanks for any suggestions.
This was great! Thank you for sharing! I remember learning as a kid back in the late 70's early 80's about RADAR and how it worked by watching a program called NOVA. It had a lot of segments using WWII animations but explained it very well and simply. I remember wanting to get my hands on a magnetron to make my own. haha Glad I didn't! Probably be dead by now. haha Thanks again for the video!
Very great care was taken to supplement the narrated explanations with visual cues. These kind of videos are sorely lacking in the education field nowaday, as a teacher I still used the first series of "BBC Connections" to teach History of Technology in a middle school.
OMG !!! Bravo !! To think it was all done Cannon Plugs and Linear Power Supply's. I often wondered what the BNC (British Navel Connector) was used for.
Amazing the British could create much of this electronic wizardly, but they couldn't make a breaker-point ignition system their motorcycles that would last a month without overhaul.
Interesting video processing done here, fine noise, texture and detail was reduced with a remarkable increase of sharpness and excellent smoothness. It looks like a lot of work.
That's all the original texture and detail there is. The scale provided by digital archives and old dvds etc is the original, and that's about 400 per cent less than modern televisions. I'm tinkering with digital upscaling to enhance what's there and remove the pixelation / blurriness of automatic interpolation, remove lens flicker and film vibration. It's still a learning process for me.
must throw in my tuppence worth here; truly excellent production work; brings the sense and feel of the original footage to life. How much archive material there must be out there, which we have only seen in worn-out prints! Time does a blink, and we are at any point in the last century.... best regards@@ArmouredCarriers
and also shows very clearly the culture of innovation and excellence in this country which set Britain, not simply ahead of the yanks, or the enemy, but in a league of her own in so many fields: jet engines and all the rest. Everyone simply filling in the gaps, ever since.
it was interesting to hear the wavelengths being described in metric. yet all other things in imperial! and i wonder why they used such a 1920s/1930s font for the title page? fascinating vid, thanks.
as a child of THIS GREATEST GENERATION! I love to hear these voices and see these films AGAIN! Very Soothing! Had Family fight in the Battle of Britain on through D Day! starting with Canada ending with every Allied Force and the USAAC! Others in the ETO some in the Pacific! Oh Ya! one Grams was in the BATTLE for the ATLANTIC! PBY's recon, repairs. To Bad kids these days. do Not? Love! Science the same ways all of US before the 80's DO! RIP GREATEST! Miss ya'll Y'all! I knew you were out front, But DARN! I did not Know this FAR! I "did not know" the Brits had a Fabric Sword Fish "BI PLANE" fitted with RADAR!
If you visit the D Day beaches, behind Juno is the German radar station just outside Douvres-la-Deliverande. The museum explains much of the systems used.
Electronics is seldom a top story amonst WWII historical documentaries, less glamorous I suppose, but this was quite fascinating. A bigger part of the story than I had realised.
The very first radar experiment On a moving object was by Leo C. Young and Albert Hoyt Taylor, in 1921. They observed the radar return of a ship in 1921, on the Potomic River, while working at the US Naval research Laboratory. They developed the first true working radar. I refer you to Robert Morris Page. His book The Development of Radar.
I wish the MIT Radiation Lab had done something like this in 1946. The Top Secret nature of the work seemed to carry over with radar as with nuclear weapons. The development of the SCR-584 alone would have made a great documentary. That and the unit in the P-61.
Oddly enough I actually understood all of this. Boy, this technology is old and very primitive. The real magic of modern RADAR systems is the digital processing not the underlying concepts.
It may seem “old and very primitive” now but it was cutting edge then. You must give enormous credit to the pioneers who had a limited range of test equipment at their disposal and were working from first principles. The system engineers of today are “standing on the shoulders” of these extremely talented electronic engineers.
@robertdonnell8114 All the Digital stuff does is replace a load of Analogue electronics which did its job in the past. plus a load of WAAF moving plots on a table and a bloke trying to filter out all of the crap. The basic physics of how it all worked is the same today.
I remember as a child seeing the masts on the South East Coast. As a child I was in awe of them. I knew they had been very important, but didn't know how.... If only Hitler had had foresight, he would never had taken us on.....
Fasinating video. Mandrake, Cigar, GEE, etc but no mention of Carrots. Eating loads of carrots improved night vision, did not require electrical power, were plentiful and cheap. Eating kilos of carrots was the answer to any German questioning of airman POWs. Not sure they fell for it!
In direction finding you have to resolve if a signal is on the forward bearing or the back bearing. Sense answers that question. Later systems did not need to resolve sense as reflectors behind antennas quenched the back beam lobe that was in the antenna radiation pattern of the early more basic antenna systems.
glad to see mandrell got a mention, just wish they had named it's carring aircraft; possiably making it the worlds EW aircraft, (EW = electronic warfare: now called "Wild Weasels"), if you do not know which aircraft I am talking about, you are in for a surprise when you find out....
Fella physicist from Swansea University then I believe came up with the initial idea of dots on a revolving scanning CRT tube screen, I believe. I forget his name, Watkins or something like that.
A fascinating historical document. An early example of the maxim - If you can't blind them with science, baffle them with bullshit. Use long words, jargon (often incorrectly), unexplained initialisms, photos of mysterious electrical kit, and the passive voice until the audience's eyes glaze over. Don't take questions afterwards. I did however notice the use of two German codenames, Freya and Wurzburg, which the censor may have missed.
I've always wondered, if radar was invented in Britain as is so often stated, how come the Graf Spee was equipped with gun laying radar when it was sunk in the river Plate? None of the British ships had radar at that time.
No-one stated that it was invented in Britain, it was known that the Germans had their secrets too. The wreck of the Graf Spee was examined immediately and the radar antennas measured to determine the exact frequencies in use.
The first patent was made by a German in about 1906-8 using a horn antenna, no amplification, a short range of about 2-300m at best and was intended to stop ships colliding in obscured visibility. Radio was just making its first major public appearance and no-one was interested in such obscure stuff. The patent lapsed as it was not extended.
The Royal Marines conducted a raid on German Radar station on the French Coast to steal parts from the German Radar .which were found to be superior. It was being developed all around the World .As with alot of science.
We didn't invent it as such, but before the war, scientific papers were read widely, it only took a few people to understand the potential. The British developed RDF which became RADAR, the Germans developed their versions as did the U.S. The game changer (as far as I understand) was the cavity magnetron which enabled equipment to be smaller and more powerful. The British gave this to the Americans and they won the war for us. So thanks America! Appreciated.
Not if it is made for internal purposes. New recruits back then were starting from a very very low base (very few films or novels depicted radar for example).
@@petefluffy7420 It was compiled in 1946 out of training films made during the war. Most of the last WW2 "secret" designations were lifted about 1995. Only the most sensitive (read political) material remains classified.
@@ArmouredCarriers OMG, 50 years after the event! Huge amount of time. The only real need after '45 might have been the cavity magnetron - essential for very short wavelengths. cheers
If this documentary was classified as 'secret' when it was made in 1946, why is it so skimpy in regard to proper technical details? It is almost like it was created by some people seconded from the drama film department of the BBC, with no clue about communicating technical information to people, other than in the form of B-roll footage. There is a lot of useful and relevant technical detail they could have mentioned, but didn't.
It was a mashup of wartime training films, produced as an internal history of the war. I'd love to find those original films. Usually, in the 1930s and 40s, training films were for "introductory" sessions, providing an overview and context. Classrooms went on to convey the detail. It's the same for US WW2 training films.
In February 1935 Watson-Watt demonstrated to an Air Ministry committee the first practical radio system for detecting aircraft. The Air Ministry was impressed, and in April Watson-Watt received a patent for the system and funding for further development. Soon Watson-Watt was using pulsed radio waves to detect airplanes up to 80 miles away. Shortly before World War II began, the British constructed a network of radar stations along the coast of England using Watson-Watts’ design. These stations, known as Chain Home, successfully alerted the Royal Air Force to approaching enemy bombers, and helped defend Britain against the German Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. The American Physical Society (APS)
