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Educated at the universities of Manchester and Cambridge, Wilkins was a member of Watson-Watt’s team. His suggestion that it might be possible to bounce radio waves off an aircraft led to the 1935 experiment where a reflected wave was detected in a field near Daventry. Later that year he moved to Orford Ness in Suffolk to conduct further experiments which eventually led to the move of the Telecommunications Research Establishment there. He was then instrumental in setting up the coastal radar network before helping to develop the British version of the Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) system.

In consequence, in March 1935, Tizard’s committee recommended that the Treasury authorise £10,000 for large-scale experiments to be carried out under Watson-Watt’s leadership. By January 1936, these had demonstrated that it was possible to detect a plane 40 km away. New premises were acquired at Bawdsey Manor near Felixstowe, Essex, which had extensive grounds, to further investigate and develop the Radio Direction Finding (RDF) technology, which was later named radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging). Following further successful investigations, the Treasury authorised £10 million for 20 stations to be built around the coast from the Firth of Tay to the Solent, each comprising a number of steel transmitting towers and lower wooden receiving towers.

Coastal radar station, Sussex, 1940. Left: 110 metre steel transmitting towers. Right: 72 metre wooden receiving towers. Science at War (HMSO)

Radar transmitting and receiving station at coastal radar station. Science at War (HMSO)

In the development of radar the scientists worked closely with Air Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, the Air Member for Supply and Research in 1930–36 and later Fighter Command’s commander in chief. While Harry Wimperis, an aeronautical engineer who was the Director of the Air Ministry’s Department of Scientific Research, fought inter-service battles, Watson-Watt recruited and led the research team; foresaw both the possibilities and the problems; and fought the team’s administrative battles. Among key team members were Jimmy Rowe, A. F. Wilkins, and Dr E. G. ‘Taffy’ Bowen (later instrumental in developing airborne radar), while committee members who gave influential support included the Nobel Prize winner Professor Archibald Hill and Professor Patrick Blackett. Co-operation between scientists and serving officers was exemplary; Tizard described it as ‘the great lesson of the last war’.

By the summer of 1939 the coastal radar chain comprising separate high- and low-level systems (known as Chain Home and Chain Home Low respectively) was operational, with 21 and 30 stations respectively. The fall of France not having been anticipated, the original chains had to be hastily reconfigured and augmented in the summer of 1940 to provide cover west of the Solent and for ports and cities in Wales and the North West.

The Observer (later Royal Observer) Corps, which had been established pre-war, supplemented the information derived from the radar network by reporting numbers, direction, height, and composition of enemy formations.

Despite the high visibility of the radar towers, the Germans amazingly did not make them prime targets, nor were they mentioned in a July 1940 report by the Luftwaffe’s Chief of Intelligence on the British defence system.