Читать книгу Engineering Hitler's Downfall - Gwilym Roberts - Страница 59

A government scientist who joined the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough in 1914, he first worked on radio systems for detecting thunderstorms. By 1933 he was superintendent of the Radio Research Station at Slough and then, from 1936 of the RAF’s Radio Direction Finding research station near Folkestone. Having concluded that a ‘death ray’ of intense radio beams could not bring down a plane, he and his team realised that radio waves were reflected from aircraft and could be detected. Thereafter he designed the radar network that was installed and fully operational by the start of the war (and for which he was awarded £52,000). During the war he became the Air Ministry’s scientific advisor on telecommunications. Post-war he led British delegations to international conferences, established a consultancy, and lived for a while in Canada. He served as president of the Royal Meteorological Society, the Institute of Navigation, and the Institute of Professional Civil Servants, and as vice-president of the Institute of Radio Engineers in New York. Reputedly, in retirement he was caught for speeding by a radar speed-trap!

Radar variants developed by Allied scientists and engineers. Science at War (HMSO)

Other radar systems which later evolved from the Bawdsey team’s pioneering work included Airborne Interception (AI) radar (for night fighters); Air-to-Surface Vessel (ASV) radar (to aid attacks on ships); Oboe system (for improved bombing accuracy); Gee system (also for improved bombing accuracy as well as assisting bombers return to their bases); H2S (target finding for bombers); and Rebecca and Eureka used by invading paratroops. The Telecommunications Research Establishment and the Admiralty Signals Establishment were both in the forefront of such developments.

The Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors gave a tax-free sum of £87,950 to the Bawdsey team, Watson-Watt’s share being £50,000 (award No. 171). The transition from the flickering and truant radio echoes of 1936 into the reliable defence system of 1940 was ‘one of the greatest combined feats of science, engineering and organization in the annals of human achievement’.