soc.history.war.world-war-ii

In article
<47d91027$0$19246$5a62ac22@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au>,
gsinclairnb@froggy.com.au (Geoffrey Sinclair) wrote:

> By the way here is where the need for the Germans to be first comes
> in, the RAF had PPI in service in 1940. Using the one built
> criteria.

The RAF adopted PPI to make conversions from radar bearings to the
existing operational display easier. The table in the operations room
predated PPI and relied on the conversion of bearings from the CH system
to positions on a visual display with aircraft markers moved by hand.

Hogg "Anti-Aircraft" makes the point that Germany could have had PPI at
the start of the war as the Freya and Wurzeburg systems were suited to
it but rejected it as development would take too long for a short war.

Later Germany concentrated much more on receivers mainly for H2S,
Monica and IFF. Night Fighters fitted with the various detectors like
Flensburg and Naxos could apparently detect the bomber stream forming up
over England.

The UK was ahead in most types of Radar for most of the war but except
for centimetre radar which was more important for AS than anything else
and the proximity fuse was never markedly ahead. In fact the CH system
was inferior in all ways but one to the German Air Detection system. It
was fully operational with enough trained crew in September 1939. There
was one glitch.

Ken Young