[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Actually, in 1936 the Germans lead the world in radar technology. The British Chain Home system was so far below the Germans' expectations that they did not even recognize it as a radar set during an electronic surveillance of Great Britian prior to the War. The British employed radar more effectively than the Germans, doing a better job of integrating it into a coherent air defense network. Read Alfred Price's Book, "Instruments of Darkness" for an "illuminating" history of EW on the Continent during World War II.

The British breakthrough was the multicavity magnetron, an improvement on the single cavity magnetron developed by General Electric prior to the War. This was the device that Spencer improved the manufacturability of. The Germans had examples of the magnetron as early as 1942 and knew they were being used in airborne radar sets to hunt submarines. They countered by applying radar absorbing materials to the hulls of submarines, in other words, they invented stealth. By 1942, the Germans were up to their eyebrows in the war with Russia and did not have the time or resources to implement a program to utilize microwave radar. The German search radars operating at UHF, the Freya and Riese Freya, are still counted as the best search radars of the War. After the War, a Riese Freya was adapted as a radio telescope at the University of Manchester's Jorell Banks observatory, being the first serious radio telescope in the world.

[21twelve]

“This was the device that Spencer improved the manufacturability of.”

Thanks. In reading your earlier post I thought of this one guy and his one idea - and how critical it was. Stuff like that always makes me wonder. How one relatively unknown man, or one fairly simple idea can change history.

A long time ago a guy at our church passed away. It wasn’t until his memorial service that I found out about how interesting he was. He had worked at Bell Labs and developed the touch tone key pad. And in (or before) WWII he had developed radar-ranging gear for the ships. His name was Lorentz (or something like that).

His son is a doctor and told how he was giving a talk, and afterwards some old doctor came up and asked him if he was related to the “Lorentz(?) radar” - and he said yes - that is my dad. The old guy asked if he was still alive (he was). “You give him a big thanks for me and thousands of other sailors - that radar saved so many lives in WWII”. I guess using the radar we could get the first hit with one shot, while the japs would need a couple shots to narrow in on the range.

The power of one man - sort of like the movie “Its a Wonderful Life”.