Salute!
What a great thread, and few realize how inportant the "wizards" were, and then there's the code folks.
I have not see the book all talk of, but the dude wrote another that I read here at Eglin AFB - "The Wizard War". I don't think it's the same book, and it has very technical stuff and not a lot of name dropping. You can still get a copy at Amazon for less than $10 U.S.
Having flown in an enemy air defense a few times to bomb a target, and later during the U.S. Red Flag and Green Flag exercises, I appreciate all the good work the pioneers did.
One thing tha surprised me during my readings was made clear in this link:
http://spitfiresite.com/2010/04/defl...ld-war-ii.html
I had no idea that Germany was actually ahead of Britain in the 30's WRT air defense radar units for actual close work - 60 miles or so. And the German radar seemed to be originally for navbal use. Chain Home was good for long range, but not for control of AAA. The biggie came after the Battle of Britain, and it was the short wavelength radar the Brits developed and passed to the Yanks. Then it was the electronic countermeasures.
Someone mentioned chaff, and I personally exploited those small slivers of aluminum one day over Hanoi. I could see the chaff corridor on my groundmap radar and we flew right down the corridor at 20,000 feet. Many radars beaming at us and a few missiles here and there. The radars didn't get a good lock on us until we had rolled in and about to drop. Too late, so sad. The Fire Can 85mm sites finally locked on as we egressed, but it was mostly optical guns shooting at us.
10 years later I flew in several Green Flags and Red Flags and the electronic wizards had much better stuff. The best thing was embedded ECM support like the EF-111. All that went away a few years later when low observable technology eliminated a lot of the active radar jamming and spoofing.
Gums opines..