Jetex Jim
5th Mar 2008, 04:15
From Sir Arthur C. Clark:
Flying Officer Alan Bishop found it singularly peaceful on this tiny metal platform a hundred feet above the North Sea. The fact that Adolf Hitler was undoubtedly preparing some sort of mischief over there on the Continent, and that it was his duty to watch out for it, seemed quite irrelevant on such a warm autumn afternoon. Nothing moved in the whole expanse of sea and sky; even the big concave dish of the radar scanner had ceased its restless searching and was staring straight toward Holland. If it did start to spin, Alan would have to move smartly; it was not very practical to share the platform with a whirling ten-foot saucer standing on its rim.
Below him, the rest of the station appeared equally relaxed. But this, Alan knew, was an illusion. In the wooden hut at the base of the tower, Sergeant Campbell was attacking a defective wave monitor with liberal doses of solder and profanity. Over there inside that mysterious barbed-wire enclosure, Flight Lieutenant Hicks, Royal New Zealand Air Force, was assembling his Gee installation -- whatever that might be. F/O Bishop resented the existence of any radar device that was secret to him, but all his attempts to winkle information out of Hicks had been wholly unsuccessful. At least, he consoled himself, by the look of the antenna arrays it was only old-fashioned meter-wave-length stuff, so it couldn't be very interesting.
There were probably fifty people hard at work within a hundred yards of him, but the only signs of life were the bored Service Policeman on duty at the main gate and a Woman's Auxiliary Air Force operator doing some voluntary gardening on the skimpy flower bed around the Orderly Room. At least, Alan assumed it was voluntary; the WAAF Commanding Officer had not, as far as he knew, started doling out horticultural exercises to criminous airwomen.
The parabolic bowl looming above him gave a premonitory creak and twisted toward the south, as if tired of staring for so long in one direction. There was no danger that it would start spinning at full speed -- Sergeant Campbell knew that he was up here -- but Alan thought he had better move.
The big dish was aimed straight at him, and he was sitting in a radio beam of a frequency and strength no one would have dreamed possible only a few years ago. It might be imagination, but he felt that he was already starting to cook.
Half a million watts were squirting silently, invisibly toward Holland, focused into a narrow beam by the big radio searchlight. Not a billionth of that energy was coming back, reflected from whatever obstacles it had encountered before it skimmed clear of the horizon and headed out into space. Yet that feeble echo was enough to betray the presence of any ships or low-flying aircraft within a hundred miles of the coast, and to pinpoint them accurately on the cathode-ray screen in the receiver hut.
There were times, however, when old-fashioned vision was better than radar, and this was such a moment. A mere half mile away was an approaching target of much more interest than Nazi torpedo boats or low-level bombers. As soon as Alan spotted the brown van weaving along the narrow lane, he started to descend the tower with reckless speed.
Despite his early warning, the news was all over the station before he reached ground level. By the time he sauntered through the main gate (it was, of course, undignified for officers to run) the queue for the NAAFI van was so long that it seemed incredible that the station could still be fully operational. If Hitler only knew, thought Alan, he could sabotage the entire radar chain by organizing a simultaneous onslaught of NAAFI vans loaded with off-ration chocolates and cigarettes.
This book, Glide Path, although fiction, is based closely on Clarke's wartime experiences working on Radar - largely GCA
You can download the whole thing from Fictionwise
Flying Officer Alan Bishop found it singularly peaceful on this tiny metal platform a hundred feet above the North Sea. The fact that Adolf Hitler was undoubtedly preparing some sort of mischief over there on the Continent, and that it was his duty to watch out for it, seemed quite irrelevant on such a warm autumn afternoon. Nothing moved in the whole expanse of sea and sky; even the big concave dish of the radar scanner had ceased its restless searching and was staring straight toward Holland. If it did start to spin, Alan would have to move smartly; it was not very practical to share the platform with a whirling ten-foot saucer standing on its rim.
Below him, the rest of the station appeared equally relaxed. But this, Alan knew, was an illusion. In the wooden hut at the base of the tower, Sergeant Campbell was attacking a defective wave monitor with liberal doses of solder and profanity. Over there inside that mysterious barbed-wire enclosure, Flight Lieutenant Hicks, Royal New Zealand Air Force, was assembling his Gee installation -- whatever that might be. F/O Bishop resented the existence of any radar device that was secret to him, but all his attempts to winkle information out of Hicks had been wholly unsuccessful. At least, he consoled himself, by the look of the antenna arrays it was only old-fashioned meter-wave-length stuff, so it couldn't be very interesting.
There were probably fifty people hard at work within a hundred yards of him, but the only signs of life were the bored Service Policeman on duty at the main gate and a Woman's Auxiliary Air Force operator doing some voluntary gardening on the skimpy flower bed around the Orderly Room. At least, Alan assumed it was voluntary; the WAAF Commanding Officer had not, as far as he knew, started doling out horticultural exercises to criminous airwomen.
The parabolic bowl looming above him gave a premonitory creak and twisted toward the south, as if tired of staring for so long in one direction. There was no danger that it would start spinning at full speed -- Sergeant Campbell knew that he was up here -- but Alan thought he had better move.
The big dish was aimed straight at him, and he was sitting in a radio beam of a frequency and strength no one would have dreamed possible only a few years ago. It might be imagination, but he felt that he was already starting to cook.
Half a million watts were squirting silently, invisibly toward Holland, focused into a narrow beam by the big radio searchlight. Not a billionth of that energy was coming back, reflected from whatever obstacles it had encountered before it skimmed clear of the horizon and headed out into space. Yet that feeble echo was enough to betray the presence of any ships or low-flying aircraft within a hundred miles of the coast, and to pinpoint them accurately on the cathode-ray screen in the receiver hut.
There were times, however, when old-fashioned vision was better than radar, and this was such a moment. A mere half mile away was an approaching target of much more interest than Nazi torpedo boats or low-level bombers. As soon as Alan spotted the brown van weaving along the narrow lane, he started to descend the tower with reckless speed.
Despite his early warning, the news was all over the station before he reached ground level. By the time he sauntered through the main gate (it was, of course, undignified for officers to run) the queue for the NAAFI van was so long that it seemed incredible that the station could still be fully operational. If Hitler only knew, thought Alan, he could sabotage the entire radar chain by organizing a simultaneous onslaught of NAAFI vans loaded with off-ration chocolates and cigarettes.
This book, Glide Path, although fiction, is based closely on Clarke's wartime experiences working on Radar - largely GCA
You can download the whole thing from Fictionwise