Beam Detection in the Battle of Britain
 

I have read somewhere and lost the the link that F/O James Mazdon and F/O Basil Sadler flew a balloon over the Channel during the Battle of Britain period carrying equipment to detect German navigation beams.
Does anyone recognize this and can give a source?

Most Secret War by R V Jones might yield the answer. Don't have to hand, but can look later.

First detection was done in an Avro Anson near Spalding. There had been much arguement between R V Jones and others whether the radio beam could be transmitted over such a distance from the transmitter at Kleve. R V Jones eventually won out because Churchill backed him and demand that flights continued.

The receiver was a highly sensitive Lorenz beam receiver used for blind landings. This was discovered in the wreckage of a Heinkel which was shot down.

The Germans tried ot find out about British radar using a Zeppelin before the war authorised by Luftwaffe signal command under General Wolfgang Martini.

Try the Instruments of Darkness by Alfred Price an ex AEO from V Force.

I second EWAN. RV Jones' book might not mention a specific on that but, it is a treasure trove of info on the subject. TBH, many "history of WW2 air war" books need rewriting with the info in Most Secret War. :eek:

OAP



PS. Air pig is correct about the detection mentioned in RV Jones' book. However, there was a lot of work going on that is not all listed so, whether other chaps flew balloons (blimps?) for such purpose may be listed somewhere else?

I agree, in particular with that we now know ACM Dowding during the Battle of Britain had access to Enigma decrypts.

Secret War
 

The first episode of the 1977 BBC series Secret War covered the battle of the beams; the series includes lots of clips of R V Jones.

The Germans had the X Gerate (Don't know how to type the umlaut) which was a single beam, and the Y Gerate which had 2 beams that intersected to mark the target. These beams were VERY narrow, only a couple hundred meters wide in England (projected from sites in France). So, you really needed a plane to catch the beam, as they were redirected every night for a different target. The Germans initially set up the beam in the early afternoon, to make sure the equipment was working and properly aimed. If the British could detect the beam as soon as it was set up, they had a number of hours to mobilize equipment and manpower to defend against the attack.

Jon

Before X and Y Gerate you had Knickebein based on the Lorenz system which was produced pre war. The aircraft flew down a beam with morse dots to one side and dashes on tho other. In the middle was a steady tone 'equi-signal'. Approaching the target the observer tuned to the second sigal crossing their path when the obtained the steady tone, tey dropped their bombs. The system was actually difficult to jam as you needed to know both frequency used and how many cycles/second it was transmitted on. X and Y Gerate were far more automatic and incorporate timers therefore easier to spoof and jam.

I think Y Gerate had three cross beams, the first was a warning to the crew to prepare, second the observer started a clock which ran slowly and at the third a second clock was started which ran 3x faster than the second when both reached zero the bombs bropped automatically.

As with any beam reliant system the further from the transmitter the less accurate it is.

This was the start of electronic warfare as we know it today. We still use chaff which was originally called window and Dupel by the Luftwaffe, coincidently it was invented by both sides at the same time.

Most Secret War is a great read. Recommended to those who haven't.

Thanks for posting the Y clip, GG. :)

OAP

I believe they did have chaps climb the Chain Home radar towers to try to detect the beam signals.

The Germans quite remarkably thought the Chain Home masts were some kind of system for civil aviation,they had no idea that they were for military use.

Our good fortune but also they were quite difficult to destroy. The German bombing offensive was beset by mis-judgements, move from attacking radar stataions to attacking airfields then London. The latter taking the infra-structure pressure off the RAF adding in the short range of effective Luftwaffe fighter protection turnd the battle along with the effective removal from the orbat of the Me 110 and the Ju 87.

I do have a copy at hand. Jone's, page after page, simply drops name after name. It would be wonderful to read an account of the secret war but this isn't it.

I don’t know if Brian Johnson’s book “Secret War”, (originally a tie-in with the 1977 BBC program, and first published by the BBC), adds anything. It has now been republished by Pen and Sword as one of their ‘Millitary Classics’. But second hand copies of the original BBC hard back can be picked-up on line for less than a good pint of bitter.

RV Jones' book Most Secret War should be on the compulsory reading list for anyone thinking of building anything technological for any military purpose. It's about the only book we have where sneakiness of technological design, use, and exploitation, and indeed exploitation of exploiters, is described from, as it were, the horses mouth.

The Battle of the Beams, and the history of how each side's capability progressed, was the first example of a technological arms race during war, and there's a lot of lessons that have to be learned from it by current and future generations.

To give you an idea of the race, at the beginning of its operational history the Lancaster was carrying a radio, and that was about it. By the end of the war it was carrying up to 2 tons of electronics, just to survive and operate over Germany. 2 tons! I got this off an old chap who had managed to collect an example of everything the Lanc had carried, and it was impressive.

Other compulsory books are:

• Skunk Works by Ben Rich, because it shows what can really be done when you can exclude pride and politics from procurement.
• Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks, because it shows you what harm pride and politics can do.

Jones' other second book, Reflections on Intelligence, is also well worth a read. SPOILER ALERT: in it he relates being sent over to the USA to be briefed on the then super-secret Sidewinder missile (not that he knew the name beforehand).

At about that time some scientists had worked out how the Sidewinder snake hunted - it has heat sensitive pits next to its eyes, and it hunts using those to "see". Jones had read their paper, infrared being an early topic of research for him whilst still in academia.

Anyway, on being told the name of the missile, Sidewinder, apparently he said, "Oh, that must be an infrared heat seaking air-2-air missile". Cue one massive panic on the side of the Americans, who thought there'd been some enormous security breakdown, how on earth had this Limey seen through to the very core of this program, etc... It simply turned out that when the Americans had chosen the name Sidewinder no one had any idea whatsoever that the codename was so very apt!

For those who are intersted and are willing to travel to China Lake, there's an excellent museum on the perimeter of the Air Station at Ridgecrest, where you can learn an awful lot about subtlety of design. Sidewinder was built for an unpleasant purpose, but as an object lesson in refining a design down to the bare minimum it is hard to beat.

cvg2iln, What a strange snipe at an important book. The identification of individuals by RV Jones in his book is one of the aspects that make it so valuable. The book is a fairly deep record of some important work that UK scientific intelligence achieved in the period. It is not a chronology of British technical development, it is more of a record of scientific counter intelligence and concentrates upon; German Radar and navigation/targeting Beams, Rockets and V weapons, Night fighting equipment and techniques and, German progress towards Atomic weapons. The book describes how intelligence and scientific analysis was successfully used to develop effective countermeasures and tactics for most of the German technical advances. Some of the most enlightening information illustrates how internal British political and military lethargy sometimes caused avoidable Allied losses. :sad:
So, sorry cvg2iln, I don't agree with your generalised criticism.

OAP

I quite agree. cvg2iln's comment is uncharitable. Jones was there, and did do those things, and played a pivotal role in fighting what Churchill had already named as being "The Wizard's War".

Besides, given that Jones was indeed mixing it with some very important people on some very important topics, how on earth would any history of those events justifiably omit "names", no matter who wrote that history?

I have heard criticism of Jones before, usually along the lines of being 'arrogant'. Well, some people get to a level where they really are the leading light in their field, and Jones was one such person.

For comparison, how many fighter pilots think they're god's gift to flying? Quite a few, but then they are pretty damn good at what they do. So long as they restrict professions of their expertise to topics about flying fast whizzy things, not pumping up the tyres, what sort of spanner to use, etc. :}

Came across this excerpt from The Enemy is Listening by Aileen Clayton
Maddeningly, I can't find a longer excerpt with what comes after the ellipsis, and the book doesn't seem to be available in electronic format. However, from a review on another site, some info about the author and the RAF Y Service (which was part of or worked in conjunction with the War Office 'Y' Group, I believe), that might aid in finding other references:
FYI, the "early English balloonist" great-grandfather of Basil is James Sadler who, per the Royal Aeronautical Society, "... in 1810 became the first man to fly over (but then into!) the Bristol Channel after skirting the Glamorgan coast - this being the first balloon flight over Welsh soil."

Information on Sadler's death from Australian RAAF records, as a result of RAAF personnel serving on attachment in the RAF. Note this was yet another flight carrying "wireless investigation equipment":

Freeman Dyson advocated getting rid of all gun turrets to make the Lanc 50mph faster and more maneuverable. The powers that be wouldn't listen. Whilst I doubt that the added weight of electronics allowed it to survive, ( systems such as Monica and Fishpond were homed in on by the Germans and Gee was jammed all the way from the Dutch coast and beyond) H2S did allow for more accurate navigation.

Guernsey Girl II

Many thanks for posting the YouTube link.

Apropos RV Jones - a most unassuming man and certainly not arrogant. Knew him in later life when he was 'Prof Jones' - Professor of Natural Philosophy (Physics to you and me) at Aberdeen Uni in the 70s. Took a great interest in both the UAS and the URNU , in fact was our guest of honour at one Mess Dinner for the latter when I was presiding, so sitting next to the great man was fascinating. His lectures were legendary, incorporating much of his wartime life, so much so that an awful lot more students turned up than just his Physics lot. Lovely man.

I bought a second copy of RV Jones book only last year. The original I had in the 80s went missing. I too consider it essential reading. He is one person I would have wished to have met. Going through the visitors book at EWAU at Wyton he had been a frequent visitor. Unfortunately as a junior I was not able to meet him.
Off thread but perhaps worth adding. I learned a few weeks ago that my old boss, Hd EW, Barry Ellender had died in November at Addenbrookes from Parkinson’s. He lived in Kent, the funeral took place in Kent. Barry left EWAU for a job in DI perhaps following in RVs footsteps.
I enjoyed the Sidewinder story above. I know RV had undertaken the foundation work on IR detectors. Amazing how everything is so miniature these days. I wish I had known of the museum at China Lake as I had been a couple of times to undertake some RCS work on Airborne kit in early 2000s

Bloody cold up here Fanshawe
 

R V Jones also pointed out that it was soon discovered that sending two poor sods up to the top of a swaying ice cold chain Home mast with a receiver worked just as well as keeping aircraft in the air. They also served who only froze and swayed

By all accounts I've heard from people who knew him, he was indeed an all round great guy. It's just a pity that some people, who didn't know him, seem to like to think otherwise.

Had I been 10 years older I'd have been sorely tempted to go to Aberdeen Uni simply because of his association with the place. As it happens I went to Shrivenham...

I heard another story of a British Boffin causing a security flap in the US. A noted aerodynamicist (whose name I cannot recall, to my shame) involved in the Concorde project was invited over to the States, to visit Rockwells. At the time they were having their first go at the B1, and it was not going well. Our chap was given a tour of the plant, and there was the prototype, and afterwards there was a splendid dinner.

Our chap gave the after dinner speech as guest of honour, relating some of the issues that had cropped up on Concorde. During this he says something like "I see that you're having problems with your engine intakes, that your prototype isn't as fast as you thought it would be, and your fuel consumption is terrible". He was bang on the money, this was exactly the situation they were in. Unfortunately, this was a closely guarded secret, and he'd just blurted it out in front of the assembled diners, most of whom were certainly not cleared into that aspect of the program!!! As security fowl ups go, it was a bit of a biggy.

What our chap had noticed on his tour round the plant was that there were lots of pressure probes mounted in front of the engine intakes, and he'd rightly guessed that the Americans were trying to understand the airflows into the engine at high speed. From this he'd deduced that it was under performing, They'd had similar problems with Concorde, and he recognised what they were trying to do.

After the fuss calmed down and they'd decided he wasn't some sort of uber-spy-James-Bond's-brother, he explained what they'd done about it on Concorde. Back in those days, determining airflow from pressure probes was a big numerical challenge, too big to be undertaken unless desperate. However the Concorde guys had a good trick. They'd smear the wing surfaces in front of the engine intake with tar. They'd take off, get up to supersonic speed, cruise for a short while, and then quickly slow down again. The tar would warm up, get blown into the shape of the airflows around the wing surfaces, and then set, preserving the pattern for all to see on the ground.

Wipe it off with solvent and they could do that several times a day for little more than the cost of the fuel, and literally see what was going on. In contrast the number crunching on the data from a bunch of pressure probes would take ages in those days.

I visited the museum in China Lake in the mid 2000s. I think it was fairly new, it may not have been open when you were there.

That's the trouble with a technological arms race; you end up with a lot of kit, and you can't ever discount the old "junk" in case the other side realises you've stopped fitting it.

There were some long lived systems in WWII. Gee was compromised by over enthusiastic trials by the RAF over Germany with an early set, which was lost and fell into German hands. RV Jones invented a system called Jay, in the hope of throwing them off the scent. I understand from Jones' book that once the Germans realised they'd been had, that Jay was a spoof and that Gee was the real deal, they completely ignored Jay for the remainder and it served as a useful homing aid.

Que? If you've successfully jammed the carrier frequency in the target region, what does it matter how, or even if, it is modulated? Unless I've misunderstood what you were saying.

The early jammers were converted diathermy machines from hospitals, they knew the frequency but not the modulation I believe.

As an aside, when RVJ was doing his TV series, I believe he was known as 4 Fee Jones.

Remember, he was only 29 when the blitz began.

I can never understand why he was never given a Knighthood or some other title,other than a CBE. He must have saved countless thousands of lives.

Too young and too junior for the civil service to allow such a thing. They also managed to keep him 2 grades below his actual working level. The CBE was a compromise.

He was made a Companion of Honour.

Lord Coe was awarded it as was Stephen Hawking, Paul McCartney and David Hockney. In the pecking order of honours it is quite high. It ranks higher than a KB.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_...ions_of_Honour

Not until 1994 apparently. It says a lot for this country, whilst men and women were dying for our freedom, the powers that be decided that the Status Quo must be kept and a relatively lowly, but brilliant civil servant should not be allowed to be promoted or given official recognition above his station. These days Knighthoods are tossed around like confetti for all kind of worthless individuals

Churchill's list was a knight of the Garter (personal gift of the Monarch there are only 24 at any one time), Order of Merit and Companion of Honour, (plus others).

John Major was also a KG and a CH.

I take your points about awards to the Civil Service and the delay here. I suspect in large measure it reflected the lack of recognition generally in the post war years for the contribution many made to the victory in 1945. I think in the twenty or thirty years post war the Country wanted to forget the past and look to the future. Wars were not generally fashionable between 1945 and the Falklands War. Many involved in WWII didn't want to talk about it and their role in it. It is only since the WWII 'heroes' started dying off that the current generations have started to show an inquisitive interest in what their mums and dad''s (or grand parents) did in the war.

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..

As our old Adj ( x Lancaster rear gunner ) used to say: 'It was a good war, for those that can talk about it'.

gums, reading Spitfire on my Tail, the first book of Erich Steinhilper's excellent trilogy, it's clear that Germany was some way behind the Allies in the field of integrated air defence at the time of the Battle of Britain.

Freya and Wurzburg might have been under development, but in 1940 some of the ex-Condor Legion pilots such as Adolf Galland didn't even want radios in their Bf109s, complaining that the weight wasn't worth it! Those fighters which did have radio used HF voice (around 5 MHz) and the bombers used MF WT (at around 1.3 MHz) - so the escort fighters couldn't even communicate with the bombers they were escorting! Sorted out later though, with VHF comms at around 40 MHz, but by then it was too late.

On ADEXs, comms spoofing was easily ignored if it came from a 360 Sqn Canberra as the background inverter noise was all too obvious. One of the best spoofs was a reply of the previous days comms exactly 24 hours later - it caused enormous confusion!

Intially they were jammed by interference, but later it evolved into bending the beams so that bombs were dropped away from cities. Presumably you would need to know frequency and modulation. From Wiki:

Efforts to block the Knickebein headache were codenamed "Aspirin". Initially, modified medical diathermy sets transmitted interference, but later, on nights where raids were expected, local radio transmitters broadcast an extra "dot signal" at low power.[17] The German practice of turning on the beams long before the bombers reached the target area aided the British efforts. Avro Ansons fitted with receivers would be flown around the country in an attempt to capture the beams' location; a successful capture would then be reported to nearby broadcasters.[18]

The low-power "dot signal" was initially transmitted essentially at random, so German navigators would hear two dots. This meant there were many equi-signal areas, and no easy way to distinguish them except by comparing them with a known location. The British transmitters were later modified to send their dots at the same time as the German transmitters, making it impossible to tell which signal was which. In this case the navigators would receive the equi-signal over a wide area, and navigation along the bombline became impossible, with the aircraft drifting into the "dash area" and no way to correct for it.

Thus the beam was seemingly "bent" away from the target. Eventually, the beams could be inclined by a controlled amount which enabled the British to fool the Germans into dropping their bombs where they wanted them. A side effect was that as the German crews had been trained to navigate solely by the beams, many crews failed to find either the true equi-signal or Germany again.[19] Some Luftwaffe bombers even landed at RAF bases, believing they were back in the Reich.[20]