World War Two
On the outbreak of World War II Bowen's unit was moved to St Athan. One of the first things that Bowen did there was to try to detect a submarine by radar. By then the cavity magnetron had been improved by John Randall and Dr. Harry Boot, making airborne radar a powerful tool. By December 1940 operational aircraft were detecting submarines at up to 15 miles range. This technology had a major effect on winning the Battle of the Atlantic and eventually enabled forces to be built up by sea for the invasion of Europe.
In April 1941, RAF Coastal Command was operating anti-submarine patrols with about 110 aircraft fitted with radar. This increased the detection of submarines both day and night. However very few of the attacks were lethal until the introduction in mid-1942 of a powerful searchlight, the Leigh light, that illuminated the submarine. As a result the U-boats had to recharge their batteries in daylight so that they could at least see the aircraft coming. The radar and the Leigh light together cut Allied shipping losses dramatically.
Developments also continued in air interception, and a radar with a narrow rotating beam and plan-position-indicator was developed and used by the RAF to direct fighters in October 1940. Early versions of airborne radar were fitted to Blenheims, but had limited minimum and maximum range. However in the hands of a skilled crew later versions in 1941 were remarkably effective, and in the heavy night raids of 1941 radar-equipped fighters were the main weapon of air defence. In May 1941 over 100 enemy aircraft were shot down at night using radar, compared with 30 by anti-aircraft guns.
Centimetric contour mapping radars like H2S greatly improved the accuracy of Allied bombers in the strategic bombing campaign. Centimetric gun-laying radars were much more accurate than the older technology. They made the big-gunned Allied battleships more deadly, and with the newly developed proximity fuse made anti-aircraft guns more dangerous to attacking aircraft. The anti-aircraft batteries, placed along on the German V-1 flying-bomb flight-paths to London, are credited with destroying many of the flying bombs before they reached their target.
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“Man is made of the same atoms the world is, he shares the same impressions, predispositions, and destiny. When his mind is illuminated, when his heart is kind, he throws himself joyfully into the sublime order, and does, with knowledge, what the stones do by structure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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