Alfred Lee Loomis - Loomis in World War Two

Loomis in World War Two

In the late 1930s Loomis's scientific team turned their attention to radio detection studies, building a crude microwave radar which they deployed in the back of a van. They drove it to a golf course and aimed it at the neighboring highway in order to track automobiles, then took it to the local airport, where they tracked small aircraft.

Loomis had visited the United Kingdom and knew many of the British scientists who were working on radar. Britain, at war with Germany, was being bombed nightly by the German Luftwaffe, while America was trying to stay out of the war. In 1940 the British Tizard Mission visited the United States, desperately seeking help to develop their concepts further and construct the technology they had invented. British scientists had developed the cavity magnetron, which allowed their radar to be made small enough for installation in aircraft.

On hearing that the British magnetron had a thousand times the output of the best American transmitter, Loomis invited its developers to Tuxedo Park. Because he had performed more work in this area than anyone else in the country, Loomis was appointed by Vannevar Bush to the National Defense Research Committee as chairman of the Microwave Committee and vice-chairman of Division D (Detection, Controls, Instruments). Within a month he had selected a building on the MIT campus in which to equip a laboratory, dubbing it the MIT Radiation Laboratory, usually referred to as the Radiation Laboratory and later known simply as the Rad Lab. He pressed for the development of radar in spite of the Army's initial skepticism, and arranged funding for the Rad Lab until federal money was allocated.

The MIT Rad Lab was managed by its director, Lee DuBridge. Meanwhile, Loomis assumed his customary function of eliminating the obstacles to research and providing the encouragement that was needed at a time when success still remained elusive. The resulting 10 cm radar was a key technology that enabled the sinking of U-boats, spotted incoming German bombers for the British, and provided cover for the D-Day landing. Loomis took advantage of all his business acumen and industry contacts to ensure that no time was wasted in its development. DuBridge later commented, "Radar won the war; the atom bomb ended it."

Originally known as "LRN" for Loomis Radio Navigation, LORAN was invented by Loomis. It was the most widely used long-range navigation system until the advent of GPS (which was developed from it and only became available to the public in 2000) and LORAN is being enhanced and retained as a land-based alternative to the satellite-based system. The system was developed at the laboratory and is based on a pulsed hyperbolic system using a master and two slave stations. A world network of stations once existed. The current LORAN system has been phased out in the United States and Canada. The United States Coast Guard (USCG) and Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) ceased transmitting LORAN-C (and joint CHAYKA) signals in 2010.

Loomis also made a significant contribution to the development of ground-controlled approach technology, a precursor of today's instrument-landing systems that used radar to enable ground controllers to "talk down" aircraft pilots and help them to land safely when poor visibility made visual landings difficult or impossible. Even untrained persons forced into the unexpected position of having to pilot an aircraft in an emergency, have been guided to land safely using this technology.