Deployment and Incomprehension
The non portable version, the SCR-271-A, s/n 1 was delivered to the Canal Zone and began operation in October 1940 at Fort Sherman on the Atlantic end of the Panama Canal. It picked up airliners at 117 miles (188 km) in its initial test run. The second set was set up on Fort Grant's Tobaga Island on the Pacific end of the Canal by December 1940, thus giving radar coverage to the vitally important but vulnerable Panama Canal. Westinghouse quickly ramped up production, and produced 100 by the end of 1941.
Operators of sets that were sent to the Panama canal, the Philippines, Hawaii and other strategic locations were all gathered for an air defense school at Mitchel Field, New York in April 1941. The school was the culmination of efforts began in 1940, when the War Department created the Air Defense Command headed by Brig. Gen. James E. Chaney. Chaney was tasked by Hap Arnold to collect all information on the British air defense system and transfer the knowledge as quickly as possible to the US military. Air Marshal Dowding, one of the designers of the Ground-controlled interception (GCI) air defense system used during the Battle of Britain, was at the school and discussed with the American generals the design and urgency of establishing the Hawaiian system, in particular emphasizing the need for thorough radar site coverage along the coasts.
Despite the high level attention and the excellence of the school in training on the use of the SCR-270 and its integration and coordination with fighter intercepts, the army did not follow through on supporting the junior officers who were trained at this session. Army Major Kenneth Bergquist returned to Hawaii after attending the school intending to set up a coordinated system, but when he arrived he found the local Army leadership was uninterested in the system, and he was reassigned to his former fighter unit. Only when incomprehensible equipment began appearing did the army return Bergquist from his fighter unit and was told his job was to assemble the equipment when it arrived. Assigned the defense of Hawaii, General Walter Short had faint grasp of the weapons and tactics that Army technologists (led by Hap Arnold) were aggressively pushing them to adopt. Except in rare cases, there was little interest in assisting or even cooperating with the goal of setting up the air defense system. On his own initiative, Bergquist along with some other motivated junior officers built a makeshift control center without authorization and only by scrounging.
The first SR-270's became functional in July 1941 and by November Bergquist only had a small team established and a set of four SCR-270-B's stationed around Oahu with one unit in reserve. They were placed on the central north shore (Haleiwa), Opana Point (northern tip), in the northwest at the highest point- Mount Kaala, and one in the southeast corner at Koko Head. However there was no real communications system or reporting chain set up. At one point the operators of one of the sets were instructed to phone in reports from a gas station some distance away. By explicit order by General Short, the radar stations were to only be operated for four hours per day and to shut down by 7AM each day.
Although communications were eventually improved, the chain of command was not. Air defense required direct control of assets spread out over disparate units; anti aircraft guns, radars, and interceptor aircraft were not under a unified command. This had been one of the primary problems identified by Robert Watson-Watt prior to the war, when a demonstration of an early radar system had gone comically wrong even though the radar system itself had worked perfectly. Dowding was well aware of the importance of a unified command, but this knowledge did not result in changes within the Army structure.
Read more about this topic: SCR-270 Radar