SAVED BRITAIN

Evening Star, Issue 25563, 15 August 1945, Page 4

SAVED BRITAIN

TRIBUTE TO SCIENTISTS GREAT POTENTIALITIES FOR PEACE" (Rec. .11,15 a.m.) LONDON, May 14. Radar possessed far more immediate potentialities for service to the human race even than the splitting of the atom, declared Sir Stafford Cripps, at a Press conference attended by famous scientists, radar experts, and high service officers. He added that the'.whole civilised world owed a great debt to radar scientists. If. they had not worked on the invention long before the outbreak of hostilities it is doubtful if Britain could have held out against the German onslaught during the critical years when she stood alone. Air-Marshal Tedder echoed Sir Staf-* ford Cripps’s tribute, and said that he had never known anything so dramatic and fascinating as when - during the siege of Malta, he was. at the operations room, deep down in the bowels of the island, and by .radar was able to 6ee German aircraft take off from their aerodromes, watch their course, and see British fighters smash them. “It was radar which enabled us to strangle Rommel’s sea-borne supplies and brought about the glorious episode when we sank vital fuel ships just as. they were about to enter Tobruk harbour,” he said. General Pile told how, early in the war, the odds were 50 to 1 against the anti-aircraft gunners hitting an enemy plane in daylight, and 100 to 1 against at night. With the development of radar it was 10 to 1 that the gunners would secure a hit either day or night. Sir Robert Watt revealed that very soon after the enemy launched the first V2 attacks, radar experts were able to track the rocket from the moment it was fired until it reached its destination, and thus were able to give valuable seconds of warning.