Nelson Evening Mail THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 1941 A TELL-TALE WIRELESS WAVE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 19 June 1941, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 1941 A TELL-TALE WIRELESS WAVE

IT has now been disclosed that Britain’s most significant victory in; the war so far—the defeat of Ger-! many’s day-bombers last September l —was in part due to the use of a J secret weapon, a tell-tale radio de- j vice which warns of the approach cf, an aeroplane. This has been one of j the best-kept secrets of the war. j Known as radio location—a further I welcome addition to the vocabulary of technical terms which wireless has given us—this system has now been extended all over Britain and its full use is being retarded only by lack of trained personnel. The public will be interested to learn that the equipment is already being made in Australia and New Zealand. Radio location is a triumph of applied science. Revealing the secret, Air Marshal Sir Philip Joubert has said that it does not involve a new science but the application of known facts to war. For this reason the British authorities see no harm in making some of the facts of its development public, since the Germans could well know of its application, though there is no positive evidence of this reflected in the British air losses over Germany. A Scot with the same name as that of another famous inventor, Mr R. A. W. Watt, scientific adviser on telecommunications to the Air Ministry, is the man who has developed radio location from meteorological methods. He has been assisted by other scientists who have worked patiently since 1935 on perfecting the device. Its efficacy was proved even before the outbreak of war. The waves of the ether must remain much of a mystery to the layman. Many of us could not even explain just what happens when we switch on the radio, but enough has been said about the new weapon for us to be able to appreciate its farreaching possibilities. Waves are sent out a considerable distance into the ether. Any solid object which gets into the path of these waves sends back a reflection to the operator. In the early experiments with directional wireless during the last war considerable difficulties in operation were experienced in times of fog and at certain periods of the day, particularly sunrise and sunset. Mr Watt's device is an all-weather, twenty-four-hour watcher of the skies. The easing of the strain on airmen and planes which stand guard over Britain is clearly enormous. Need for continuous patrols of fighters is eliminated; yet the magic eye can warn of the approach of an enemy in plenty of time to meet him. This is surely a refinement of the many automatic warning devices which are in use both in peace and war. The Navy and Army also have it but its full extension to these services awaits trained personnel. War always lends the spur of necessity to invention. Technical developments of perhaps a generation of peace were lumped into four years of war in 1914-18. The greatest advances then were made in aviation. Wireless as a handmaid to the fighting services was also considerably developed and these advances were carried over into the peace so that the person of to-day accepts the wonders of radio as commonplace just as we do those of electricity. Now the scientists of the nations, both friend and, foe, are mobilising their inventive genius to provide newer and more deadly weapons of destruction. No more fertile field of research remains to them than the wave-world of the ether. The aids to destruction which it lends to man will not replace human courage and resource. Without the help of those “strong young hands” the new weapon could not of itself have sent the German Luftwaffe crashing down and reeling back last September, but it was a much valued ally. When it has been further developed and employed in the task of destroying evil things radio location can be made the servant of man in peace. It has already been said that its full application would banish shipwrecks and make travel by air very much safer. A new phase of wireless is opening before our eyes, providing a new vocation for those who choose to work in it. Lord Beaverbrook, who has always had a special affection for “the boys in the back room,” has expressed the opinion that there is a good future awaiting those who can get into this new calling “on the ground floor.”