In 1932, British conservative leader Stanley Baldwin famously declared,

The bomber will always get through.

And indeed, the conventional wisdom of the time was that bombers flew so fast

that by the time you spotted one coming, there would be no time to alert fighter aircraft

to take off and intercept it.

But what if you could see it coming

when it was still a hundred miles away?

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

Music to the history of the 20th century. Episode 327. Radio Detection and Ranging The First World War had been a nightmare for everyone. The woes of military planners and

strategists might not count for much in comparison to the soldiers in the trenches,

but it was a difficult time for them as well.

Those people spent years looking for a way to break the trench warfare stalemate on the Western Front.

By the end of the war, new tactics that incorporated new technologies and new modes of fighting

began to show the way toward breaking the deadlock.

Airplanes were a part of those tactics.

Airplanes could do detailed reconnaissance of enemy positions,

which allowed for precision artillery strikes that helped weaken the enemy's defenses.

Aerial reconnaissance led to aerial defense,

fighter planes meant to shoot down the enemy's reconnaissance flights.

Airplanes got better as the war went along.

They became capable of flying higher, faster, and over longer ranges.

These new capabilities introduced the prospect of dropping bombs from airplanes. By the end of the

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