D-Day from the Air

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2021

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s 77 years since D-Day but it might never have happened at all without one very specific piece of new technology; the resonant cavity magnetron. Atomic bombs or the Colossus supercomputer may come to mind when thinking about innovations which changed the course of WW2, but without this technological breakthrough, history would have been very different. Historian Norm Fine talks to James about the development which enabled microwave radar, and why he thinks it was the single most influential new invention which eventually won the war.

You can read more in Norman Fine’s book, Blind Bombing: How Microwave Radar Brought the Allies to D-Day and Victory in World, which is out now.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone welcome back to the history hit warfare podcast I'm your host James Rogers and in this episode we are looking at the Normandy landings D-Day Operation Overlord it took place 77 years ago this week and saw 150,000 Allied troops land across five beaches
0:17.1	on France's Normandy coast. But it turns out that D-Day might not have happened at all
0:22.4	if it wasn't for the invention of one very specific new technology,
0:27.0	the resonant cavity magnetron, which enabled the use of microwave radar.
0:33.6	When you think of a technology that won us the war,
0:35.2	you'll think of atomic bombs or perhaps the Colossus
0:37.6	supercomputer over at Bletchley,
0:40.2	but the fantastic historian Norm Fine takes us through the months before D-Day and how this new form of radar
0:47.2	Annihilated the U-boat threat took out the war-making capacity and the air power capacity of Germany and really did allow D-Day to take place.
0:57.3	So here he is, Norm Fine, on D-Day, the untold route to victory. Hi Norm welcome to the history hit Warfare
1:18.2	podcast how you doing today well James thank you, where are you in the world?
1:24.2	I'm in Shenandoah Valley of Virginia,
1:27.0	which is a beautiful, beautiful spot to be.
1:29.5	We love it here and don't ever want to leave.
1:31.2	I actually was born in Boston, grew up in Boston, went to school in New
1:36.6	Hampshire at Dartmouth and loved all that, but where we want to be now.
1:42.3	You're an East Coast guy through and through.
1:44.8	Yes, yes I am.
1:46.6	Am I right in thinking that you used to work for Nessa as well?
1:50.8	Our little company that we started, we did work for NASA, yes, on that first moon shot.
1:56.8	Oh, wow. So it was your company that engineered some of the technologies that allowed us to get
2:02.3	those pictures back from the moon.
	...

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