Radar | Welcome to Tuxedo Park | S33-E1

American Innovations

Wondery

Steven Johnson, History, Kids & Family, Education For Kids, Science

4.6 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 July 2020

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What technology won WWII? Most people would say the atomic bomb, but the real answer is radar.

As a small island country, vulnerable to aerial attacks, England took the lead in developing radar in the 1930s. But the early radar systems were too massive to fit into planes, where they would be of most use in the fight against the Germans. At the heart of the problem was a technological catch-22. Smaller radar systems were, by definition, less powerful.

Or so everyone thought, until a mismatched pair of brothers in Northern California decided to take a crack at creating a new kind of radar...

This is episode one of our three-part series on radar, “Welcome to Tuxedo Park.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to an episode of a Wondery Plus exclusive series.
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0:15.0	It's September 1940. The Battle of Britain is raging. Royal Air Force pilot Johnson is flying through the air over England looking for a German bomber.
0:35.4	Germany has been relentlessly bombing England for months, showing the world its impressive aerial power.
0:41.8	Johnson is exhausted.
0:44.0	Come on, come on. Where are you, you Nazi chomp?
0:48.0	Moments ago, England's air detection system, known as Chain Home, registered incoming German planes using radio waves.
0:57.0	But the system is imprecise.
0:59.5	How many and exactly where these planes are is up to Johnson and his colleagues to
1:04.0	determine by hunting around in the sky. It's a huge improvement over the method used
1:09.1	during the last war which relied on human observers stationed at lookouts.
1:14.0	Chain Home has given England a fighting chance against the German assault,
1:18.0	but there are limitations.
1:20.0	Johnson swivels his head back and forth, but he can barely see anything in the pea soup of the clouds.
1:26.0	He picks up his radio and calls ground control.
1:29.0	There are no planes in sight. Over.
1:32.0	You're in the right spot continue to visually scan I've got to be there somewhere
1:36.8	Roger I have limited visibility due to the cloud cover
1:40.5	We're rooting for you over
1:43.0	Johnson circles back and keeps looking for those German planes.
	...

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