
How Germany used radio waves to guide night bombing raids in WWII - TheSpine
https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/england-was-almost-destroyed-by-radio-waves-df70830e8593
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jfengel
The title is terrible, but the story is interesting. Germany was using ground-
based radio waves to guide aircraft, possibly including unmanned ones. It was
clever, but easily jammed, especially since England had a BBC tower readily
converted to a jamming system.

One wonders if they would have discovered frequency-hopping spread-spectrum,
famously co-created by actress Hedy Lamarr, but her patent in 1941 was after
the Germans abandoned their project. I suspect that the distances were too
great for it to work well (they were trying to guide planes to specific target
from transmitters in Germany and France, hundreds of miles away).

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dang
Ok, we've taken a crack at a more accurate and neutral title. If anyone has a
better one, we can change it again. Thanks!

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jfengel
Much less clickbaity, thank you. It's a really good article.

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dang
> It's a really good article.

That is pretty much the thing we most hope to hear from users.

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Theodores
Coventry. That was not a normal raid. It is also a raid that is mired with
myth. According to the legend Churchill knew all about it but 'sacrificed'
Coventry as that would reveal that Enigma had been cracked.

This myth has persisted for many years and those that perpetuate it never
mention that there were other sources of intelligence such as the guided radio
waves, which were only turned on when the planes were on their way. There
wasn't much point doing anything other than praying when the radio beams came
on, it was too late to evacuate the city by then.

It is also quite hard today to appreciate what a useful place Coventry once
was. It is not a particularly remarkable city, although, that said, the people
there are remarkably friendly, welcoming and helpful. It also lacks urban
sprawl, so although a 'big city' it does not feel that way when you enter it.
Compare with nearby Birmingham where there is no green space between
Birmingham proper and built up 'West Midlands'.

The myth about Churchill letting the Germans just bomb Coventry also serves to
under-appreciate how important manufacturing was there. Coventry really was
where it all got made, the numerous car companies that were once there all
swapped over to making weapons of some sort and with no car companies there
today it is hard to imagine so much came out of Coventry.

Other places the Luftwaffe helped with the town planning didn't quite have
Coventry's industrial clout. Southampton, Plymouth, Bristol, Liverpool and
Hull were historically ports rather than places where stuff got made although
there were plenty of factories in all these cities when Britain was the
'workshop of the world'. Quite a lot was made in London too, although this is
quite hard to believe given today's complete absence of smokestacks in the
capital. All considered, the idea that Churchill just let Coventry go so as to
not reveal Enigma is laughable.

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joezydeco
There's lots more in _The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence
1939-1945_ by R.V. Jones.

[https://www.amazon.com/Wizard-War-Scientific-
Intelligence-19...](https://www.amazon.com/Wizard-War-Scientific-
Intelligence-1939-1945/dp/0698108965)

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ggm
Cannot recommend this book too highly. Also worth reading is anything about
PMS Blackett and the birth of Operations Research, Barnes Wallis (the JP
Morpugo biog is good), and Solly Zuckerman ("from apes to warlords") on the
bombing accuracy issues, statistics and the 'transport plan'

its not on kindle, but Robert Buderi's book on Radar is also worth reading.
from the roots up to chips and microwave physics, amazing stuff

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theoh
Thanks for this comment. I recently discovered that the inventor of PCM, Alec
Reeves, was also involved in the development Oboe system for guidance of
bombers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alec_Reeves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alec_Reeves)
(the offsite reference pages are particularly good)

I get the sense that he was much less of a mover and shaker than either
Blackett or Zuckerman. By the same token, I wonder if they have been idolized
a bit (even though I had never heard of them, and their names are clearly not
heard very often these days.)

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scottlocklin
There's an amazeballs BBC documentary on this "Secret war; the battle of the
beams"

[https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x123i1g](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x123i1g)

also
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams)

The entire BBC series is pretty good.

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mhh__
It's been posted in this thread, but I'll say anyway: The British "The Secret
War" documentary is absolutely fantastic and well worth watching either for
the engineering or the human intelligence working around the engineers

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lootsauce
Steve Blank has covered this issue well in his Secret History of Silicon
Valley

[https://steveblank.com/tag/world-war-ii/](https://steveblank.com/tag/world-
war-ii/)

