I believe satelite havent been invented yet during world war 2, how can radar back then detected enemy aircraft, thanks for telling
any extra about radar during world war 2 is also welcome
Developed by the British before WW2 most radar(Radio Detection and Ranging) stations were stationary and pointed in one direction. At least in the beginning of the war. In simple terms the send out a signal and if it hits something the signal is transmitted back to the station. WW2 radar was very simple. All you could really tell was that there was a plane or group of planes. You couldnt really tell what kind or who’s they were.
Another interesting idea that the british developed were magnetic flux gates. They measure disturbances in the earth magnetic field. This was very helpful in detecting german U-boats. They are very sensitive intruments that can pick up the slightest changes in movement. These coupled with sonar (underwater radar) made the U-boats jobs much thougher. Arent the British just dash cunning. :lol:
The Germans experimented with radar as well and stubbled on to modern concept. They discoverd a few of there test plane designs had an extremely low radar signature. This helped in leading to todays stealth technology.
wouldnt that be very inefficient, the sky is so big and you can only scan a little at a time? :roll:
Acutally they were pretty efficent.
Its kinda like throwing a rock into a pond. You will see that the ripples are the stongest near the point of entry but weaken as they get further out. Samething with Radar. Depends on the strengh of the signal that is sent out. The more signal strength the further the range. It wouldnt take long for this to become very wide. Then you would have a huge field of view.
Time wasnt a problem because they had plenty of rocks!!! :lol:
Hope this helps.
Radar actually might of won the war for the Allies. If Britain hadnt of invented radar before the Battle of Britain, then they would’ve most likely lost. And if the British lost, noone would no what the outcome would be.
Later on British scientists invented something that was so small yet it doubled and even tripled the range. Winston Churchill wanted Britain to give that thing to the Americans, because he knew they would be a great help in the war. Other people in the government did not want to give one of Britains most valuable secrets, but Winston Churchill did not care about secrets, he cared about winning.
And so the Americans where astonished of what the British discovered and imeadiatly bagan researching the topic. The interesting thing is that they had radar towers when the Japanese hit Pearl Habor, and they actually say planes coming in, but when they alerted their boss, he thought that they where our planes and didnt even think about it being antoher country. And so after Pearl Habor, the Americans began speeding up the reaserch and it bacame extremely valuable in defeating the Japanese Navy, and Airforce.
=“Gen. Sandworm”
Time wasnt a problem because they had plenty of rocks!!! :lol:
Actually time was a problem for the British in the Battle of Britain. Even thought they had a long range over the channel, the Luftwaffe had very fast planes and they only had a couple of minutes to gather the information and to get the planes up to meet them. So there was no room for error.
Radar actually brought the first women into the military, and most women where operating the radar posts or gathering the information.
do you know what exactly those aircraft are?
my bet is Me262
Or it could be the ME 163 Komet. That thing looks extremely aerodynamic. It had a max speed of something like 596 m.p.h.
Im not exactly sure of the plane(s). The Germans just noticed that it didnt showup as well on the radar screen. They werent sure exactly why. Its not so much that aerodynamics as it is the material the plane is made of and most importantly the radar cross section. The more 90 degree angles on a plane the better it will show up on a radar screen. My understanding is that the Americans studied the German notes and started the study of why this was happening.
Gen Sandworm Wrote
Developed by the British before WW2 most radar(Radio Detection and Ranging) stations were stationary and pointed in one direction. At least in the beginning of the war. In simple terms the send out a signal and if it hits something the signal is transmitted back to the station. WW2 radar was very simple. All you could really tell was that there was a plane or group of planes. You couldnt really tell what kind or who’s they were.
Early British Radar sets were fitted with IFF, (Idenitification Freind or Foe)
that produced an enlarged shape on the screen of the tracking radar station, which identified Allied Aircaft, each Aircraft had an IFF box fitted which modified the return signal, thus producing the distinctive shape.
do you know what exactly those aircraft are?
my bet is Me262[/quote]
The Aircraft that you are talking about is the Gotha 229, here is a side view of one
And a Gotha 229 on flight trials
This Aircraft was also known as the Horten 229, Named after the 2 Brothers that designed it. Walter and Reimar Horten.
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Yup those would be those ones. Thanks for the update and pics Andrew
would that be possible the radar could scan the wrong thing, aka, birds?
That was a damn fine looking plane that gotha 229. The Americans deffinetely took that design and made it into the B-2 Stealth bomber along time later. 
No, because 1. birds where too small. 2. Birds where extremely aerodynamic and therefore it meant, that they had very smooth edges and nothing sharp.
I think that radar works when there is a distraction in the radio frequencies and so it bounces off.
Here is a picture of one of the Radar towers in Britain.
Radar is something that is in use all around us, although it is normally invisible. Air traffic control uses radar to track planes both on the ground and in the air, and also to guide planes in for smooth landings. Police use radar to detect the speed of passing motorists. NASA uses radar to map the Earth and other planets, to track satellites and space debris and to help with things like docking and maneuvering. The military uses it to detect the enemy and to guide weapons.
Meteorologists use radar to track storms, hurricanes and tornadoes. You even see a form of radar at many grocery stores when the doors open automatically! Obviously, radar is an extremely useful technology.
When people use radar, they are usually trying to accomplish one of three things:
* Detect the presence of an object at a distance - Usually the "something" is moving, like an airplane, but radar can also be used to detect stationary objects buried underground. In some cases, radar can identify an object as well; for example, it can identify the type of aircraft it has detected. * Detect the speed of an object - This is the reason why police use radar. * Map something - The space shuttle and orbiting satellites use something called Synthetic Aperture Radar to create detailed topographic maps of the surface of planets and moons.All three of these activities can be accomplished using two things you may be familiar with from everyday life: echo and Doppler shift. These two concepts are easy to understand in the realm of sound because your ears hear echo and Doppler shift every day. Radar makes use of the same techniques using radio waves.
In this article, we’ll uncover radar’s secrets. Let’s look at the sound version first, since you are already familiar with this concept.
Echo and Doppler Shift
When you shout into a well, the sound of your shout travels down the well and is reflected (echoes) off the surface of the water at the bottom of the well. If you measure the time it takes for the echo to return and if you know the speed of sound, you can calculate the depth of the well fairly accurately.
Echo is something you experience all the time. If you shout into a well or a canyon, the echo comes back a moment later. The echo occurs because some of the sound waves in your shout reflect off of a surface (either the water at the bottom of the well or the canyon wall on the far side) and travel back to your ears. The length of time between the moment you shout and the moment that you hear the echo is determined by the distance between you and the surface that creates the echo.Doppler shift is also common. You probably experience it daily (often without realizing it). Doppler shift occurs when sound is generated by, or reflected off of, a moving object. Doppler shift in the extreme creates sonic booms (see below). Here’s how to understand Doppler shift (you may also want to try this experiment in an empty parking lot). Let’s say there is a car coming toward you at 60 miles per hour (mph) and its horn is blaring. You will hear the horn playing one “note” as the car approaches, but when the car passes you the sound of the horn will suddenly shift to a lower note. It’s the same horn making the same sound the whole time. The change you hear is caused by Doppler shift.
Here’s what is happening. The speed of sound through the air in the parking lot is fixed. For simplicity of calculation, let’s say it’s 600 mph (the exact speed is determined by the air’s pressure, temperature and humidity). Imagine that the car is standing still, it is exactly 1 mile away from you and it toots its horn for exactly one minute. The sound waves from the horn will propagate from the car toward you at a rate of 600 mph. What you will hear is a six-second delay (while the sound travels 1 mile at 600 mph) followed by exactly one minute’s worth of sound.
Doppler shift: The person behind the car hears a lower tone than the driver because the car is moving away. The person in front of the car hears a higher tone than the driver because the car is approaching.
Now let’s say that the car is moving toward you at 60 mph. It starts from a mile away and toots it’s horn for exactly one minute. You will still hear the six-second delay. However, the sound will only play for 54 seconds. That’s because the car will be right next to you after one minute, and the sound at the end of the minute gets to you instantaneously. The car (from the driver’s perspective) is still blaring its horn for one minute. Because the car is moving, however, the minute’s worth of sound gets packed into 54 seconds from your perspective. The same number of sound waves are packed into a smaller amount of time. Therefore, their frequency is increased, and the horn’s tone sounds higher to you. As the car passes you and moves away, the process is reversed and the sound expands to fill more time. Therefore, the tone is lower.
Sonic Boom
While we’re here on the topic of sound and motion, we can also understand sonic booms. Say the car was moving toward you at exactly the speed of sound – 700 mph or so. The car is blowing its horn. The sound waves generated by the horn cannot go any faster than the speed of sound, so both the car and the horn are coming at you at 700 mph, so all of the sound coming from the car “stacks up.” You hear nothing, but you can see the car approaching. At exactly the same moment the car arrives, so does all of its sound and it is LOUD! That is a sonic boom.The same phenomenon happens when a boat travels through water faster than waves travel through the water (waves in a lake move at a speed of perhaps 5 mph – all waves travel through their medium at a fixed speed). The waves that the boat generates “stack up” and form the V-shaped bow wave (wake) that you see behind the boat. The bow wave is really a sonic boom of sorts. It is the stacked-up combination of all of the waves the boat has generated. The wake forms a V shape, and the angle of the V is controlled by the speed of the boat.
You can combine echo and doppler shift in the following way. Say you send out a loud sound toward a car moving toward you. Some of the sound waves will bounce off the car (an echo). Because the car is moving toward you, however, the sound waves will be compressed. Therefore, the sound of the echo will have a higher pitch than the original sound you sent. If you measure the pitch of the echo, you can determine how fast the car is going.
Understanding Radar
We have seen that the echo of a sound can be used to determine how far away something is, and we have also seen that we can use the Doppler shift of the echo to determine how fast something is going. It is therefore possible to create a “sound radar,” and that is exactly what sonar is. Submarines and boats use sonar all the time. You could use the same principles with sound in the air, but sound in the air has a couple of problems:* Sound doesn't travel very far -- maybe a mile at the most. * Almost everyone can hear sounds, so a "sound radar" would definitely disturb the neighbors (you can eliminate most of this problem by using ultrasound instead of audible sound). * Because the echo of the sound would be very faint, it is likely that it would be hard to detect.Radar therefore uses radio waves instead of sound. Radio waves travel far, are invisible to humans and are easy to detect even when they are faint.
Photo courtesy NASA (left), Department of Defense (right)
Left: Antennas at Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex (part of NASA’s Deep Space Network) help provide radio communications for NASA’s interplanetary spacecraft.Right: Surface search radar and air search radar are mounted on the foremast of a guided missile destroyer.
Let’s take a typical radar set designed to detect airplanes in flight. The radar set turns on its transmitter and shoots out a short, high-intensity burst of high-frequency radio waves. The burst might last a microsecond. The radar set then turns off its transmitter, turns on its receiver and listens for an echo. The radar set measures the time it takes for the echo to arrive, as well as the Doppler shift of the echo. Radio waves travel at the speed of light, roughly 1,000 feet per microsecond; so if the radar set has a good high-speed clock, it can measure the distance of the airplane very accurately. Using special signal processing equipment, the radar set can also measure the Doppler shift very accurately and determine the speed of the airplane.
The radar antenna sends out a short, high-power pulse of radio waves at a known frequency. When the waves hit an object, they echo off of it and the speed of the object Doppler-shifts the echo. The same antenna is used to receive the much-weaker signals that return.
In ground-based radar, there’s a lot more potential interference than in air-based radar. When a police radar shoots out a pulse, it echoes off of all sorts of objects – fences, bridges, mountains, buildings. The easiest way to remove all of this sort of clutter is to filter it out by recognizing that it is not Doppler-shifted. A police radar looks only for Doppler-shifted signals, and because the radar beam is tightly focused it hits only one car.
Police are now using a laser technique to measure the speed of cars. This technique is called lidar, and it uses light instead of radio waves. See How Radar Detectors Work for information on lidar technology.
For more on radar and its applications, check out the links on the next page.
tnx for the post. Tht will clear up alot of posts.
I believe this question has been completly answered. From now on RTFM 
Yes. Please, nobody post anything more on “how radar works” etc. You may post if its directly to WW2 and Radar.