[Milsurplus] Books on Radar

[r390a@enteract.com]

Quoting aGEnuine ham <gl4d21@juno.com>:
 
> I'm reading "The Invention That Changed the World" by Budiansky about the
> concept and development of RADAR.  Not too deep technically, but it is
> very informative about the difficulties getting the upper military brass
> to accept new ideas, concepts, hardware, anything, back in the 30s. 
> Explains a lot about some of the 'why was development so slow?' questions
> which appear here from time to time.   Old Admiral King was something
> else.  He would probably have been happy with 3 masted schooners.   Newer
> hardware need not apply.
> 
> 73,
> George
> W5VPQ

I just finished "A Radar History of World War II" by Louis Brown 1999 (ISBN 0 
7503 0659 9.)  Covers American, British, German, Japanese, Soviet, Italian,
Australian and South African radars (whew!)  He includes evaluations of radar's 
effectiveness in the various campaigns of the war.  By and large, commanders 
who understood the technology and who had been properly trained in it's 
application were the ones to make the best use of information from radar.  
Sadly, many chose to remain ignorant of what radar could do.

Another fun book is 'Tuxedo Park' the story of Alfred Loomis who played an 
important role in WW II military technology development.  Largely forgotten 
today, he'd made a killing in the 1920's stock market and used his profits to 
build a first-class physics lab near his home in Tuxedo Park, Long Island.  
During the 1930's he gave fellowships to top scientists from all over the world 
to come work at the lab.  He was close friends with Ernest Lawrence and during 
the depths of the depression, Loomis raised the funds ($1M) from foundations 
and private interests to get the big cyclotron built at Berkeley.  He also was 
instrumental in creating the Radiation Lab at MIT where over a hundred radars 
were developed during the war.  Later, Oppenheimer raided the Rad Lab for staff 
for the Manhatten Project, who by now were accustomed to working together on 
military projects.  The reader is certainly left with the impression that WW II 
might have lasted much longer or even turned out differently had not someone 
like Loomis come along.

Here's a link for the Loomis book:

http://www.booknotes.org/Program/?ProgramID=1679

/dave
N9ZC


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