Big Mistake? Why Not Destroy Radar during Battle of Britain?!

hello everyone chris from military aviation history here and today i want to talk about the radar and of course the battle of britain it is now the 80th anniversary of that particular engagement and as such i think it is a fitting time to have a discussion about this topic there is of course a health convention out there that without chain home the radar system that britain had it would have been a lot def more difficult to defeat a luftwaffe and this convention in my opinion is largely correct although i will expand a little bit more in this video on this particular subject now last year i actually made a video that was sponsored by the raf on the defensive network that the raf had built during the battle of britain you can watch that video as well if you want to but to sum up quickly here britain had about 20 radar stations dotted around their coast mainly of course to the southern and eastern shorelines to detect incoming threats coming from the european continent here is a map from july 1940 showing these these stations were either chain home or chain home low those are two different radar systems for the purposes of this video the differences really don't interest us now the main network had a range of around about a hundred miles that's 160 kilometers that's give and take with some variance depending on what's going on the map here from the time shows the rough estimates this means that the raf could detect possibly detect german planes over france before they flew over the channel and could track them before they came into visual range once past the coast of course radar was pretty much useless since it was an outward looking system over british soil the observer corps which were mainly volunteers and small posts dotted around the countryside would provide information and solid information on updates on the heading the speed the altitude and of course the strength of the enemy force over the years then the question has been asked why did the germans not target the radar stations after all this seems like the prudent thing to do isn't it and there's been plenty of answers that were already given for example that the germans didn't understand radar or that the germans didn't know about chain home or that the germans were too focused on destroying perhaps the raf on destroying the cities on destroying the infrastructure and so on today i want to explore this topic a bit uh look at why the germans didn't target chain homes specifically except of course when they did and why it's not just that easy of a task as it might appear on paper so i'm going to structure this video into a few chapters here chapter 1 is going to be the germans and radar chapter 2 is going to be the germans and chain home chapter 3 will be effect and compromise and chapter four well this is a little bit of a special one i visit an old chain home site on the coast it is sometimes said to varying degrees that the germans didn't understand radar at the outset of world war ii i think this is a misconception born largely out of the initial conclusions drawn from the battle of britain in a sense that the popular assumption of course would have been and this is quite understandable that radar gave the raf such a big advantage and luftwaffe really should have destroyed it that it didn't is then of course interpreted as an inability to comprehend or understand the significance of the system which granted is probably true in individual cases within the luftwaffe so the question is then did the germans understand radar and the answer to that is a clear yes but first germans had their own radar systems this was technology that was not unknown to them on pure technical and operational terms the german radar systems which were known as for example as freyja and wurzburg were more capable than chain home but the technical differences here have no impact on the battle of britain and the comparisons between the systems in this instance makes no sense so i'm not going to do that germany was aware that britain had radar during the battle they also flew for example dummy attacks or fans to confuse the raf operators that shows you that at least at some level they understood a portion of the obstacle that they were facing the germans also didn't fail to appreciate the early warning aspect of radar because well just remember the battle of britain might be a defensive battle for most brits but arya of bomber command still flies missions into germany at the same time as the battle of britain is taking place in fact it is part of the battle of britain and the germans also track these attacks with radar but now comes the important but it is definitely true that the operational advantages that radar yields were not fully appreciated by the most relevant groups within the luftwaffe at this specific point in time people are quick to point at going but i think the problem starts at a far lower level and it just ends with them the problem was a lack of understanding by key members on a technical level that allowed him to make conclusions for the operational level and this is largely due to the fact that the technical aspects of radar and what this technology meant weren't taught to luftwaffe officers and no linkages were established between the technical and the operational after the war for example general engineer hypno criticized this aspect based on hypno simulations of the higher staffs never considered matters of technology and at most concern themselves with operational fuel and ammunition supply questions inexperience with technology especially with modern radar systems was evidence in offices of the force it is known that special equipment is only known to ncos while the officers have no clue about them given the nature of planning games and simulations this is not exactly surprising but it does shed light on a wider problem and that is that the luftwaffe had not yet built up a sort of a group a dedicated group of competent specialists on matters of radar that were then also integrated into the planning and operational aspects and from whom germany could simply drawn for experience or ideas this only happened in germany at a later stage thus radar wasn't some unknown voodoo but it certainly wasn't a prominent feature in operational discussions with a dedicated staff and system surrounding it consider this in britain too chain home was before its merits were on full display something that some people quite frankly considered a waste of resources the difference is that britain had a dedicated structure and trained operators and a staff that were in place in 1940 that specifically focused on radar and it could draw on a pool of experience from these people that were working within the system and in germany these linkages still had to be developed so the difference between germany and britain in this case is not one country understands radar and the other one doesn't both countries had developed radar on the pure technical scale the difference is one country developed operational procedures and could capitalize on know-how technical expertise while the other well it hadn't it's a notable distinction that centers around the difference between capacity and capability consider chain home as it was would an attack on this system been a realistic use of resources that would have furthered the luftwaffe goals for the battle i believe on the surface the answer most people would give to this is probably a resounding yes but when i started looking into this i began to realize that little of the existing battle of britain literature actually engages with radar which was surprising there are of course descriptions of the doubting system that being the raf's integrated air defense system of the time but the advantages of radar in itself are taken as self-evident although at least one british historian noted there is now reason to question the true effectiveness of radar as the perceived victory of fighter command has determined the direction of those writing about a doubting system it must have been difficult to envisage the latter as the latter as less than a resounding success yet the documents casting doubt on this aspect of the battle of britain are easily accessible in the national archives so i began to wonder whether anyone had ever made a study that gives a really detailed technical and operational breakdown of chain home as well as an in-depth account of the experiences with it throughout the battle of britain because what i found only really partially covered this and unless i'm mistaken hey this might be a surprising gap in the literature it's possible of course that i missed something and now that i've said that someone is of course going to send me just that reference i need it all along anyway let me try to answer a question about how vulnerable chain home was and whether the luftwaffe could have or should have knocked it out by looking into the history of every single major station in the south of england once i did that it led me to the station of ventnor on the isle of wight swingate at dover pevensie ray and dunkirk finding information on attacks is difficult most of it comes from local historical heritage sites and it doesn't really give much information and often with no references to boot so i actually dismissed two of these stations outright for a lack of information clear information and i mentioned this caveat here anyway this leaves ventnor swingit and dunkirk the majority of attacks happened in august 1940 but there are very few in total let's take the dunkirk station first it is situated to the east of london near canterbury and was targeted by fighter bombers on august 9 12 and 31st the majority of the damage seems to have since simply to the cables and the power grid which was repaired rather quickly swingate near dover then was hit on august 12 and near misses cut cables repairs seemed to have been conducted in less than two hours another attack a few days later caught more cables in october and november of 1940 swingaid was again bombed and hit in the switch room this knocked the place out had it not been for standby equipment repairs to the main unit actually took a few months by the way as seen here on google maps the swingate towers still stand to this very day so this is a location that you can actually check out yourself when the possibility arises ventnor on the isle of wight was target of the path's most documented attack on august 12th ju 88's from kapke schweiter in 50 kg 51 dropped around 15 funds of explosives destroying service buildings and knocking out the stations a few days later a second attack made sure that vent noir stayed completely knocked out for a couple of months a second station however was set up close by apparently within a week these attacks provide some insight into the vulnerability of chain home which by its very nature the way the sites are set up seem to be relatively resistant each station was made up of a transmitting mast or multiple transmitting mass actually either of wooden or usually metal construction and a couple of service stations and a power unit when targeting the station the most common damage was to the cables as of course the bomb blasts that go around the whole site would destroy these on the masts and the ground but cables are replaced easily and the mesh-like construction of the towers themselves also means that anything but a perfect hit on a pillar makes them near and vulnerable the service stations were protected well to varying degrees really sometimes a service station was just a collection of huts and sometimes they were somewhat fortified constructions with earthworks or concrete being used the electrical power grid was also vulnerable but quick to repair unless you hit the main units the only realistic hope then to knock out a station for more than a few hours which was the usual case was to hit exactly those switch rooms that operated the radar and destroy the equipment there rather than the masts themselves this is what happened for example at ventnore and it took a full flight of ju-88s with follow-up attacks this of course then begs the question what sort of resources does the luftwaffe have to invest in order to knock our chain home and not just one station but the comprehensive system that existed and is this realistic let's take the vendor attack then as our baseline 20 ju-88s attacked it 15 got through and reportedly each bomber was armed with one funnel of explosives so that's 50 tons in total or 33 000 pounds to knock out a single station a few days later a smaller flight of five to seven ju-87s dropped one to 1.5 tonnes of explosives as well combined damage took a few months to repair but a reserve unit was actually set up close by to compensate for the loss of coverage in that area although it seems that this was not that successful in any case vendor and the other attacks suggest that while the stations could theoretically be taken offline this is actually far more difficult than it looks and is more complicated than just dropping a couple of bombs superficial damage was easy but for a lasting impact you really need to come in with a substantial force and a good amount of ordnance and fly repeat attacks to prevent repairs to have the maximum affect then and also to cause the most disruption you want to have all of these attacks on different stations taking a place with as many stations involved in a short time frame as possible and i wouldn't be surprised if assuming you know numbers manpower and operational conditions are not really a factor in this that just in a clinical semiarico that a dedicated anti-radar operation by the luftwaffe will require around 300 to 500 bombers and dive bombers sent only against the main sovereign chain home stations in a few days of constant hammering to really hit that network hard plus another reserve of 100 aircraft can be fighter bombers as well to continuously attack the sites afterwards to prevent those repairs from taking place and at the same time you also need to fly recon missions around the whole coastline to find new buildings and new stations that get set up and there's never a way to make sure that one station is really offline or not unless you wiped it from the face of the earth so is it possible then yes the luftwaffe could have probably done it is it realistic well that depends but probably not this is a complicated question really because it's very difficult nowadays in a world of blessed hindsight of should have could have to fully appreciate a situation at the time and especially the information that was available to the germans radar gave the raf an advantage you can't you really can't brush early warning under the table and say well that doesn't really matter because it does and i won't do that but we also need to look at it from an operational perspective and also really appreciate the limitations of chain home in itself early warning is one thing but the solid information that the raf actually processed came from the observer core because they tracked the german planes over land and could validate their position their heading their strength their altitude and so on most of the documents suggest that considerable problems with the technical personnel badly affected the operation of rdf chain it seems likely that a high proportion of the german aircraft intercepted between july and october 1940 were detected by the unsophisticated methods of the roc to appreciate the value of chain home let's work out a somewhat clinical scenario here we're going to go with the assumption that we have a battle of britain's spec heinkel he 111 bomber one of the official manuals here says that in an ideal conditions roughly fully loaded and with a bomb load of around 1000 kilograms that's 2000 pounds the best attainable continuous speed is just about 330 kilometers an hour that's ideal conditions so let's say 300 kilometers an hour to make things easy and assume well i don't know headwind formation flight and just some operational variants there let's then say that it mustards outside the range of chain home and that the heinkels will fly towards britain with that speed coming in at the shorter detection point of chain home let's say they get detected over france at a range of roughly 100 kilometers from the coastline that means that within 20 minutes they are in fact over the british coast how does it then look on the british side from the moment an rdf station detected an incoming raid and fighter takeoff if the aircraft were at readiness it would be six and a half minutes otherwise if only at available this would be 16 and a half minutes these figures were based on average times because of the limitation inherent in basis aircraft could not always stand at readiness not every squadron takes off those on the assumed german route might get told to go up while others are simply told to get ready and be on standby the further away the less likely you will be getting a call then again the german route can change mid-flight and they often done that once taken off the fighters still need to climb and of course vector into the intercept based on the n3171 speed trials a spitfire mark 1 climbs to about 5000 meters in just about 6 minutes a hurricane will take longer flight time to go where it is told will vary so about 10 to 25 minutes might pass in addition to that if you add everything up the bombers are now over land and depending on their destination about halfway to the target from the coastline it's about 70 to 100 kilometers to the center of london which is 15 or 20 minutes of flight time if the luftwaffe is bombing airfields to the south it's a matter of minutes and anything further inland obviously but well obviously it's going to take more time right considering this i think no one can really dispute that raf that the raf having about 20 to 40 minutes of advanced warning depending on the case wouldn't be helpful especially on days where poor visibility would interfere with the observer core or on attacks in the coastal region once you have targets further and land perhaps you know from london if you draw a line straight west and then upwards northwards then the advantage really starts to decrease as the observer core on the coast would still give you a margin of error in terms of time for response at the same time you need to consider the german perspective on all of this the germans well they have a multitude of valid targets and the immediate concern of the luftwaffe are the raf fighter squadrons place that objective within the operational thinking of the time and well you have a clear goal and actually you have a couple of goals you need to eliminate the production of new aircraft so what do you need to a target that's right you need to target the factories you also need to disrupt the fairing of goods and materials so you need to hit the ports the ships the railway yards the stockpiles you need to deny basing to the raf especially in the sovereign area of england so you need to hit the airfields and make them unusable you also need to establish air superiority so every time you see enemy fighters you need to try to shoot down as many of them as possible those are tangible goals they have a clear and understandable even immeasurable impact and at the same time they are incredibly hard to achieve without a ground operation supporting it of the air operation supporting the ground operation in any case when you look at the luftwaffe situation sure it's easy to say knock out the radar positions that's going to solve everything but if you consider what that entails from the perspective of the time and the fact that it doesn't just end the battle out right there it's not like the raf just going to say oh no we don't have any radar anymore we will surrender the battle will continue and the resources you spend on knocking out the radar and keep it knocked out well those are resources you lack when it comes to other targets and then the situation as you can see it starts to become quite complicated i think the real value actually in a doubting system isn't as much in the radar in itself of course it's important but it's actually the information transmission from radar and specifically also the observer core to and between the relevant sector group and command levels that's really the critical ingredient there and i think that was for a much bigger advantage to the raf than radar in itself because it connects a whole chain of stations within a quite a flexible but also relatively centralized structure that well it allows a more coherent response with the resources on hand than would have been otherwise possible radar plays its part and will play an ever increasing role throughout the war we have no way in disputing that but considering the resources required to knock our chain home and considering the limitations this would have placed on other operations that the luftwaffe really also is required to fly these attacks suddenly no longer seem as appealing as hindsign makes us initially believe alright come with me on a little tour of an old raf chain home radar site before i do that however in the description i also put a link to the 80th anniversary of the battle of britain podcast from the raf benevolent fund which is a uk-based charity i was invited to be a guest on the program and the episode i'm in just came out so if you are interested have a listen so i visited raf beachy head which is a discontinued raf station at the sovereign coast of england it used to be a chain home low station established in june 1940 as chl-07a and during the cold war this spot also has some interesting aria of history attached to it there is little to remember the spot now a lot of commemorative plaques about everything except the radar station unless i missed it here's a plaque commemorating five frenchmen that came over in a kayak during world war ii there is also an raf bomber command memorial here this is one of the last places many crewmen would have seen as they flew towards germany apparently it got lifted here with a chinook there is a pop here now because of course there is and the station itself was set somewhere along these cliffs overlooking that channel this is really a great lookout by the way to the east here past the cliff you see there arcing northwards is dover straight east is bologna zomer in france to the south dieppe actually this station did some of the coverage for the deep raid as well and of course le havre and kong in normandy to the west is brighton well hov actually and eventually portsmouth and the isle of wight it's really a nice place i can recommend and you might even see a spitfire flying by i saw two the whole day which was well which was quite nice getting to raf beachy head you can either take a car or a bus or you walk from eastbourne or the longer route from seafort that's what i did most people seem to recommend seven hours it took for me about five hours although it can definitely be done faster and it takes you along a very scenic site seven sisters here and just in front of it you see the beach of moore haven a couple of old bunkers still littered the landscape this probably have been an assumed landing spot and thus somewhat fortified you need to find a local historian for more details past seven sisters you got the berlin gap a little bit more touristy i walked on pretty briskly from there to belt out lighthouse they move this one about 25 meters in land because of cliff erosion every now and then geology dictates that britain gets a bit further away from the mainland of europe and eventually you reach beachy head so i hope that you enjoyed this episode big thank you to my patrons and channel supporters of course and if you enjoyed this content and it is possible for you please consider supporting the channel also word of mouth is incredibly important so if you like the video please share it and also subscribe to the channel and enable those notifications to be alerted when the next video goes out and as always have a great day and see you in the sky

Channel: Military Aviation History

Views: 197,415

Rating: 4.9328685 out of 5

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Id: rOziGmBhCk8

Length: 27min 56sec (1676 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 04 2020

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[u/OpanaPointer]

Skeletal targets were hard to kill.