Naval History Forums

However, we must not assume that USN procedures and equipment apply generally to the other Navy's as well. There are some parallels, but also some distinct differences. The USN and the Royal Navy both mounted their firecontrol radar antennas to the existing optical firecontrol directors. This way th...

Hi Brad, By all indications Mk3's range accuracy was very good. There are several accounts alluding to this, and this was one of the first things noticed with the first prototype. My sources indicate a typical range accuracy of +/- 40 yards. Actually this was about the average range accuracy attaine...

Yes, I'm working from primary sources, and using data listed in those sources. A USN manual that gives the bearing width specs (RN literature also gives these specs) also states that Mk3 was good at spotting the fall of shot for range, but determining the bearing of the splashes was problematic. The...

I'm not going to get involved in those other controversial threads, but there seems to be some confusion about the effectiveness of the decimetric fire control radars to determine usefull bearing data. These radars were not always "useless" in this regard. I think I can focus on the USN Mk...

I don't. The Japanese accounts are very vauge concerning numbers shot down. A rough estimate could be deduced, and probably has been, from American records. This would not give us an accurate number of aircraft shot down by individual warships, because the Japanese warships were arrayed in two large...

1st air attack Musashi picks up attackers on radar at 10:00, having been warned of an approaching attack by Kurita on Yamato earlier. 30 minutes later, aircraft are sighted visually. Musashi is hit by one bomb and four bomb near misses. The bomb hit squarely on the Number 1 main battery turret and ...

Japanese scientists were steeped in the world wide interest and early research in the radar concept, that existed among academics during the 1930's. Indeed the Japanese research community had been working with magnetrons, even cavity magntrons, for many years. Where the Japanese dropped the ball; wa...

Much of the standard secondary source information contains very many errors, and misconceptions, and is for the most part incomplete, particularly concerning the GEMA radars.

Do you mean German naval radars or any WWII era naval radars? I have found some primary document based information on most all the operational German naval active radars including Seetakt, Freya and Freya derivatives, Hohentwiel, Berlin, Wurzburg, and Euklid so far, but I'm open to additional inform...

Hi Brad, Some, or most, of the data you have on the GEMA radars is not correct. Particularly the pulse width. I'll PM you. The British Type 274 had a pulse width of 0.1us, but it did not start coming into active service until May 1944. Duke of York still retained it's Type 284-I post war. The Britis...

Hi Brad, I agree with your clarifications for the most part. Radar had the potential to change the whole ball game. Some navies had functional radars and some did not, and some navies were slow to realize what they had. In the USN, Adm Nimitz set up a special school at Pearl Harbor to better train o...

Thomas, check your PM's.

Hi Thomas,

Actually all GEMA Seetakt radars, even those pre-war, could spot fall of shot.

The official USN data for the effective range of fire control radars was based on averaging the best ranges obtained by several ships of a type in the operational fleet, (according to period USN documents.) That seems to be a good way of obtaining a realistic and repeatable specification of somethin...

Those radars may well of had such a feature as well. Such a feature was possible with a B indicator, and some period radars did have such a feature.