Chapter.!!

The Fathers of Radar

Radar, like many innovations, had a multi-faceted parenthood. It was not the product of a single brain, nor did its appearance on the technical scene reflect the brilliant inspiration of one man or a single group of men. It was not even the triumph of a single country, because it was developed simultaneously, albeit secretly, in several countries. Nevertheless, in each of these countries, there were one or more dedicated and persevering innovators whose contributions to the success of radar overshadowed the efforts of all others. These men, these too often unsung heroes of World War II, were the fathers of radar. Although both Germany and Japan had their scientists and their radar projects, the most brilliant successes were achieved in the United Kingdom and the United States. It is the story of the English and American fathers of radar which will be unfolded here.

Sir Robert Watson-Watt

Sir Robert Watson-Watt, a distant relative of another famous innovator, James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, was a Scotsman, born in the ancient cathedral city of Brechin, in the County of Angus. He was educated at University College, Dundee, a part of the University of St. Andrews. Watson-Watt graduated with special distinction in electrical engineering and, after a brief stint as assistant to the professor of natural history, he accepted a wartime invitation in 1915 to join the Meteorological Office in London. His first job was to work on the possibility of giving thunderstorm warnings to the aviators of the infant Royal Flying Corps which soon became the Royal Air Force. This thunderstorm project became inextricably interwoven with the pattern of Watson-Watt's life, and remained so for the next two decades. His task was to aid in the unraveling of the story of radio atmospherics or static. His career as a meteorologist was almost tenninated prematurely when the war ended before the full realization was achieved that scientific meteorology was an essential part of military aviation. Fortunately for Watson-Watt. for England, and for the free world, the new Radio Research Board

formed a committee on Atmospherics and made Watson-Watt a member: I

Watson-Watt. if a man of his many talents and complex personality can be categorized at all, was an "applied scientist." He describes himself with rather remarkable clarity in his aut�biography. The Pulse of Radar, as having

... struggled to hold a middle path between fundamental research of a university kind, which I prefer to admire and respect from without rather than from within, and engineering development or ad hoc instrument design. which 1 was glad to be instructed to leave to others... I had chosen a middle path between fundamental research and technological practice; the middle way was the utilization of the prinCiples methods, techniques. and products of fundamental research in a series of scientific investigations, basic to one or another of a wide variety of technological 'industries.,2

With no trace of shame, but with a quite substantial measure of sinful pride, Watson-Watt declares the overall pattern of his Cult of the impeifect-give them the third best to go on with, the second best comes too late. the best never comes.3 To this code, he added yet another maxim: The summit of human wisdom is to know the exact shade of grey to wear on a particular occasion.4 Throughout his development of radar can be seen evidence that Watson-Walt's middle-of-the-road view of himself is an accurate one. He was ever willing to make a needed compromise between the desirable and the possible. between the theoretical and the practical.

Dr. A. Hoyt Taylor

On the American side of the Atlantic, there were other "Fathers of Radar." Among these must certainly be included the brilliant Dr. A. Hoyt Taylor, a product of America's mid-west, who spent over thirty years developing radio and radar equipment

• Notes are at the end of this chapter on page 11.

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of all types for the United States Navy. Hoyt Taylor, like Watson-Watt, started his professional career in the cloistered environment of a university, but his association with the academic life lasted much longer. Upon graduation from Northwestern in 1900, with a degree in physics, he taught at Michigan State College for three years and at the University of Wisconsin for another five years. In 1908, he again returned to the student's side of university life and journeyed to Germany; here he received his Ph.D. at Gottingen the following year. The next eight years were spent teaching at the University of North Dakota.

While at North Dakota, Dr. Taylor developed a great interest in the newly developing science of radio and became one of the nation's first and best known amateur radio operators, or "hams" as they are usually known, through his work with station 9YN. When World War I burst upon the international scene, the U.S. Navy granted him a Lieutenant's commission and made him District Communications Superintendent at the Great Lakes Station. Probably unrecognized by both Taylor and the Navy at the time, this was a fateful decision for the future of naval radio research.

W hile at the Great Lakes Station, and entirely on his own initiative, Hoyt Taylor set up a small radio research group to deal principally with low frequency problems. T he core of this group was to remain together for over a quarter-century and its contributions over the years were among the brightest on the radio horizon.

Before going on with Dr. Taylor's story, a brief look at the other members of Taylor's team is in order. Louis Gebhard had been an employee of the Marconi Wireless Company for the previous four years. Leo Young was in the tradition of the resourceful, inventive, gadget-minded small-town

boy with no education beyond high school, but with a great and consuming passion for radio. After five years as a telegraph operator for the Pennsylvania Railroad, he found himself working for Dr. Taylor at Great Lakes. A third team member, Robert M. Page, was not part of the original Great Lakes group, but he should be identified at this point because Taylor credits him with having contributed more significant inventions to radar than any other man. Page joined up with Taylor in June 1927 immediately after his graduation from Hamline University. He has been with the Naval Research Laboratory ever since.

T he war years for Taylor were years of travel. T he Navy moved him from Great Lakes to Delmar, New Jersey; Hampton Roads; and finally to Washington D.C. Late in the fall of 1918, Taylor established his group in three wooden barracks at the Naval Air Station at Anacostia, where they remained until the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) was established in 1923.5 When NRL came into being Taylor was named Superintendent of the Radio Division. Three

previously separate activities, the Radio Test Shop, the Naval Research Laboratory, and the Aircraft Radio Laboratory were merged under his direction.

During the next quarter century Taylor became associated with a wide variety of scientific explorations, but the one unique experience that he shared with the other early developers of radar was his work, in cooperation with Breit and Tuve, on ionospheric research. T heir combined efforts to measure the height of the ionosphere marked one of the earliest uses of the radio-pulse technique, which became one of the most important radar techniques as well.6

Although Taylor shared with Watson-Watt an interest in the ionosphere, a university background, a wartime call to government service, and a conservative family heritage, they also had some important differences. Watson-Watt attacked a problem with greater singleness of purpose. He directed all his energies toward one project at a time. He was impatient to achieve success as early as possible. His early disenchantment with university life was reflected in his constant willingness to sacrifice the desirable for the attainable. In Britain's five year race with destiny the country was indeed fortunate to have had Watson-Watt's brilliance, impatience, and somewhat arrogant self-confidence. Taylor, on the other hand, typified his seventeen years of university life. He had a burning intellectual curiosity about many things. His broader responsibilities, both administrative and technical, precluded his becoming quite the zealot that Watson-Watt became. Although his experiments with radar antedated Watson-Watt's by more than a decade he was not faced with the same degree of urgency. The survival of the nation was not hanging on his success or failure. Consequently, he was more deliberate in his approach to problems, but just as

determined nonetheless. One could predict that if the same challenge had been given him in 1934, as was given Watson-Watt, he too would have succeeded.

Colonel William R. Blair

T he United States Army Signal Corps also had its "Father of Radar." Perhaps, more appropriately, the term should be plural, because there are many supporters of both Colonel William R. Blair and Lieutenant Colonel (later Major General) Roger B. Colton for the title. The services of both were interwoven throughout the early pattern of the Signal Corps' radar development. Colton gave the project a good kick in the seat of the pants when it was needed while Blair had been the early pioneer. Blair was the first person in the Army to recommend the use of radar as a defensive weapon. He possessed both the courage and the determination to establish a radar project at the laboratory without the approval of his superiors. He also had the technical genius

IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE VOLUME 21, NUMBER 8, PART II, AUGUST 2006

to visualize the best theoretical combination of components and techniques to accomplish the job. Unfortunately, he attempted to develop radar in the microwave frequency band before a satisfactory high-power microwave oscillator had been invented .

Nevertheless, his was the scientific approach that eventually made radar the scientific marvel of World War II, despite the fact that his idea was delayed by running headlong into an impenetrable state of the art roadblock at first. After several years of trying to overpower that roadblock-years of frustration and disappointment-the Signal Corps eventually had to take a detour and use longer waves. It was Colton who pointed the way to the detour and turned the path of research into a theoretically less desirable but more attainable channel. Blair's inventive genius was officially recognized August 20, 1957, the day on which he was granted the basic United States Patent for radar, after a Patent Office examination of the case which lasted more than twelve years. 7

Blair was thoroughly trained in radiation physics, and he had taken his Ph.D. in the study of 20 centimeter waves at the University of Chicago in 1906. At Chicago he studied under Michelson and Milliken. T here were interesting parallels between Blair, Watson-Watt, and Hoyt Taylor. Blair, like Taylor, entered government service in 1917. He was given a commission in the United States Army Signal Corps at the request of his fonner professor, Dr. Robert Milliken, who had been placed in charge of the Signal Corps Meteorological Service, and had been sent to France to take charge of the Meteorological Service for the AEF. Blair, like Watson-Watt, prior to embarking upon a military career, had been a meteorologist and had worked for the United States Weather Bureau. After World War I, he worked on the applications of radio to meteorology and, in the 1920s, importantly assisted in the development of the radio sonde.8

Following a year at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and a year of duty in the Office of the Chief Signal Officer, Blair assumed command of the Signal Corps Laboratories in 1930. It was while he was in charge of the Laboratories that he initiated the Signal Corps' fIrst radar project and guided the Signal Corps' efforts in this fIeld through the early 1930s.

Blair had no great singleness of purpose toward the development of radar. He had his own theoretical concept of how it should work and he assigned someone to develop his ideas. His great interest, however, was to develop an effective research organization within the Signal Corps. He believed that the Signal Corps should stop its practice of giving out contracts for the design of separate pieces"'-an antenna, a telephone, or a power generator, for example-and should think in tenns of whole assemblies, such as a field telephone system or a

RADAR: A CASE HISTORY OF AN INOVATION-CHAPTER II

complete radio set. It was his conviction that the Signal Corps Laboratory could best pursue such a policy of system design and standardization, keeping in close touch with the universities and commercial laboratories, and purchasing commercial samples for study, but avoiding contracting for the central research work.9

Blair's consuming interest in research as an end in itself may account for his somewhat dead-end pursuit of his microwave project, in spite of the existence of an insurmountable state of the art obstacle-the lack of an adequate high-power microwave oscillator. From· a theoretical standpoint he knew that he was right, but from a practical standpoint he may have actually delayed the Army's development of radar. He may not have been as determined to develop a workable radar as he was to develop the best possible radar.

The contrast between his approach and Watson-Watt' s "Cult of the Imperfect" could not be more striking. As one of his contemporaries described him, he was a sweet but slow moving character whose real achievement is that he did inject real research into the Signal Corps Laboratories. 10 In the long run, however, his theoretical analysis of how best to develop radar proved to be correct and his was a major contribution. In 1937, his health began to fail and in October of the following year he retired from the military service.

lieutenant Colonel Roger B. Colton

Blair was succeeded as Commander of the Signal Corps Laboratories by Lieutenant Colonel Roger B. Colton who had been his executive officer for two years. Colton is the second and perhaps most widely recognized candidate for the title of "Father of Radar" in the United States Army. He was a graduate of Yale and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Like Blair, he had previously had tours of duty with the Signal Corps Laboratories and in the Office of the Chief Signal Officer. The similarity with Blair stops at this point, however, because Colton had the drive, the singleness of purpose, the willingness to substitute the attainable for the theoretical, and the impatience to

. succeed, of a Watson-Watt. Colton had a way of reducing complicated theories

to their least common denominator. A good example of this are his rules of thumb published in a 1935 Signal Corps Bulletin:

(1) Frequencies below 100 kc ... require 'extensive and expensive antenna systems

(2) Frequencies between ]00 and ],500 kc are generally useful ...

(3) Frequencies between 1,500 and 2,500 kc are especially good for vehicles, small boats, and airplanes, and for short and medium distances,

9

but in airplanes it is generally preferable to use frequencies from 5,000 to 6,000 kc; ...

(4) ...

(5) Frequencies above 30,000 kc are for very short distances

(6) Frequencies above 300 mc (300,000 kc) behave very much like light and are hard as yet to produce efficiently. 11

Instead of pursuing the theoretically best microwave radar, he pushed the development of sets which could be built within the state of the art, at lower frequencies. At the same time, however, he identified the bottleneck in microwave development-tube technology-and decided to do something about it .. Following his motto, "Learn to walk before you run," he developed a plan for research and development into higher frequencies by the development of vacuum tubes and circuits in progressive �teps-up 100 mc, 200 mc, 400 mc, 600 me, and 1,200 mc. He foresaw that antiaircraft guns would go to much greater bores than three inches, at a time when the prophecy that the Army would have 90 millimeter guns seemed fantastic. Furthermore he recognized that the precision that would be required to provide them with effective target information made extremely important a breakthrough in the microwave radar field. 12

One of Colton's greatest assets was his willingness to stand up for his ideas against all opposition,

regardless of the rank or position of his opponent. He was also not above a little intrigue and deception, if he felt that such was needed to win his point or get money for his projects. The descriptions of Colton by his contemporaries almost unanimously express admiration for his leadership ability and they emphasize his overwhelming determination to succeed. Some of the typical comments are as follows:

-Colton's inspired leadership seemed to convert normal engineers and physicists temporarily into composites of Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein. 13

-He lacked tact but was far ahead of his time. 14

-Colton always realized that the Signal Corps' pre-war 5-and-10 cent store thinking was wrong and knew that he must get the Signal Corps away from its conservative attitude. Colton had the right idea about what it takes for modern research and development and dared to stand up with his ideas. IS

-Great credit is due Colonel Colton for he pushed the development of radar virtually alone .... /t was his fixed purpose to develop a radar instrument that would work, then standardize upon it. 16

An impression of mild intrigue which Colton would reson to when necessary comes from his own

words:

I had to use tricks, too. I was once told by the Chief Signal Officer not to send any Signal Corps engineers to board meetings of the several arms-then was told six weeks later to try everything to meet the desires of the arms. In this case, 1 followed the second order and disregarded the first. 1 would do nothing without an order but, if one officer of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer gave me an order I thought wrong, 1 would get another officer to give me an instruction that would enable me to get around the initial faulty instruction. 17

To Blair belongs the credit for being the first United States Army officer to recognize the importance of radar; for developing a theory which, although ahead of its time, was sound; and for initiating the first radar project. To Colton belongs the credit for lifting the project from the doldrums; for giving it a new breath of life; and providing the tremendous surge of energy, enthusiasm, initiative, and determination which enabled the SCR 270 radar set to be on duty, guarding the shores of Oahu on the fateful morning of December 7, 1941. That its warning went unheeded and a great national tragedy occurred only emphasizes all the more the importance of the technical triumph of Blair, Coiton, and the many important contributors with whom they worked.

A Contrast

Although the research of the British Air Ministry's Bawdsey Laboratory, the Naval Research Laboratory, and the Signal Corps Laboratories was parallel, there were some noteworthy differences among them. The Naval Research Laboratory was set up as a research laboratory, specified and supported by Congress in the name of research. It could range farther within the imaginations of its scientists than was possible in the Signal Corps . Experimentation at Fort Monmouth had to be directed toward an immediate application, toward developing a specific and practical piece of equipment. For large research, although much of the Army's early work on radar constituted an exception, the continuing policy was always to tum to commercial firms to get it accomplished by contract.IS Watson-Watt's Bawdsey Manor operation, on the other hand, was more of a special project than a laboratory, although a laboratory environment and attitude persisted. It's one and only purpose was to develop radar. Nothing interfered with this mission. By contrast, both NRL and the Signal Corps Laboratories were conducting research on projects in the first half of the 1930-40 decade that were considered more important than radar and were given higher priority. Watson-Watt started his radar development with an appropriation of £10,000,

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a recognized need, and, after his first successful demonstration of the phenomenon, full support of his government. On the other hand, during the early stages of their radar projects. the Army and Navy researchers in the United States had none of these things. Despite the many differences in method,

NOTES TO CHAPfER II

the personalities of the principal motivators, the conflicting philosophies of the laboratories, and a wide discrepancy among the projects' starting dates, Bawdsey, NRL, and the Signal Corps Laboratories completed successful service test radar models within a few months of each other.

[1] Watson-Watt. The Pulse of RadPr, op.cit., pp. 13�38. [2] Ibid, p. 44. [3] Ibid, p. 46. [4] Ibid, p. 48. [5] Guerlac, op.cit., pp. 96--98. {6] Taylor, Dr. A. Hoyt, The First 25 Years of the Naval Research

Laboratory, (Washington: Navy Department, 1949), pp. 12-13.

[7] Interv iew with Dr. Harold A. Zahl, September 12, 1960. Dr. Zahl is Director of Research of the U.S. Anny Signal Research and Development Laboratory, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.

[8J Thompson, Dr. George Raynor, Presentation to meeting of the Washington History of Science Club, February 27, 1958. Dr. Thompson at the time of the lecture was Chief of the U.S. Anny Signal Corps Historical Division.

[9] Terrett, Dulaney, The SignaJ Corps: The Emergency, (Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1956), pp. 89-90.

[10] Interview with O. M. Brymer, Government Sales Representative of the Western Electric Corporation; IS February 1950, on file in Signal Corps Historical Office.

[ll] Colton, Major Roger B ., "Radio Energy Radiation and Propagation," (Signal Corps Bulletin No. 86, September-October 1935), pp. 18-25.

[12] Interview with Colonel Albert F. Cassevant, 10 February 1950, on file in Signal Corps Historical Office, p. 4.

[13] Vieweger, Arthur L. and White, Albert S., "Development of Radar SCR-270," (Article published separately by the U.S. Army Signal Corps Research and Development Laboratory, 1060), p. 1.

[l4] Interview with Cassevant, op.cit., p. 4. [15] Interview with Brymer, op.cit., p. 6. [16] Woodbury, David 0., Battlefronts of Industry-Westinghouse

in World War II, pp. 92-110. [17J Interview with Major General Roger B. Colton, 14 February,

1950, on file in Signal Corps Historical Office. [18] Terrett, op.cit., pp. 43-44.

RADAR: A CASE HISTORY OF AN INOVATION-CHAPTER n 11