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el cid again -> RE: If you could have one Axis A/C... (5/24/2006 9:26:09 PM)
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quote:
What would help Japan is (but luckily for humanity the Germany-Japan copperation was almost nonexistent):
#1
Radar technology.
Quite false actually. The best long range proper tracking radar in the world was German. It could acquire and track in altitude as well as range a hypersonic missile - and was originally intended to insure that V-2s were on course (by radio correction after launch) - although in the event the sites for launching so accurately were overrun and only mobile units got to shoot.
The longest range aircraft detection technology of any WWII era power was used by the IJA - and it is the basis for a Chinese project to detect stealth aircraft today (one terminus station was at Shanghai - so the Chinese got to see its antennas). This is not exactly a radar however - it is properly an electromagnetic fence.
Japanese radars often were multi-static - they might have as many as four recievers - which is not only very efficient in terms of getting value from a radiated watt - it yields certain operational advantages.
Note that the Japanese invented the cavity magnetron independently. There is a good deal in Western radar history about how big a deal this is - the French invented it - smuggled it to Britain in 1940 - and Britain shared it with the USA - to help "win the war." Well - it may indeed have been "secret" - but physics is physics - and the Japanese - not knowing about it - made it anyway. Just because you don't know about it does not mean it is correct to assume ignorance on their part.
In general - I work with the principle author who writes about Japanese atomic science and, lately, with the head of a US intel team assigned (after the century turned) to investigate the same subject - I would say Japanese physics was far better than German - and amazingly ahead on theoretical grounds. [That is, Japanese theoretical physicists could work out correct values on the blackboard which American and Europeans could not, and did so, during the war, often on a time competative basis, in the atomic science world. A Japanese physicist was the first to propose a hydrogen bomb - for example - and more than a few things we had to measure the Japanese simply calculated.] I began professional life as a radar technician, and I collect wartime radar technology data:
this assertion is at best grossly misleading. Japan produced radar sets in the thousands - 6000 for just one type - and virtually for every kind of platform (land, ship, submarine, airplane) with virtually every function. It was better at using radar passively than we were - see the book Shinano for an example. Shinano detected her adversary FIRST - using RADAR - but not active radar! She was lost due to a series of critical mistakes made by her captain - the first of which was to misinterpret the meaning of the signal (he thought it was a surface ship, he thought it was attempting a different maneuver than it really was, and his misjudgement caused him to take the wrong course). But the OPPORTUNITY to wholly evade detection belonged to Shinano - because it had first contact - and passively - so the attacker had no clue.
Japan did suffer from big problems with respect to radar:
1) It was not a priority for far too long resulting in many things being too late for operational use;
2) Japan had great difficulty producing powerful transmitter devices, including tubes and magnetrons;
3) It was not properly coordinated - the workers at the same factory working on an Army radar had to keep it secret from workers who did Navy radar for example! Instead of sharing, the Army and Navy went separate paths - until too late. [Eventually the Army GAVE radars to the Navy - and one used on Japanese submarines is actually an ARMY radar!]
4) Japan did not use the planned position indicator - what you think of as a circular display - an important aid to interpreting signals.
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