The history of radars in the USA

thumb|300px|left|Video1 In the United States, both the Navy and Army needed means of remotely locating enemy ships and aircraft. In 1930, both services initiated the development of radio equipment that could meet this need. There was little coordination of these efforts; thus, they will be described separately. United States Navy In the autumn of 1922, Albert H. Taylor and Leo C. Young at the U.S. Naval Aircraft Radio Laboratory were conducting communication experiments when they noticed that a wooden ship in the Potomac River was interfering with their signals; in effect, they had demonstrated the first multistatic radar, a system that uses separated transmitting and receiving antennas and detects targets due to changes in the signal. In 1930, Lawrence A. Hyland working with Taylor and Young, now at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C., used a similar arrangement of radio equipment to detect a passing aircraft. This led to a proposal by Taylor for using this technique for detecting ships and aircraft. A simple wave-interference apparatus can detect the presence of an object, but it cannot determine its location or velocity. That had to await the invention of pulsed radar, and later, additional encoding techniques to extract this information from a CW signal. When Taylor's group at the NRL were unsuccessful in getting interference radio accepted as a detection means, Young suggested trying pulsing techniques. This would also allow the direct determination of range to the target. The British and the American research groups were independently aware of the advantages of such an approach, but the problem was to develop the timing equipment to make it feasible. Robert Morris Page was assigned by Taylor to implement Young's suggestion. Page designed a transmitter operating at 60 MHz and pulsed 10 μs in duration and 90 μs between pulses. In December 1934, the apparatus was used to detected a plane at a distance of one mile (1.6 km) flying up and down the Potomac. Although the detection range was small and the indications on the oscilloscope monitor were almost indistinct, it demonstrated the basic concept of a pulsed radar system.[10] Based on this, Page, Taylor, and Young are usually credited with building and demonstrating the world’s first true radar. An important subsequent development by Page was the duplexer, a device that allowed the transmitter and receiver to use the same antenna without over-whelming or destroying the sensitive receiver circuitry. This also solved the problem associated with synchronization of separate transmitter and receiver antennas which is critical to accurate position determination of long-range targets. The experiments with pulsed radar were continued, primarily in improving the receiver for handling the short pulses. In June 1936, the NRL's first prototype radar system, now operating at 28.6 MHz, was demonstrated to government officials, successfully tracking an aircraft at distances up to 25 miles (40 km). Their radar was based on low frequency signals, at least by today's standards, and thus required large antennas, making it impractical for ship or aircraft mounting. Antenna size is inversely proportional to the operating frequency; therefore, the operating frequency of the system was increased to 200 MHz, allowing much smaller antennas. The frequency of 200 MHz was the highest possible with existing transmitter tubes and other components. The new system was successfully tested at the NRL in April 1937, That same month, the first sea-borne testing was conducted. The equipment was temporarily installed on the USS Leary, with a Yagi antenna mounted on a gun barrel for sweeping the field of view. Based on success of the sea trials, the NRL further improved the system. Page developed the ring oscillator, allowing multiple output tubes and increasing the pulse-power to 15 kW in 5-µs pulses. A 20-by-23-foot (7.0 m), stacked-dipole “bedspring” antenna was used. In laboratory test during 1938, the system, now designated XAF, detected planes at ranges up to 100 miles (160 km). It was installed on the battleship USS New York for sea trials starting in January 1939, and became the first operational radio detection and ranging set in the U.S. fleet. In May 1939, a contract was awarded to RCA for production. Designated CXAM, deliveries started in May 1940. The acronym RADAR was coined from "Radio Detection And Ranging" as a cover reference to this highly secret technology. One of the first CXAM systems was placed aboard the USS California, a battleship that was sunk in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

United States Army As the Great Depression started, economic conditions led the U.S. Army Signal Corps to consolidate its widespread laboratory operations to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. On June 30, 1930, these were designated the Signal Corps Laboratories (SCL) and Lt. Colonel (Dr.) William R. Blair was appointed the SCL Director. Among other activities, the SCL was made responsible for research in the detection of aircraft by acoustical and infrared radiation means. Blair had performed his doctoral research in the interaction of electromagnet waves with solid materials, and naturally gave attention to this type of detection. Initially, attempts were made to detect infrared radiation, either from the heat of aircraft engines or as reflected from large searchlights with infrared filters, as well as from radio signals generated by the engine ignition. Some success was made in the infrared detection, but little was accomplished using radio. In 1932, progress at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) on radio interference for aircraft detection was passed on to the Army. While it does not appear that any of this information was used by Blair, the SCL did undertake a systematic survey of what was then known throughout the world about the methods of generating, modulating, and detecting radio signals in the microwave region. The SCL's first definitive efforts in radio-based target detection started in 1934 when the Chief of the Army Signal Corps, after seeing a microwave demonstration by RCA, suggested that radio-echo techniques be investigated. The SCL called this technique radio position-finding (RPF). Based on the previous investigations, the SCL first tried microwaves. During 1934 and 1935, tests of microwave RPF equipment resulted in Doppler-shifted signals being obtained, initially at only a few hundred feet distance and later greater than a mile. These tests involved a bi-static arrangement, with the transmitter at one end of the signal path and the receiver at the other, and the reflecting target passing through or near the path. Blair was evidently not aware of the success of a pulsed system at the NRL in December 1934. In an internal 1935 note, Blair had commented:

Consideration is now being given to the scheme of projecting an interrupted sequence of trains of oscillations against the target and attempting to detect the echoes during the interstices between the projections. n 1936, W. Delmar Hershberger, SCL’s Chief Engineer at that time, started a modest project in pulsed microwave transmission. Lacking success with microwaves, Hershberger visited the NRL (where he had earlier worked) and saw a demonstration of their pulsed set. Back at the SCL, he and Robert H. Noyes built an experimental apparatus using a 75 watt, 110 MHz (2.73 m) transmitter with pulse modulation and a receiver patterned on the one at the NRL. A request for project funding was turned down by the War Department, but $75,000 for support was diverted from a previous appropriation for a communication project. In October 1936, Paul E. Watson became the SCL Chief Engineer and led the project. A field setup near the coast was made with the transmitter and receiver separated by a mile. On December 14, 1936, the experimental set detected at up to 7 mi (11 km) range aircraft flying in and out of New York City. Work then began on a prototype system. Ralph I. Cole headed receiver work and William S. Marks lead transmitter improvements. Separate receivers and antennas were used for azimuth and elevation detection. Both receiving and the transmitting antennas used large arrays of dipole wires on wooden frames. The system output was intended to aim a searchlight. The first demonstration of the full set was made on the night of May 26, 1937. A bomber was detected and then illuminated by the searchlight. The observers included the Secretary of War, Henry A. Woodring; he was so impressed that the next day orders were given for the full development of the system. Congress gave an appropriation of $250,000. The frequency was increased to 200 MHz (1.5 m). The transmitter used 16 tubes in a ring oscillator circuit (developed at the NRL), producing about 75 kW peak power. Major James C. Moore was assigned to head the complex electrical and mechanical design of lobe switching antennas. Engineers from Western Electric and Westinghouse were brought in to assist in the overall development. Designated SCR-268, a prototype was successfully demonstrated in late 1938 at Fort Monroe, Virginia. Production of SCR-268 sets was started by Western Electric in 1939, and it entered service in early 1941. Even before the SCR-268 entered service, it had been greatly improved. In a project led by Major (Dr.) Harold A. Zahl, two new configurations evolved – the SCR-270 (mobile) and the SCR-271 (fixed-site). Operation at 106 MHz (2.83 m) was selected, and a single water-cooled tube provided 8 kW (100 kW pulsed) output power. Westinghouse received a production contract, and started deliveries near the end of 1940. The Army deployed five of the first SCR-270 sets around the island of Oahu in Hawaii. At 7:02 on the morning of December 7, 1941, one of these radars detected a flight of aircraft at a range of 136 miles (219 km) due north. The observation was passed on to an aircraft warning center where it was misidentified as a flight of U.S. bombers known to be approaching from the mainland. The alarm went unheeded, and at 7:48, the Japanese aircraft first struck at Pearl Harbor.

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