A RADAR HISTORY OF WORLD WAR II: TECHNICAL AND MILITARY IMPERATIVES
L. Brown, IOP Publishing, 1999, pp: 543, ISBN 0-7503-0659-9, Price: $38.00 (hc).

This is a large book. Coming more than fifty years after the events described, we might even expect it to be the last word on the subject. The author aims at an encyclopedic review of all the radar work done during the war. He also attempts a long-after-the-fact assessment of just what was accomplished when, and by whom, in bringing radar to its remarkable flowering at war's end. In both these goals he comes close but falls just short of the mark. Anyone who actually worked on radar during the war, on the British (as opposed to the American) side, will find at first reading, that some of his favourite sets are missing. On looking closer he will discover that some British equipment is subsumed under the designations of American-produced copies. Fair enough, but just a little deflating!

There is a good history of all the possible inventors of radar. Brown, wisely, refuses to give the credit to any one person. He refutes one claim with the acerbic comment, "Watson-Watt awarded the title to himself." Indeed, there is a faint anti-Brit sentiment permeating the book, even when Brown is struggling to be fair. He identifies three of the turning points of the war in which radar played a crucial part: the Battle of Britain (1939-1941), the struggle for control of the Mediterranean (1941-1942) and the battle for the Pacific (1942-1943). In the first two of these the radars were, predominantly, British built. He paraphrases what has often been said about Churchill: Did radar win the war? No! But radar prevented the losing of these battles and with them, probably, the war. Still, he closes the book with two famous quotes that go further: Lee DuBridge said "The bomb may have ended the war, but radar won the war," and Hoyt Taylor said "The bomb finished the war, radar fought the war."

Brown states frequently that British radar was inferior to both American and German versions. This was due, apparently, to the fact that the work in Britain was done primarily by physicists while the other two countries used engineers. He explains the incredibly original ideas of some of the physicists by saying that really they became engineers for the duration. One wonders if he knows about the excellent Engineering Physics programs which existed in Canadian universities then and which contributed many of their graduates to wartime radar activities.

Unfortunately his historical/technical descriptions are also flawed by this bias. He points out that Britain was the only country to have an integrated radar/plotting-centre/fighter control system in place in 1939. This system, based on the CH radars, completely surprised and confused the attacking Luftwaffe. He describes the CH as a "technical anomaly…designed by physicists…not electrical engineers…a dead-end design. Its ability to track bombers…was quite limited." But then he goes on to say "It is idle and mean-spirited to criticize something so obviously successful as the CH radar." We would all say amen to that!

In some ways the book is almost too clinical. It tries to tell us what was done and how it was done at all the various national radar development locations including the Russian, Canadian, Australian, Japanese, and South African among others. It references hundreds of books and articles written over the years. However, if the reader is looking for the actual feel of a place where major radar developments took place he would do better to pick up one of the referenced books, A.P. Rowe's slim volume entitled One Story of Radar (1948). Rowe catches something of the excitement, the brash optimism, and the good humour that characterized the huge Telecommunications Research Establishment in England. It is good to know that ordinary people, even physicists, can laugh and carry on under terrible responsibilities.

P. Forsyth
London, Ontario