Re: OT: "Warplane" Documentary Starts This Week on PBS



Henry Spencer wrote:

People often don't realize just how sophisticated the electronic war over
Europe was getting by, say, mid-1944.


There's a great story about a very imaginative British POW who pulled a brilliant one over on the Germans.
Realizing that Allied aircraft were able to spot their submarines on the surface at night with radar (when suddenly searchlights began to illuminate them followed seconds later by bombs or depth charges beginning to fall on them from a Short Sunderland seaplane), the Germans equipped them with "Metox" and "Naxos" radar detectors, which were supposed to be able to detect the radar signals and give the sub enough time to crash dive.
But still the subs were being detected and sunk, even when dived.
Curious about what was going on, the Germans began questioning some Royal Navy POWs about how they detected their subs even underwater.
In a positively brilliant move, one of the POWs left the secret leak out.
It was the radar detector...the radar detector emitted signals that the RN had learned to home on.
Absolutely aghast, the Germans started checking their radar detectors out.... and found to their distress that they might indeed emit very weak radio signals during use.
The word went out to the Kriegsmarine: If you value your life, for God's sake discontinue the use of the radar detector immediately! It's a killer!
Actually, the thing the British were spotting on their radar was the snorkel head and its wake... but the Germans had no idea that British radar was that good.
So, until that fact finally dawned on them, U-boat losses at night increased, as both submerged snorkeling subs, and surfaced ones with their radar detectors shut off were easily targeted.
I don't who that POW was, but if anyone ever deserved a free pint from his mates, it was him. :-D

Pat
.