Introduction

As readers will see from other articles on this website, EKCO re-located to Malmesbury as part of a government master plan to disperse strategic manufacturing to secret Shadow Factories, which would render them safe from German attack.

In order to give some idea of why EKCO Malmesbury was so important to the war effort, it has been said that WW2 was as much a ‘Radar War’ as a physical war.

It’s also true to say, that throughout history, wars are won by the side with the best technology and in WW2 this was very much a close run thing since there were many occasions when the Germans introduced new technologies and equipment, which the allies had to counter.

The redeeming factor was that in Radar thanks to the work done by Robert Watson Watt and his pioneering team at Bawdsey and later at the Telecommunication Research Establishment (TRE) at Worth Matravers we largely kept one step ahead and this was due in part to the equipment made by EKCO.

Origins

The development of the CH (chain home) early warning radar system is well known and documented. What is not so well known is that at a very early stage it was recognised that this system was inaccurate insofar as being able to direct fighters onto incoming attacks since CH could only direct fighters to the general vicinity of the intruders. (Which was not a problem during the Battle of Britain since the Germans by and large sent over large waves of aircraft, which were visible from a long way off.)

Recognising this Henry Tizzard and a scientist called Eddie (‘Taffy’) Bowen felt that the answer was to put a radar system (AI) onboard the aircraft, which would allow the crew to home onto the enemy. His objective was an airborne radar system that would weigh no more than 100 kilograms (220 pounds), consume no more than 500 watts of electrical power, and use antennas no longer than a metre (3 feet 3 inches).

Given that this was 1937 and the technology of the time meant that the CH station’s electronics filled up rooms to say nothing of the massive power demands whereas space, weight and electrical power were at a premium on aircraft this was a major challenge (aircraft at that time only generated and used not more than 500 watts?).

Initial experiments were conducted in the early summer of 1937 with a modified Heyford (bi-plane) bomber. The bomber didn't carry a transmitter, instead it only had a receiver, which picked up the ground transmitter pulses and the echoes and try to make sense of them. Bowen was enthusiastic about the scheme, but it was tricky to get to work. The idea was basically sensible but beyond the technology of the time.

Having learnt from the experiment, Bowen and his team went back to the drawing board and refined the equipment with the next set of tests using an AVRO Anson in the late summer of 1937, which is ironical when you consider that 20+ years later EKCO themselves were using an Anson as their flying test bed.

The testing did not detect any aircraft however the team were asked to take part in a Naval exercise in September 1937 in weather so poor that normal reconnaissance aircraft were grounded. This flight showed up the Naval ships in the predicted area which they were able to relay to the commander of the exercise, which confirmed the possibility and practicality of Air to Surface Vessel (ASV) radar.

Part 2: The Wartime Radar sets