Impact Of New Technology During Ww2

3. What new technology during WW2 had the biggest impact on the outcome of the war? Dozens of different technologies—the Jeep, synthetic rubber, and duct tape, to name a few—impacted World War 2 and are still used today. Among these technologies, the atomic bomb is one of the first thoughts when mentioning which was the most influential. However, radar, or radio detection and ranging, should not be taken for granted. A technology revolutionary for the time, it could display the locations of enemy ships and aircraft, aim anti-aircraft guns, and track storms. From navigating at night and through fog to finding bombing targets and even locating buried mines, radar’s ability to “see” for hundreds of miles helped the Allies secure a victory and

It could detect distant objects by receiving waves that are reflected from the object and converting them into an electronic signal, which is then displayed on a screen to be viewed by an operator. An object’s distance from the radar antenna is found by measuring how long it takes for the signal to reach the target, bounce, and return to the transmitting antenna. Radar was split into two categories: detection and fire control. Detection radars could create electronic maps of objects in any direction at great distances, and they were used for early warning detection against vehicles like airplanes and ships and ground terrain navigation. Fire control allowed night fighters to locate the precise position of a target, allowing guns to be aimed at and hit targets without actually seeing them. Early iterations used HF (High-Frequency radio, which operated between 5,950 kHz and 26,100 kHz), VHF (Very High-Frequency radio, which operated between 30 MHz and 300 MHz), and UHF (Ultra High-Frequency radio, which operated between 300 MHz and 3 GHz) tubes and antennas, which were used by the British with their Chain Home system and were relatively primitive. The Chain Home system was a detection radar system that allowed the British Fighter Command to defend against German bomber formations. They were prone to ghosting and false images. Such primitive technologies were indistinguishable from short-wave

Through the use of magnetrons, radars could be more efficient and effective at detecting objects from further away. Invented by Harry Boot and John Randall, such technology worked by using electron tubes that could produce very high-intensity radio waves under certain conditions, and special holes called “cavities” controlled the wavelength of a given magnetron. The manipulation of magnetic fields of a plate connected to the filament in the electron tubes gave the user control over the amount of current reaching the plate and creating the aforementioned radio waves. The first working cavity magnetron was demonstrated on February 21, 1940, when it produced over 400 watts of power at an extremely short wavelength, which was over 100 times more power than any other radar available at the time. It could detect a submarine periscope from 6 miles away. Over a year, a new 10-centimeter experimental tracker would become formulated at the MIT Radiation Laboratory, and soon after, SCR-584 radars were being produced. This variant of radar didn’t need searchlights or optic systems, contrasted with older radars that had wider bandwidths. The technology had come at the right time, especially considering that the Germans had learned how to jam the SCR-268 radar system, and the new 584 system caught them off-guard. These radars proved highly lethal, and air defense reached unprecedented