Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "The Battle of the North Cape - Ice and Fire at Sea" video.

The Germans never thought that the British could have developed the cavity magnetron for microwave radar at the end of 1943. They understood the concept of the cavity magnetron, but they used the klystron tube as a more stable source of UHF radar signals up to about 750 MHz. The British vessel's true microwave radar transmitting at 3 GHz was never seen by the Germans, since their radar warning receivers only went up to about 900 MHz. British radar receivers were able to pick up the German radar signals from about 50 miles out. The Germans also needed about 4 kw of power to get only about half the range as the British obtained with 1 kw of power. This was a big deal in ship's electrical systems never constructed to handle these additional power demands. The Battle of the North Cape demonstrated once and forever the primacy of ships that had the most advanced radars and best trained radar operators. Before this, many senior naval officers considered radar as little more than a technological toy developed by the big brains back home. The other radar lesson from the battle was the need to develop smaller radar antennas that were less prone to battle damage and the overriding importance of redundant cabling so a lucky hit couldn't sever the one cable set used operate the radar.
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@John Fulghieri You're thinking of the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. It was not really a good demonstration of what radar would become, except for Washington's surface search set acquiring the Japanese task force 31 miles from the entrance to the Strait. After that, Washington lost the Japanese in the clutter of the many small islands in the Strait. South Dakota's radars and pretty much all her communications facilities were destroyed by battle damage early on in the battle. When Washington found the Japanese again, it was done mostly visually. GFC radar helped with return fire but it wasn't integrated, even on the Washington, since the Combat Information Center concept was in its infancy. The Battle of Surigao Strait almost two years later, or the Revenge of the Pearl Harbor Battleships, was probably the best WWII example of radar integrated into a CIC during a surface engagement.
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Alexander Challis Indeed, and even worse for the Germans, it was an offhand remark from a captured British airman that stopped them from using Metox on submarines. He pulled a prank of his interrogators by telling them British planes were able to home in on the incredibly weak RF radiation from the Metox receiver's local oscillator. Since the Germans couldn't believe that the Enigma code had been broken, they had long believed the British had some kind of submarine detector that allowed Coastal Command planes to attack a surfaced sub without warning. As a result of this prank, Doenitz ordered all Metox units turned off on July 31, 1943. In addition to Enigma intercepts, the British had developed airborne centimetric radar, something the Germans believed impossible. It was this higher frequency radar that was the cause of more attacks, not planes detecting a Metox receiver. The USN wasn't immune to this silliness. A single experiment at Princeton "discovered" the signals from local oscillators of shipborne receivers could be picked up by a German sub 20 miles away. The Navy spent millions developing "radiation safe" radios and ordering all non-safe radios to be turned off when out of port. After the war it was discovered that the scientists involved had cooked the books and stretched the distance this signal could be received by using exceptionally poorly tuned radios with leaky LOs and huge antennas to pick up the LO signals. The distance using an average radio and average antenna was really about 75 feet. The test was paid for by a radio company named EH Scott, a name familiar to modern stereo buffs. I'll bet you can't guess which company was ready with compliant radios. :-)
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Erik Heath No, U-Boats almost never transmitted unless it was short range coordination of a wolf pack. They were never required to submit sinking reports unless something very much out of the ordinary happened. U-Boat headquarters transmitted many messages to U-Boat but the boats only listened so there was nothing to DF. They believed that Enigma still make those message secure from decryption. The Germans used DF to establish the location of convoys so they were well aware of the dangers of transmitting while at sea. They developed the answer by a system called Kurier in 1944. It broadcast in a high speed burst mode that lasted less than ten seconds, and it used far off frequency sidebands. No allied vessel was ever able to DF a Kurier transmission.
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@rpr6.5 creedmoor Yes, but the idea then was to have enough radar equipped ships that at least one would be able to cover any blind spots. The complete loss of power on South Dakota showed the weakness of that plan, and all capital ships would have at least two sets of radars and antennas after that.
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Have you ever done a segment on Jack Nissenthall and the Dieppe Raid? You may have and I've just missed it. If not, it's quite a story of heroism and the quest for the technological lead in WWII
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@Gingerbreadley Great question. For the end of the war, it would have to be as many Gearing class destroyers as I could lay my hands on. Light cruisers would be a toss up between the HMS Superb if the British could have built more than one or the Fargo class if the USN could have built more than two. Baltimore class heavy cruisers seem to be the clear winner there. Iowa's for battleships, although the Vanguard would have been a close second if she had been completed. Essex class for carriers or possibly Malta class, if they had ever been built. For fleet submarines, nothing was better than the Gato/Balao class, if nothing else because there were 197 of them.
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