Customer Reviews

A Radar History of World War II: Technical and Military Imperatives

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Brown began his studies on World War II radar development "because the book he would have liked to read did not exist". The outcome is a book almost any reader would love to have written! Although radar became an esoteric subject almost from the beginning, the necessary technical background is presented clearly and the reader does not have to be an electronics specialist to enjoy the superb panoramic view Brown presents of the development of a technology that changed the face of war - and that of peace as well! Even if one is familiar with the subject, surprises start popping up in the first dozen pages or so. This is not an updated version of the books that have gone before but something new. In the first place, it is based on massive, critical and thoroughly documented research. Secondly, it does not focus on the efforts of just one or two participants in the radar epos - be it the Germans, British, American, the naval or air forces. Instead it describes the almost simultaneous and often comparable developments that took place before and during the war worldwide. Critical, and thus well-known, subjects like the role of radar in the Battle of Britain are dealt with, of course, but even here fresh insights are offered. And besides, many epic events that have unjustly been "forgotten" - such as the Japanese forces that were NOT to be found on Attu Island - are described. Even the selection of the photographs (of excellent quality) bears testimony to a fresh approach. Almost invariably, mention of the German Seetakt radar has been accompanied by pictures of the burning wreck of the Admiral Graf Spee. Here we see an intelligence officer's nightmare (or delight!): a German Torpedo School ship with Seetakt antenna in full view - in a freely available 1939 pocketbook! What makes the story so coherent is that radar is firmly placed in the context of the military operations: it shows how the brighter warriors exploited the new technology and how the dumber authorities goofed. And finally, there is a wealth of anecdotes, from the horrific to the hilarious. I find Brown's Radar History just as good as R.V. Jones' "Most Secret War": serious but light-footed, and very well written.

In A Radar History of World War II, physicist Louis Brown recounts the little-known history of a technology that may very well have been the difference between a free world and a Nazi-dominated one. The book provides very painstaking details and is unique in that it describes the technology that existed within the societies of all major combatants: Americans, British, Germans, Russians, and Japanese. It is also a good primer on the basics of radar that can be understood by the layman.

However, the book is long and tedious. Although the science can be understood by a layman, I can personally attest that it is rough going. Although Brown recounts some interesting anecdotes, it is clear that he is a scientist first and a writer second. As a result, this book is unlikely to appeal to a mass audience. That being said, A Radar History of World War II is a rewarding read for those with the necessary stamina. If you're a scientist or an engineer, feel free to add a star or two to my rating.

The story of the development atomic bomb finally had its complete chronicle in 1995 with the Richard Rhodes book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb." Rhodes is unmatched as an explainer of difficult concepts; he is even better at describing the personalities who made the discoveries that led to the Bomb. More importantly his skill made the book as good a read as any Tom Clancy novel.

Louis Brown attempts to do the same for Radar during World War II. The good news is that this book has the sweep and depth of anything Rhodes has done. If anything it's even more complete. As a fan of the history of technology I've finally found the single source book on WWII radar. As of now this book has become the definitive work on the subject. If you are interested in the topic you have to read this book.

Authors of the history technology need a rare combination of divergent skills to write a good technical history; an understanding and passion for the subject, dogged research skills for those subjects that were once classified, and the ability to tell a captivating story.

Brown is as good as they get for understanding and passion. His description of German and Japanese radar boggle the mind. The sad part is that as a writer Brown is simply no match for Rhodes. What could have been a sweeping epic that popularized the subject ends up being a tedious list of facts of interest only to the few passionate about the subject. The book veers between a mind-numbing list of radar types (with an awesome bibliography, stunning index yet it has no timelines, radar order of battle, or any coherent summary of the mass of data presented), it is interspersed with personal rambling asides, punctuated by bursts of interesting exposition and great insight. This book could have used a very good editor and some night classes on writing. Instead it looks like it got a spell-checking program.

This book is such a valuable resource that I urge the author to find a co-author and put out a revised second edition.

The book is an extremely valuable, comprehensive and trusted source of information about all principal aspects and many details of the radar before and in time of the WWII, except one minor aspect. This is the pre-war history of radar R&D in the USSR. The author cites only one reference - a book by a Soviet general M. Lobanov, who supervised the gun laying radar developments in the 1930s, written in 1975. Still it is clear that the author could not read Russian and so had the book translated by someone. It looks like not all the book was translated or read, because too many facts, names and organizations are twisted, mixed up and simply omitted. This old Sovet book gives much better vision and proper names and facts than those reproduced by L. Brown. Still today exist other sources on this topic. In some sad way, the mentioned deficiency continues long tradition in the English-centered literature of neglecting and not accurate using the information available about the radar in the USSR even if it is scarce. The tradition started when someone in America in 1944 made a capital error in the name of one of two Russians who measured a real cavity magnetron in 1937 and published it in 1940 (in Russian) - correct name Malyarov or Maliarov was twisted and printed as "Malairov". And so, forever in English/USA publications the poor guy is "Malairov". L. Brown, in similar way, twisted the history of the research radar Zenit and presented it in a most sardonic way as an example of the worst radar development existed at that moment. I am not going to discuss this in details. I'd like only to note that, first, in the mentioned boook of Gen. Lobanov the story of Zenit is given with great sympathy and his evaluation of that achievement is clearly highly positive, at least at the time of 1938-39 testing. Second, the subsequent failure of the project was not a result of bad engineering, as it is presented by L. Brown, but rather of the Orwellian circumstances of the Soviet life in the late 1930s. The story of Zenit can be read in A.A. Kostenko, et al., "Development of the first Soviet three-coordinate L-band pulsed radar in Kharkov before WWII", IEEE Antennas Propagat. Magazine, 2001, vol. 44, no. 3, pp. 28-49. I hope that this story and proper names of people and organizations, and also principal facts, will be presented in better way when, if ever, this book is published as a next edition.

Several of the other reviews have well described the breadth of view and depth of detail that Louis Brown brings to this subject. The words "well researched" hardly do justice to the archival and detective work done into radar development in this work. Also quite well done is the overall organization which manages to be both topical and chronological. A reasonable amount of text is used to set the stage prior to the outbreak of the war. Additionally there is a summing up thst is most judicious though opinionated. There were two things that struck me that have not been commented on by other reviewers, which is the only thing that might justify your spending the time to read this. First he makes a strong and passionate (for an engineer) assesment that obsessive concern for secrecy by all of the four powers in the war were counterproductive for all. He makes clear that the normal result was to keep radar secret from one's own side, so secret its use was not appreciated or fully utilized. This may be an arguable proposition generally but Brown certainly argues very specifically and, to me, convincingly. The second point is that Brown is not a professional military historian so he has the tendency in describing the contextual military events to adopt perhaps well known but not necessarily well judged assessments of military competence. If you read the book you will see what I mean. That has led him to buy into the modern point of view of moral equivalence in conduct of the war by the four powers. This is a quite debatable point and Brown just buys one point of view

This book takes the reader through the technological development and military use of Radar in World War II.

This is an exhaustive but very readable account. The author manages to keep the technical details to a minimum but allows a deeper insight in to several major WWII battles and campaigns. There are descriptions of lesser known radar systems and uses that are quite illuminating when put in context with already known history especially in the Mediterranean and Pacific theatres.

If the reader does not have a background in radio/radar theory there is a section that runs through the basics needed to understand this. That being said I found myself frequently turning to a 25 year old copy of "Aircraft Electricity and Electronics" to get myself up to speed. If the reader is more technically informed I imagine this would not be a necessity.

Having said that this is a very informative book and well worth the time taken to absorb what it has to contribute especially to airborne and naval history of WWII. I would highly recommend this work.

I just finished reading "A Radar History of World War II: Technical and Military Imperatives" by Louis Brown. It was an enormous tomb over 500 pages, packed with details about many battles in the Pacific and Europe, including commanders, ships and, of course, exact details of radar equipment. But between the dry details there were fascinating glimpses into how radar was invented, developed, deployed and when, and when it did not, play a decisive role. It also covered the various purposes such as detection of incoming aircraft, fire control, friend/foe determination, mapping, navigation and even communication. There was also an appendix with quite thorough discussion of the principles just how radar works, much more than just "send a beep and listen for the return".

I came away with two overall impressions. One has nothing to do with radar: WWII was a very big deal that pretty much consumed the planet's attention for half a decade. I knew this, of course, but the relentless detail made it come alive and drove the point home even more so. The other was the speed at which the radio art in general, and radar in particular, was developed in support of the war effort. This was true on all sides, not just the US and Britain -- several countries made various advances all stunning in their own rite. In just a few years we went from relatively crude radios to highly sophisticated microwave systems that established principles still in use today.

It made me wonder if there are ways other than the threat of death to produce this level of invention? And what wonders could be achieved if this intensity could be sustained indefinitely?

Well, it was a heavy read, but when I finished I laid it down and just sat on the couch feeling both amazed and disgusted at what humans are capable of.