Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Herald and news. (Klamath Falls, Or.) 1942-current | View Entire Issue (June 23, 1943)
PAGE TEN HERALD AND NEWS, KLAMATH FALLS, OREGON June 23. 1043 Radar Checks Ability of Plane to Attack With Demoralizing Surprise (Editor's Note: The basic principle of radar, the rndio "eyes" of the armed forces, was discovered in 1922 by Dr. Albert Hoyt Taylor of the naval research laboratory. He noticed that radio waves were fleeted by passing ships despite fog or darkness. The navy did nothing about his discovery, but with several loyal associates he persisted in research until in 1930 it was found that those same waves would detect airplanes a revolutionary fact ki warfare. John M. Hightower of the Associated Press takes up the story at that point in this third of six daily installments.) , Br JOHN M. HIGHTOWER (Copyright By The Associated Press) WASHINGTON, June 23 OD At that time June, 1930 the developers of radar realized that their discoveries had gone far beyond original expectations. Here was a method which sharply limited the airplane's then unchecked ability to attack with surprise and demoralize defens es before they got into action. Here was one of the greatest tactical advances in warfare since the original evolution of the military uses of aircraft. Experiments There followed several months of Intensive experi ments with aircraft detection. Various radio frequencies were tried out. Dr. Albert Hoyt Tay lor and his associates, including Carlos B. Mirick, who then di rected the naval research lab oratory's aircraft radio section, spent weeks bouncing waves off planes around the naval air sta tion and along the Mount Vern on boulevard on the Virginia side of the Potomac. Mirick's job was to keep a photographic record of the experiments, which he did with outstanding success, Taylor said. Even the dirigible Akron, whfrtt nannpnen 10 De in uie vicinity, was subjected to a few wave bombardments just to make sure that airships as well as planes could be picked up. Used Regular Waves All this work was carried on with regular radio waves, rath er than with the pulses used in measuring the Kennelly-Heavi-aide layer (the world's electric roof, about 150 miles up). These waves required comparatively clumsy apparatus, including two widely separated antennae one for sending, the other for receiving. . This bothered Taylor consid erably, for he was a naval sci entist seeking to develop a ma chine compact and simple enough to install on a ship with out cluttering it up and antag onizing the officers. " The apparatus was entirely effective, however, and not too clumsy for use on land. At one time Taylor worked out a com plete, defense system for the eity of Washington using the detection equipment then de veloped. So information about the experiments and their possi bilities in defense of the coun try against air attack was turn ed over to the army in 1932. Army research, like that of GcnrifcJ94Jt twin Mriu Tomcco Ca r- W V.aev vs& u ix;, , Afm..:: net the navy, was then starved for funds, and no vigorous progress along the lines suggested by Taylor was made before 1936. The research and develop ment then undertaken by the army signal corps eventually led to the system of radar pro tection set up around the coast al frontiers of the United States to detect the presence of air craft while they still are many miles from land. Protection Unsolved This left unsolved the prob lem of what to do about pro tecting the navy's ships against air attack. For a time the best brains of the research labora tory were baffled. That is, whenever they got a few quick minutes to think about the problem. For radio detection was then but one. and by offi cial standards a minor one, of NLR's projects. . One day Leo C. Young, an as sociate of Taylor, strolled into Taylor's office with a hopeful gleam in his eyes. "Remember the Kennelly Heaviside experiments?" he asked. "Why don't we do this thing with pulses?" Long Way Up 'Well," Taylor replied, "it s a long way up there to the ionosphere. That gives you a long time-interval between emission of the pulse and its re ception, which is probably why the pulse worked so well in those experiments. I doubt whether it would work on ship board, considering the compact apparatus and the short distanc es we must work with there." But Taylor never was a man to reject an idea simply because he disagreed with it. He told Young to begin work on the pulse principle. Young started a new line of research and worked more or less alone for three or four months. His problem was typi cal of all those encountered, be fore and after, in radar develop ment. The scientists were al ways reaching out for the un known and the untried: a new electrical gadget, a different coil, or sparkgap or vacuum tube, might be the missing link needed to bring weeks of brain wracking labor to fruition. . . By this time a number of -individual navy officers, including Harold G. Bowen, then a cap tain, were much interested in the plane detection work. To understand the intensity of their interest it is only necessary to recall that for 10 years. General William Mitchell, the prophet of air power, had been preaching the doom of the warship. Technical ProgTtts . During those 10 years the commercially valuable airplane had made enormous technical "progress" shipboard anti-air craft defense, seemingly with no conceivable commercial uses, had not. . Busy with civilian goods, pri vate research agencies were not interested in solving problems in preparation for some distant dreamed of war. - If there wasn't a predictable percentage of prof it in a project through public ex ploitation, no board of directors could afford to approve it What ever progress was made would have to be made by the govern ment itself. Taylor Report Back in November 1930, Tay lor had made a comprehensive report to the navy's bureau of engineering, of which Bowen was then assistant chief, entitled "Radio-Echo Signals From Moving Objects." The paper told about detection of ships and planes, how and why they were detected and what the tactical possibilities were. The admirals at the navy de partment did not even have to digest the thing. It was all there in highly assimilable form, like pre-cooked baby food. This time Taylor got results. Oisobeyed Orders For 10 years he had taken funds from other research pro jects and disobeyed orders to di vert physicists from work the navy thought more important In all that time he and his loyal associates, like men following a vision, never had become really disheartened, never had decided to throw down their tools in dis gust and wait until the navy and the nation got ready to help them. Always, whenever a mo ment could be spared or stolen, they worked on radio detection. The engineering bureau's ra dio division studied Taylor's re THE CIGARETTE THAT GIVES SMOKERS WHAT THEY port, which contained the first formal statement of airplane de tection work, for two months, then officially assigned the lab oratory this problem: "Investigate the use of radio to detect the presence of enemy vessels and aircraft. Special em phasis is placed on the confiden tial nature of this problem." The emphasis on confidence by those whose responsibility it was to handle security was a bit be lated. Publication of the articles of Kennelly-heaviside measure ments had given our future allies, the British and it must be as sumed our future enemies as well the tip-oft on radio detec tion. Secret Net Kept Had the ban been placed when Taylor first proposed his de stroyer experiments in 1922, the secret might have been kept from the Germans and Japanese and could have been given to the British as many other secret de vices, including our bombsights, were given. The belated secrecy order did serve to keep confi dential from January, 1931, un til April, 1943, the main facts and technical progress' of radar Following, the .order, other navy bureaus were informed of the work in progress, and some got busy with ideas for practical application. In October, 1931, Bowen sent along to the labora tory a number of these ideas and suggestions for possible experi ments. Taylor and his men had so far anticipated radars poten tialities that he was able to reply immediately that all the propos als had previously been studied and found to be practical and possible. He urged intensifica tion of research. Taylor Struggles While Taylor, whose field was much broader than radar study alone, struggled for necissary recognition and funds. You in his laboratory worked almost day and night to discover and prove a technique for the pulse system of plane detection. He was con vinced that only with pulses would a workable system ever be evolved. "After three or four months. during which Young was more or less alone," Taylor says, "I told him he had to have some help. And that's when I threw Mr. Page in. Not long after he got on the job he did so well that we gave him an assistant, and he carried on. "Page has made more contri butions to modern radar than any other man." While Taylor, Young, Gebhard and most of the others at the laboratory were veterans, Rob ert M. age was a youngster, but a brilliant worker, passionately devoted to physics. He had gone directly to NRL from Hamline university, tSt. Paul, Minn., in 1927. Jens M. Rysgaerd, physicist and personal friend of Taylor's at Hamline, had given Page such a glowing recommendation that when a new man was needed, he was chosen. . Despite his extraordinary rec ord in physics, Page had not al ways ben interested in that work. definitely Better-Tasting. Their Right Combination of the finest aromatic Turk ish tobacco and the choicest Of several American varieties brings out the finer qualities of each tobacco. It's a combination that really Satisfies. ) Hamline was'a sccturinn college and he had first gone therd to become a Methodist minister The jump to physics, which he explains as due to "my natural tendencies," is not so odd as it might seem since 'ho gives his work the same burning inner enthusiasm with which ho might have embarked upon a minister ial career. Quiet Man Outwardly ho is a quiet, shy man distinguished In appearance by a slight professional stoop, a tuft of chin whiskers and neat, grayish hair topping a still youthful face. He is In sharp contrast to Taylor, who is a man of rugged qualities and cusy, col orful flow of language. During 1934 Taylor gave Page the radar job as a full-time as signment and later detailed to him, as an assistant, j young physicist from the University of Montana, who had been at NRL since 1929. Young, alert, affable In an easy, square-cut manner, Robert C. Guthrie was a natural work ing mate for Page. The two men have been closely and profitably associated for a decade. Their advent on the radar scene marked the passing of the main radar development into the hands of a new generation. Checking Point This fact serves as a check ins point for what had happened in radio development outside the naval research-lnboratory at that time, and it is interesting to note that while great strides had been made in such potentially commercial fields as television, there was but little that contrib uted directly to work on radar. This instrument in America was basically developed from start to finish by the scientists on the Potomac. ' One type of equipment for which they had gone to the outside world all along, and con tinued to go, was the vacuum tube. Early in the game they tried out a variety of tubes and quickly found that only two were suitable for their hard use. Both of those were manufac tured for radio amateurs, "hams." Taylor and Page give the anonymous thousands of old time hame great credit for their unwitting contribution to radar. Tough Fellows "A ham," said Taylor, "was a tough fellow to please when it came to tubes. If he was trying to talk with Des Moines and he couldn't reach it, he would mere ly turn up the power. It didn't bother him if he put ISO watts on a SO-watt tube. If the tube burned out, he just' thought it wasn't any good. So he'd raise ; hell and get a new one. : "Those tubes wc used were' built to meet the demands of the ham. Anything less rugged was not suitable for our purposes." Page and Guthrie were using those ham tubes in their first ex periments and it was not until , several years later that funds f became available for adequate , purchases of tubes specifically- i designed for radar requirements. 1 oO,00eir tJ ft" I N o other cigarette made is as chock-full of good smoking qualities as Chesterfield. They're Milder. They're COOLER-SMOKING. They're iieia BANKERS NAME TILLOTSON AS VIGEPRESIDENT PORTLAND, Juno 23 (if) Oregon bonkers live demanding abolition of the federally spon sored production credit associa tions and tho Home Owners Loan corporation. Resolutions at tho annual State Bankers' association convention yesterday charged tho organiza tions a io wasting public funds and competing unfairly with pri vate lenders. L. K. Calbe, Portland, wui elected president; Mitchell Til- lotsnn, Klamath Falls, vlco pres ident: S. E. GJerrie, Portland, treasurer: Joseph Rogers, Baker. chairman of tho executive com mittee. SEVEN HELD IN FAULTY BOMB CASE WASHINGTON, Juno 23 (') J. Edgar Hoover announced Tuesday that seven persons hud been arrested ut Rochester, N. Y., on charges of sabotage in connec tion with tho allegedly faulty manufacture of Incendiary bombs and hand grenades for the United States armed forces and their al lies ut the Antonelll Fire Works Company, Inc., Spenccrport, N. Y. Hoover, director of the FBI, said those arrested were charged with "wilfully failing to properly load the powder charge in the bombs and grenades,' and It was churned that there wero attempts made also to pass material pre viously rejected by the army in spectors. Always read the classified ads Attention To Comply With The New Auto Law Get the Proper Insurance From Hans Norland Prompt Personal Service and You'll Be Surprised How Low the Rates Are. 11S North 7th St. Phones Office 7176 Home 3827 WANT Trade News Interesting Notes of Herald and News Advertisers, Their Products and Activities At the very tip of Cape Cod Is a quaint old village, Province town. For years actors, writers and artists have made It their summer pluyground, Ono of those artists Is named Peter Hunt, Peter Hunt owns a shop called tho Peasant Village There, for years, ho has taken old, out dated furniture, much of It just plain junk, and. with a screw driver and saw and a little paint and his own ken sense of humor, turned it into now furniture; furniture that style conscious home owners are proud to have in their homes. A picture frame may become a coffee table, a battered bureau may become a charming chest for bedroom or hall. It doesn't mat tor If the piece Is marred or ugly. Some of the worst atroci ties In your attic come out best of all. So, a new 30-page DuPont booklet In color, largely by Peter Hunt, tells you how to transform outdated, cast-off furniture Into sparkling, charming, colorful pieces that are in tune with mod ern times. You may secure a copy of "How to Transform Outdutcd Furnitudo" from F. R. llaugvr, MONT0OMIRY.WAR0 WOMEN'S RAYON HOSE Regularly 75c Lad, you're In lucid Here'i your chance to lave money on your hoie thli summer by stocking up on these lovely semi-sheer 100 denier rayons now, during our exciting three-day sale. 42 gauge . . , reinforced top and feel' ! . In a wide selection of rich warm shades. Come and buy yourself several pairs and save! In sites 8Vi to 1014. Ninth Street, Cor, Pint Phone 3188 PAY BAIL! CITY Ball for six traffic tickets handed out by city police over the . weekend have been paid. They are as follows: Rollln Tuter, improper park ing. Ball of paid, Emll Piistcgw, parking In load ing zone. Bull of $1 paid. H, 1. Baker, ovortime In thea tre parking. $1 paid, John Compton, overtime park ing, f 1 paid, C, H. Reeves, overtime park ing, $1 paid. Carroll Chapln, overtime park ing. 1 paid, PROHIBITIVE PRICES LOQANSPORT, Ind., Mj A sign In a Logansport barber shop announces "shaves II" because, explained owner Pat Branigan, "I just don't like to shave peo ple." He said he likes only to eut hair, so he put up the sign to discourage bewhlskered custom ers. In the threo months that the sign has been In the window only two customers have insisted up on shaves regardless of the cost. Branigan said. SIS Market street. Tills Is prac tical war-tlmo thrift thrift with fun suggested by DuPont, Motet 1
