| Abstract: | The article sets out to demonstrate that radar played a central,but hitherto unrecognized, role in the formation of Britishair policy during the 1930s. It is generally conceived thatthe secret of radar was stumbled across, as if by accident,in early 1935, and was then employed to devastating effect inthe Battle of Britain. The article, however, shows that thedesire for an effective instrument for air defence had gestatedduring the First World Wart—when Britain sought to fightoff the Zeppelin and Gotha bombing raids—and the searchcontinued throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. Moreover, theprinciple of radar had been known since 1904, but scientificbackwardness precluded practical progress. There is detailedexamination of the intricate political manoeuvring by PrimeMinister Stanley Baldwin and others which accompanied the adoptionof radar as Britain's primary line of defence against the Luftwaffein preference to the increasingly obsolete doctrine of bomberdeterrence. In conclusion, radar was deliberately developed,and consciously conceived of, as a device that would be slottedinto a proved framework of observation and organization constructedon top of Britain's First World War air defence system. |
