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He ini Radio News Service
8/29A5
SCISSORS AND PASTE
Radar Preventitive Puzzled Germans
(Vernon Noble,' NANA, in N.Y.Times)
July 2ij., I9I4.3# is a notable date in air history* It was on that night during the battle of Hamburg that the RAF tried for the first time under operational conditions a method of combatting the enemy defenses that was immediately successful* It was the simplest device ever invented for interfering with radar detection and it went under the code word of "window.”
The Germans were taken by surprise. The losses of aircraft were the lowest for any heavy attack made on Germany up to that time.
As well as bombs, the bombers carried a strange cargo* They took bundles of metalized strips of paper* These were opened during the flight and their contents were scattered. The whole of the ene¬ my’s defense system was reduced to muddle*
Listeners to the German fighter controllers heard uncoded messages sent out in bewildered and exasperated tones. They heard such remarks and orders asj "Many hostiles, many hostiles, flying singly*" "I cannot control you* Try without your ground control*" "Break off contact^ Hostiles are reproducing themselves." "Every¬ thing has gone wrong."
The German Air Force was in a predicament, and its staff and scientists were called in to determine the reason and to find an antidote.
No less puzzled than the German pilots and ground control staffs were the civilians vho picked up these lengths of metalized paper in the streets and fields. The rumor got around the country¬ side that the strips had been dropped by aircraft to poison cattle, and policemen--wearing rubber gloves— went sent out to pick them up.
The German people soon realized that the strips were harm¬ less once they had landed, because later that year they collected them to decorate their Christmas trees.
Scientists had appreciated for a long time that a cloud of metal strips would provoke responses in radar stations similar to those from aircraft. The fact that fifteen months had elapsed be¬ fore the system could be put into effect indicates that it was by no means a simple business*
When brown paper parcels began to arrive on bomber airfields and were taken into each aircraft, there was great speculation as to what they contained, and secrecy had to be observed. When crevirs were first briefed on the use of "window," some of them were a little skeptical; it was just one more "gadget," just one more job to be done—and a strange kind of job, too, scattering strips of paper over enemy territory. But that attack on Hamburg won over the doubters.
The strips were thrown out when it was known that the ene¬ my’ s radar would be "viewing" the aircraft. Many thousands had to be carried, and a problem that had to be solved was how to reduce the weight without interfering with the results.
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