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by Fridolin » 24 Jun 2002 22:36
From R.V. Jones, Most Secret War (he was one of Churchill scientific gurus, and one of the fathers of British Radar)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Edda Revived
WITHIN A few days of the final proof of the existence of Knickebein, there was on 27th June another mention of it in an Enigma message. This simply said 'IT IS PROPOSED TO SET UP KNICKEBEIN AND WOTAN INSTALLATIONS NEAR CHERBOURG AND BREST'. So what was Wotan? And why was it mentioned along with Knickebein ? Was it complementary or alternative to Knickebein? Just as there might be a clue in the meaning ofKnickebein as Crooked Leg, was there some clue in Wotan? I knew, of course, that he was the Zeus of tlle German Gods (and still honoured, incidentally, by Wednesday) but was there anything unusual about him? I telephoned Bimbo Norman, whose scholarship in German heroic poetry even I was coming to realize. His qualities are best portrayed by what his colleague Leonard Forster wrote ofhim in The Times after his death in December 1968: '. ..the man known characteristically through- out the academic profession as "Bimbo". Nomen est omen: the Italian word for a child in fact revealed something very deep in Norman. There is a sense in which he remained a sn1all boy all his life. He preserved Wltil the end the gusto, the quickness of wit, the intellectual curiosity of the formidably intelligent schoolboy that he must have been-and the immediacy and charnl. These qualities gave life to his academic teaching and informed the influence he exerted on generations of students. His medium was the spoken, not the written word, in informal conversation rather than in the lecture room; his use of it was memorable. In this way he communicated in a Wliquely personal ntanner his learning, enthu- siasm, and the fruits of his wide-ranging, lightning-swift mind.' I was immediately to have a demonstration of this last quality, for as I asked him about Wotan, he replied, 'Yes, he was Head of the German Gods. ... Wait a moment. ...He had only one eye'. And then, shouting triumphantly into the telephone, 'ONE EYE-ONE BEAM! Can you think of a system that would use only one beam ?' I replied that I could, for in principle one could have the bomber fly along a beam pointing over the target, and have something like a radar station alongside the beam transmitter so that the distance of the bomber could be continuously measured from the starting point of the controller there could know both the distance of the bonlber target and its speed, from which he could work out the correct which the aircraft should release its bombs to hit the target.
As for the radar system employed, it could be something like c in which pulses were sent out to the bomber and reflected back this system could be improved by having a receiver in the bomb would amplify the signal before re-transmission to base, giving ~ identification of the bomber rather as in our own system (Identification Friend or Foe). Alternatively the range-findin! might not use pulses but a continuous wave, such as had been m in the Oslo Report, and which I had also found published in a .teclmical journal. In view of the Oslo evidence, I was inclined for something like a Knickebein beam with the continuous wave ratlge measurement. Norman enthusiastically applauded this s~ and together we chased every possible clue.
A few days later we encountered another Nordic deity, then on 5th July we learnt that German fighters had been able to intercep some of our aircraft owing to the excellent 'Freya-Meldung' (Reporting') ; and on 14th July we learnt that there was somethir a 'Freya Gerät' ('Freya Apparatus'). So Freya appeared to be as with air defence and to involve specific items of equipment. I knew Freya was thle Nordic Venus: and since Wotan's one eye had sel give us a clue to a new bombing system, so I wondered wheth might be something about Freya that would provide a clul defence.
I went to Foyle's bookshop and bought a book on Norse myth and I described the result which I wrote on 17th July under the title 'The Edda Revived' : "Actually the Decknammen Department of the Luftwaffe coulc have chosen a more fruitful goddess, but few ofher attributes h possible relation with the present problem. She did, however, her most prized possession a necklace, Brisinga-men, to obtair she not merely sacrificed, but massacred, her honour...."
well, I leave to you to search for the book and continue reading
Andy from the Shire
