Japanese CV Radar from Refits?

[PaxMondo]

In other words, with some German help and better direction from the higher levels of command these issues could have been resolved much sooner.

Yes, but the ARMY Junta was the government and the ARMY had little interest in the pursuit of radar technology. If you somehow address this issue, THEN yes, IJN could easily have moved forward with radar MUCH sooner than historical. I'm not sure they could have kept pace with the Brits, but they certainly could have done much better than they did.

With respect to the IJN radar procedures (turning off sets etc), there was some merit in this: the sets that they had historically were very leaky* due to poor components and design. I haven't found any specific test data, just comments from the techs about issues they had with assembly and testing. Again, these issues could have been addressed with focus.


*leaky meaning that they emitted stray frequencies in addition to those that they were supposed to. My interpretation is that these were likely harmonics not being properly filtered. Tokyo U has a stack of papers related to the magnetron invented by Kinjiro Okabe and the subsequent building and testing of various prototypes. They are NOT an easy read .... and no I have not been yet able to get through ALL of them ...

[tigercub]

Just info the Japanese were very interested in Radar the Japanese navy dove on the wreaks on POW and Repulse to retrieve Radar components.
Japan dispatched divers to the wrecks of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse in March 1942. The Operation: Shortly after the fall of Singapore in February 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy deployed the crane ship Seishu Maru carrying a team of seven divers to locate the two capital ships (which had been sunk on December 10, 1941). The Target: Japanese intelligence was keen to recover advanced British radar equipment—specifically targeting the radar fire-control sets (such as the Type 284) and surface search systems fitted aboard HMS Prince of Wales. The Result: The diving team located HMS Repulse in early March 1942, but diving on the wrecks proved largely unsuccessful due to depth, strong currents, poor visibility, and the fact that Prince of Wales had capsized and settled upside down in over 200 feet (68 meters) of water. Redirection: The recovery operation was quickly abandoned when the Imperial Japanese Army requisitioned the Seishu Maru and ordered it to Java, leaving the British radar sets mostly intact at the seabed. Japanese engineers ultimately derived much of their early technical insight into Allied radar from intact ground-based installations captured ashore in Singapore rather than from the sunken warships.