A needed fix for allied production

[von Shagmeister]

ORIGINAL: Nicholas Bell

As has been mentioned before, the radar coverage was nowhere near as complete because the radars didn't have 360 coverage. The fighters didn't have an equivalent to the RAF Pipsqueak, so when they were out of radar coverage ground control didn't know where they were. We do of course, with extreme accuracy. While the game does include altitude inaccuracies, there apparently is no range inaccuracies (range from radar to target) which would create actual location inaccuracies. Remember they didn't have the PPI radar scopes we all familiar with (round scope with rotating radar line).

Hi Nick,

Many types of Freya variant (the most common air warning radar) had fully rotatable aerials by the start of the BTR period and Drey-Freya sets had PPI displays.

I believe the CH & CHL aerials used by the British during the BoB were fixed thus offering limited arcs of azimuth (maybe someone could confirm this as I'm not 100% on early war British equipment).

The Lw. command and control system was indeed cumbersome and the gods eye view we get as the defending player in BTR is far superior to what the defenders in RL would of had.

Best Regards

von Shagmeister

EDIT: Typos

[Nicholas Bell]

Could be wrong, but I thought the first German panoramic radars were the Jagdschloss and Berlin types.  I believe the Freya systems were steerable which allowed them to rotate and scan areas of the sky, or follow a raid.  But they did not continuously rotate to provide a full constant 360 view as the radars do in the game.  That's my understanding anyway - not trying to be argumentative.

[Hard Sarge]

but seeing as how the radar zones overlap, and overlap by a lot, wouldn't the next in line be picking up the raids as they came in, and the front line, return to scanning the front line again ?

plus we are past the time, when they were locking onto one plane and then tracking that one plane while trying to guide another plane to it (at night)

[von Shagmeister]

ORIGINAL: Nicholas Bell

Could be wrong, but I thought the first German panoramic radars were the Jagdschloss and Berlin types.  I believe the Freya systems were steerable which allowed them to rotate and scan areas of the sky, or follow a raid.  But they did not continuously rotate to provide a full constant 360 view as the radars do in the game.  That's my understanding anyway - not trying to be argumentative.

Certainly earlier variants of the Freya were manually swept by the operator, I'm not sure if later Freya variants were mechanically swept or not (some probably were if using a PPI display). Like you say Jagdschloss was an omnidirectional radar in the modern sense (I'm not familiar with Berlin air warning radar).

No radar in the WWII period could provide a constant 360° panoramic view, whether mechanically slewed or manually rotated. Even modern electronically swept phased arrays require significant processing power to fill in the gaps in coverage between the main lobe being swept.

von Shagmeister

[Golden Bear]

I gotta say that after rereading my sources, the Axis radar is over effective in game. Not only did it not work all that well and I'll ignore the linkage/communication problems, but there were large areas that were not covered at all or poorly covered because of geography. And the Freya, from German sources, was pretty questionable. The need to link F. with another radar in order to give both direction and elevation (note: not distance) must compound the difficulty of actually getting a fix.

This said, it is an interesting line of discussion but in the game it sort of works overall.

C.

[Howard Mitchell]

Thanks for the very informative reply Nick!