LIGHTHOUSE RADAR

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 70, 8 January 1947, Page 2

LIGHTHOUSE RADAR

Through the choppy seas off the coast of Iwo Jima ploughed a dozen Japanese warships. The weather was heavy, the ships obscured by a soupy fog. Yet from a distance of 25 miles, mighty American coastal guns, with pin-point accuracy, detected the vessels and later blasted them. The amazing new equipment that made this possible: a radar set which boasts an uncanny firing range of 12 miles.

The apparatus, called “seacoast fire control radar,” operates automatically by feeding the guns details on the target’s range and bearing. This is accomplished by transmitting radio pulses of unusually short wavelength, streaming out in a narrow beam. At a range of 5,000 yards, the beam would be only 50 yards wide. Old-fashioned radar sets used beams 60 to 80 times as wide.

One obvious peacetime use of this radar set is to guide safely to anchorange vessel with no radar equipment or whose sets are not operating accurately. With a cinematic view of incoming vessels (ships detected at 30 miles show up on the radar scope as distinct separate dots of light instead of a vague mass) shore-based radar operators will send orders by radio telephone to the ships to guide them into the" proper channels, past rocks, short irregularities, and other obstacles.