steve roberts
28-12-2009, 14:43
Germany used two types of blind bombing aids Knickebein which was operated by two ground stations.The bomber flew along the "Beam" of dashes and on intercepting the beam of dots,bombs were dropped.From captured instruments from shot downaircraft British scientists could bend the Beam so that targets were missed by miles.X-Gerat was a modified version of Knickebein,using three ground stations and an automatic bomb release!As before the bomber flewwone beam and on intercepting the second beam opened bomb doors.The third beam released the bombes automatically,with grwat success(Coventry) Once again british scientists descovered the system and for shotened the release beams with the result of early release before targets were reached.Britain developed OBOE a very similar device to Knickebein.The bombers flew the beam from station"CAT" and on inteception of the beam fom "MOUSE" dropped their bombs.Two main drawbacks to this system was easy jamming and availability of use by only one bomber at a time!The follow up was GEE-H similar to Oboe but using different frequencies every time to prevent jamming,and was better because several aircraft could use the system at the same time.The maindraw back was that signals were only available for short randge raids due to the curvature of the Earth.The final system was an airborne radar known as H2S.This gave a map like picture of the ground on which landmarks could be picked out.The germans soon captured an early set and equiped night fighters with detection devices that led them to the bombers usingH2S.Becuase of this risk it was mainly used by Pathfinder Squadrons and then only for short periods. Regards Steve