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Radio Research Laboratory Radar Jammers

Radio Research Laboratory Radar Jammers

Image creditDaderot (photographed at the National Electronics Museum, Linthicum, Maryland)
CC0 ↗

Radio Research Laboratory Radar Jammers

Year
1943
Creator
Frederick Terman (director) and Radio Research Laboratory staff
Company
Radio Research Laboratory, Harvard University (Office of Scientific Research and Development)
Location
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Description

These airborne jammers of the AN/APT series sent radio noise into enemy radar receivers, so the radars could not track Allied bombers. The photograph shows the AN/APT-2 on the left and the AN/APT-1 on the right.

Importance

Frederick Terman directed the secret Radio Research Laboratory at Harvard, which designed jammers such as these during World War II. The laboratory grew to approximately 800 people and developed more than 150 countermeasure devices. When Terman returned to Stanford in 1946, he used this experience of federal research money to build Stanford engineering.

Interesting fact

In 1945 the War and Navy Departments said that radar countermeasures saved more than 450 bombers and 4,500 lives in the Eighth Air Force.

Sources

  1. Harvard Radio Research Lab Developed Countermeasures Against Enemy Defenses ↗The Harvard Crimson · 1945-11-30
  2. Frederick Emmons Terman, 1900-1982 (Biographical Memoirs, Volume 74) ↗National Academies Press (O. G. Villard Jr.) · 1998
  3. Frederick Terman ↗IEEE History Center (Engineering and Technology History Wiki)