page_title: Robert Watson-Watt
section_title: Contribution to Second World War
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Watson-Watt / Contribution to Second World War
caption_attribution_description: Sir Robert Watson-Watt KCB, FRS, FRAeS, the 'inventor' (scientist who developed the practical application) of radar, seen here descending from a plinth in Trafalgar Square, London, on Saturday 18 February, 1961, after speaking at a rally protesting the spread of nuclear weapons.
context_page_description: Sir Robert Alexander Watson Watt, KCB, FRS, FRAeS was a British pioneer of radio direction finding and radar technology.
  Watt began his career in radio physics with a job at the Met Office, where he began looking for accurate ways to track thunderstorms using the radio signals given off by lightning. This led to the 1920s development of a system later known as huff-duff. Although well publicized at the time, the system's enormous military potential was not developed until the late 1930s. Huff-duff allowed operators to determine the location of an enemy radio in seconds and it became a major part of the network of systems that helped defeat the U-boat threat. It is estimated that huff-duff was used in about a quarter of all attacks on U-boats.
  In 1935 Watt was asked to comment on reports of a German death ray based on radio. Watt and his assistant Arnold Frederic Wilkins quickly determined it was not possible, but Wilkins suggested using radio signals to locate aircraft at long distances. This led to a February 1935 demonstration where signals from a BBC short-wave transmitter were bounced off a Handley Page Heyford aircraft.
context_section_description: In his English History 1914–1945, historian A. J. P. Taylor paid the highest of praise to Watson-Watt, Sir Henry Tizard and their associates who developed and put in place radar, crediting them with being fundamental to victory in the Second World War.
  In July 1938, Watson-Watt left Bawdsey Manor and took up the post of Director of Communications Development (DCD-RAE). In 1939, Sir George Lee took over the job of DCD, and Watson-Watt became Scientific Advisor on Telecommunications (SAT) to the Ministry of Aircraft Production, travelling to the US in 1941 to advise them on the severe inadequacies of their air defence, illustrated by the Pearl Harbor attack. He was knighted by George VI in 1942 and received the US Medal for Merit in 1946.
  Ten years after his knighthood, Watson-Watt was awarded £50,000 by the UK government for his contributions in the development of radar. He established a practice as a consulting engineer. In the 1950s, he moved to Canada and later he lived in the US, where he published Three Steps to Victory in 1958. Around 1958, he appeared as a mystery challenger on the American television programme To Tell The Truth.
  
  In 1956, Watson-Watt reportedly was pulled over for speeding in Canada by a radar gun-toting policeman. His remark was, "Had I known what you were going to do with it I would never have invented it!". He wrote an ironic poem ("Rough Justice") afterwards:
  Pity Sir Robert Watson-Watt,
  strange target of this radar plot
  
  And thus, with others I can mention,
  the victim of his own invention.
  
  His magical all-seeing eye
  enabled cloud-bound planes to fly
  
  but now by some ironic twist
  it spots the speeding motorist
  
  and bites, no doubt with legal wit,
  the hand that once created it.
caption: Sir Robert descends from a plinth in Trafalgar Square, London in 1961 after speaking at a rally protesting at the spread of nuclear weapons
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