Talk:Chain Home

message: I have added a list of CH sites from the book RDF1 mainly.  I will add links to maps for those sites where I know the location and would also like to add a link a page with a few pictures etc for those sites that I have visited.  Later I will do the same CHL etc but I will do that on a different page. jmb 08:50, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: List of Chain Home / AMES Type 1 Sites

message: I'd like to restructure the article from it's current two parts, Overview and Sites, into three: Development, Operations, and the German Response.  The current Sites section is rather dominant visually, and I'd propose repackaging its list into one paragraph within the new Operations section. Karl Kleimenhagen 19:32, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Restructure?

message: The paragraph on the LZ-130 mission has become rather awkwardly worded. Pritchard found in German sources that the mission did find the Chain Home signals. He also says these emissions were suspected to be radar. Pritchard did not mention if the emissions were thought to come from the towers being investigated, but the assumption the Germans didn't bring a radio direction finder on such a mission runs rather unlikely. The assertion in the paragraph that it was "very likely" the Germans thought such a string of towers, emitting 20 microsecond pulses at even intervals, were for communication also looks to be unlikely. Perhaps the Germans imagined it to be a positioning system, such as GEE, but Pritchard didn't elaborate. References backing claims contrary to Pritchard need to be provided. Such sources should ideally reference German documents, for the question is over what the Germans knew at the time. Karl Kleimenhagen 20:49, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I remember reading somewhere (it may have been R. V. Jones' Most Secret War) that the Chain Home signals swamped the receivers on board the airship due to them resonating with the airship's large aluminium structure and the Germans therefore concluded that the towers were unlikely to be connected with an Early Warning system. Ian Dunster (talk) 12:18, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the tip. I see that book is at my local library, and I'll pick it up when I return home. KarlWK (talk) 15:32, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

text: I've just finished reading Most Secret War. There is no reference to the airship, so it must have been in another work. There would have been no "resonance" from within the airship frame. There could, of course, have been reflections which might confuse the receiving electronics. Pritchard's book remains the best source I've seen. KarlWK (talk) 09:59, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I wonder what book it must have been then - perhaps Alfred Price's Instruments of Darkness? - unless it was my memory playing tricks. Thanks for letting me know anyway. It may also have been in Bernard Lovell. A Biography by Dudley Saward, but it was a while ago (ten or fifteen years) when I read them. You could also try A. P. Rowe's One Story of Radar - Camb Univ Press - 1948. Ian Dunster (talk) 22:32, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

text: Hindenburg: an illustrated history, 1994, R.Archbold () mentions the LZ-130 missions. Under the engineer Ernst Breuning, radar surveillance was attempted from the Graf Zeppelin II.  The ship's metal frame affected their direction finders, and they then tried listening from a basket suspended well below the ship. In early August of 1939, British Spitfires noticed this work, and the British demanded to inspect the ship.[p.207] The ship landed early and off loaded its equipment before the British could conduct their inspection inside.  The results of the work of Breuning and his men was not conclusive, for despite his objections, other Luftwaffe work was interfering with their ability to hear signals at the frequency of the British radars, and Breuning's men listened to other frequencies.[p.208] Perhaps the Luftwaffe was seeing if they could jam the British signals?; no explanation was given. KarlWK (talk) 22:45, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting, although I wonder why the airship didn't just monitor the transmissions from out to sea rather than entering UK airspace and being made to land. IIRC (possibly not - LOL!) the Chain Home signals should have been detectable from as far as out as over the French and Belgian coasts.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.40.254.8 (talk) 22:37, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There's the 1977 BBC programme The Secret War based on R.V. Jones' book, with the episode "To See for a Hundred Miles" on YouTube here:  This mentions the May 1939 Graf Zeppelin flight along the British coast.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.112.68.219 (talk) 15:15, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: An August 1939 Flight news item about the LZ 130 Graff Zeppelin being reported 'in the vicinity of the Scottish Coast' during the preceding week, here:   — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.29.18.153 (talk) 14:56, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The Germans never detected the Chain Home emissions because Chain Home operated on a longer wavelength than the Germans were expecting, the wavelengths the Germans were monitoring were the shorter ones that their own systems were operating at after earlier German experiments having seemingly ruled out the usefulness of a system operating on a longer wavelength.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.173.127 (talk) 10:48, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: LZ-130 Mission

message: It's stated above the pulses were 20 microseconds in length.  Can this be added to the article with a citation?  Tempshill (talk) 21:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Length of pulses? 

message: The section on the experimental work mentions that "the range was continually pushed out" and gives examples of improvements over periods of months, but doesn't say how this was done.  One mention is made of increasing the transmission power, but it's unclear that the other improvements were due to that.  Better antennas, receivers, something else? Mcswell (talk) 23:10, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Range improvements 

message: I've read of a dilemma faced sometimes by the British:  If every German bombing run were intercepted, the Germans would certainly deduce that British radar worked well and should become the #1 target.  Hence, British commanders sometimes decided not to intercept German bombing runs that had been detected, in order to decrease the probability that German commanders would deduce the significance (or existence) of Chain Home.  You can imagine the difficulty of deciding this dilemma.
Is this a bunch of nonsense?  If so, could someone write so in the article?  The article currently states, pretty much, that Germany knew that the British most likely had radar, but somehow didn't ascribe it any importance.  Tempshill (talk) 21:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I have never seen such a claim. There have been suggestions that the Germans had not realised that the signals they were hearing from Chain Home were radar.  The major advantage was what would now be called the Command & Control system behind the Chain Home radar sites and they would have no way of knowing how effective that was but it would rather defeat the object if you degraded its usefulness.    --jmb (talk) 22:42, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

text: I think you may be thinking about the breaking of the Enigma code. // Liftarn (talk) 14:13, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: German knowledge

message: When was the last of the Chain Home Wooden Reception Towers dismantled?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.46.198.148 (talk) 16:49, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Dismantling of last Chain Home Wooden Reception Tower

message: :"The Chain Home Low stations operated at 200 MHz on the VHF band"
Is the addition of "on the VHF band" necessary?  --jmb (talk) 08:26, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Not everyone knows that 200MHz is in the VHF band.  Just as most people believe that domestic 'microwave' ovens operate in the microwave band - they don't they are actually UHF as the 2.4GHz is below the official start of the microwave band at 3GHz. 109.156.49.202 (talk) 16:15, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: CHL

message: :I've contributed a Chain Home related article Leonard George Chapman, could someone please have a look at it so it can get past the unreviewed state? ICouldBeWrong (talk) 11:09, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice work. I took it upon myself to remove the unreviewed tag. KarlWK (talk) 03:53, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: New Leonard George Chapman Article

message: Had the Luftwaffe realised just how essential the radar stations were to British air defences, it is likely that they would have expended great effort to destroy them.
Have been reading the Subterranea Brittanica site  and according to their research the Chain Home sites not only had duplicated transmitter and receiver equipment, one as an immediate backup in case the other failed or was damaged by enemy action, they also had so-called 'buried reserves', in which a THIRD set of transmitter and receiver equipment was located in close proximity and which could be used in-extremis - , 
The transmitter masts themselves were relatively invulnerable to attack as little short of a direct hit on the mast legs would cause any serious damage, the open lattice work being relatively immune to blast damage.
The sites also had their own electricity generators (in a 'Standby Set House') so even if the supply from the national grid was interrupted the station could still operate.
:All true, & not the point. What's at issue is German ignorance of the importance & value of CH/CHL. And actually, the most important part wasn't the masts or transmitter/receiver gear, it was the phone lines to the Sector Stations, which IIRC weren't even buried & were extremely vulnerable....  TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura  20:00, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: This mythical standby generator didn't do the Dover station much good as the Germans hit the power grid feeding the station and put it off the air.  Although standby generators would be a good idea, the system was set up such that the transmitted pulses were in sychronism with the national grid.  One of the claimed (and unexpected) side effects of this is that following the reception of the signals aboard the LZ-130, is that they were dismissed as possible radar signals partly because of the very low repetition frequency (as against what the Germans expected such an application to use) but also because they matched the power frequency exactly, the Germans assumed the signal to actually be a brush discharge from defective electrical machinery. 109.156.49.202 (talk) 16:27, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vulnerability to air attack 

message: The opening paragraph says CHL "could detect aircraft flying at minimum altitude level of 500 ft."  
Operations says "Chain Home Low stations were placed between Chain Home stations to detect aircraft down to 2,000 ft (610 m)."  
Both are sourced, though I don't have access to Holmes to check that citation.  The CHL page itself doesn't list a minimum height.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.113.168.148 (talk) 20:52, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chain Home Low Minimum Height? 

message: Chain Home is a very complex topic as it feeds right through from British experiments in 1935 to finally decommissioning under ROTOR in 1955. There is an awful lot of information (technical and otherwise)which would be useful to put up. Perhaps a fundamental rebuild of the page might be in order? Starting with with the Daventry experiments, running through Orford and the final success as a BMEWS radar detecting V2's in 1945 (10 years earlier than the first US BMEWS system!).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.125.178.14 (talk) 11:44, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page development? 

message: :Chain Home radar installations were normally composed of two sites.
There were separate Transmit and Receive blocks and antenna but I would not call them 'two sites' because they would be close to each other.  I would think that 'two sites' more accurate describes the Main and Reserve sites which were often apart.  jmb (talk) 18:55, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two sites? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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message: The lead needs to be rewritten to conform with WP:LEAD. At the moment it makes unique points not in the article body, rambles, and has granular details which are not a summary of the article as a whole. (Hohum @) 00:12, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you be specific? Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:53, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Including, but not limited to: The quotation should be in a relevant place in the main body. The lead should summarize the body text, not make an isolated point. - The section about Tesla. This should be one sentence, or possibly not be mentioned in the lead at all. The lead is supposed to be a general summary of the entire article. (Hohum @) 17:05, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  The current lede is a general summary of the entire article. It covers CH's creation and deployment, BoB and impact on the war effort, late-war and post-war use. Tesla is most definitely mentioned in the body, there's an entire section on it, complete with an image. The issue with the quote is new to me, and I've definitely see it in the lede before. Is this MOS?Maury Markowitz (talk) 00:30, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  The lead needs rewriting. 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Cleaned up this section Some of the material (Tesla) was un-sourced or primary sourced, and the one secondary source (Clark) noted Tesla was "forgotten" with no link to the 1934-35 run up to Radar. Trimmed back section to what can be specifically referenced. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 22:10, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  cleanup death ray section 

message: Thanks Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 22:44, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Radar picket