Würzburg radar

The low-UHF band Würzburg radar was the primary ground-based tracking radar for the Wehrmacht's Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine (German Navy) during World War II. Initial development took place before the war and the apparatus entered service in 1940. Eventually, over 4,000 Würzburgs of various models were produced. It took its name from the city of Würzburg. There were two primary models of the system. The first Würzburg was a transportable model that could be folded for transit and then brought into operation quickly after emplacement and levelling. The A models began entering service in May 1940 and saw several updated versions over the next year to improve accuracy, notably the addition of conical scanning in the D model of 1941. The larger Würzburg-Riese (giant) was based on the D model but used a much larger parabolic reflector to further improve resolution at the cost of no longer being mobile. As one of German's primary radars, the British spent considerable effort countering it. This culminated in February 1942 with Operation Biting, in which components of an operational A model were captured. Using information from these components, the Royal Air Force introduced Window and a series of white noise radar jammers known as "Carpet" to interfere with their operation. Late in the war, the British introduced the first jammers using the more advanced angle deception jamming. In January 1934, Telefunken met with German radar researchers, notably Dr. Rudolf Kühnhold of the Communications Research Institute of the Kriegsmarine and Dr. Hans Hollmann, an expert in microwaves, who informed them of their work on an early warning radar. Telefunken's director of research, Dr. Wilhelm Runge, was unimpressed and dismissed the idea as science fiction. The developers then went their own way and formed GEMA (Gesellschaft für Elektroakustische und Mechanische Apparate) eventually collaborating with Lorenz on the development of the Freya and Seetakt systems.