Radar one and a half - AEW?

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From ‘Britain’s’ Shield: radar and the Defeat of the Luftwaffe’ by David Zimmerman
In the middle of 1936 Eddie Bowen suggested there was no reason for the transmitter to be in the aircraft, instead the airborne receiver would utilise radio pulses from a transmitter on the ground. Bowen dubbed this radar RDF 1½, because the Chain radar was known as RDF1 and the complete aircraft mounted system RDF2.
Testing of this hybrid commended in the autumn of 1936 using a Heyford bomber. On its first flight the radar detected an aircraft at between 8 and 10 miles distant. Bowen argued that RDF 1½ worked so well that it should be adopted, rather than wait for the development of a complete airborne radar system. Watson-Watt overruled him, citing difficulties in getting accurate range measurements unless the fighter was directly between the transmitter and an enemy bomber.


Could RDF 1 1/2 be classed as a form of AEW?

 
I don't think so, no more than RDF2 would be called an AEW system.


Later on, this setup would be called a bistatic radar, although this is the first one I've heard of that uses ground transmitters in combination with a receiver in an aircraft.
 
RDF2 was an airborne interception radar. The name was based on the idea that it would use the RDF1 radars as the signal source and some of the bits of the RDF2 in the aircraft. This was basically the Heyford testbed concept with a new name.

Such a system's returns are based on certain geometric arrangements between the target, interceptor, and ground radars, meaning the signal grows and fades as everything moves. It would be practically impossible to use and that was clear to everyone from the start.

Bowen suggested that installing it would give crews familiarity with radar systems, but it's difficult to imagine that building such systems would have any worthwhile training potential given AI Mk. I was only months away.
 

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