When the Marines captured the airfield on Guadalcanal, they also captured an intact air warning radar. This means that the IJN had a centimetric radar deployed within 6 months of the British deployment of Type 271, and within months of the first combat use of SG by the USN. The IJN equiped, IIRC, Hyuga with a 10cm radar in May 1942. They appear to have developed centimetric radars independantly. It appears that the Japanese worked hard to catch up and that they attempted to develop radars of centimetric wave length from the out set, although they had no knowlege of the 1940 British breakthroughs in that regard. One Japanese scientist was informed by the German profesor Barkhausen that the German Navy already had an operational radar in 1937, and that they better get in gear. This undoubtly retarded development of practical military applications. Where the Japanese dropped the ball was that much of what they developed remained at an experimental status in the labratories, and didn't make it to a practical application.Īnother factor was the intense and rediculous inter -service rivalry that existed between the IJN and the IJA, diluting the efforts. Indeed the Japanese research community had been working with magnetrons, even cavity magntrons, for many years. Japanese scientists were steeped in the world wide interest and early research in the radar concept, that existed among academics during the 1930's.
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