Re: Dieppe

> On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Alan E & Carmel J Brain wrote:
> 
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that they were supposed
to
> send a British unit that had actually trained for that sort of stuff,
but
> somehow got replaced with the poor canucks.
> 
>> b) One reason for the raid was to cover a very secret operation to
steal
>> some parts of a German Radar, vital for the Allied war effort. So
vital,
>> that the sacrifice of an elite division would almost have been worth
>> it...
> 
> This doesn't compute. The allies had better radars all through the
war.
> After all, they invented the bloody thing. Why would they need to
steal
> parts from a German radar? 

Because they needed to know how to _counter_ it.  The Germans had some
very good radar systems, especially the ones which directed their
night fighters.  They also used directional radio beams to guide
their night bombers to their target.  These were largely ineffective
latter in the war because the English figured out how to spoof
them so the bombers didn't know they were off target.

Michael Sandy