"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message
...

"Peter Stickney" wrote in message
news
In article ,


A bit too well, in fact. The radar didn't scan or sweep - it just
tansmitted and received a fan-shaped beam behind the airplane. It
rang its alarm whenever _anything_ entered that fan. The ground,
birds, you own wingman... people were going nuts reacting to the
high
rate of false alarms, so most systems were deactivated or removed.


It was rather more useful on night fighters and bombers I imagine
since they typically operated alone, although the Germans did
manufacture a passive receiver to home in on RAF tail
warning radars IRC


Tail warning radars substantialy reduced the looses of German night
fighter crews though only the elite crews were given it.

The German Radars with an "R" designation had tail warning radar
extensions of the main radar. Thus the FuG 218 SN-2R had one as well
as slightly broader frequencies to improve jame resistance marginally
and also the Naxos ZR or FuG 217 which was liked by the crewas
becuase it was quite resistent to jaming and windows.

Often the best warning of an Mosquito was a clicking in the FuG 16
radio, presumably due to the radar pulses of the powefull magnetron.






Keith