Building Radar: Forging Britain's Early-Warning Chain,1939-1945 Hardcover – March 1, 2010

I bought this book through amazon.co.uk and can say it is the best available text on Great Britain's radar defenses in World War II. It is a detailed description of how their installation evolved, from the point of view of policy decisions and material implementation. The level of detail is impressive (there are over 30 maps with the location of different radar types, like CH, CHL, etc, in different points of time, drawings of equipment disposition in bunkers, general plans of radar stations and the like) and it is the only book I have seen on the radar air defences of Britain that does not kind of fizzle out after the Battle of Britain (except for the almost-obligatory mention of centimetric radar against the V-weapons). It traces the development of the various defences, including after the war (the latter in quite a cursory manner), and includes information that is very hard to obtain, such as on the development of GCI.In fact, the only complaint that can be made is that there is so much information that it would have been best to include some appendixes laying out more clearly things such as differences among radar versions, and dates of commissioning and de-commissioning of sites during the war. A lot of it is actually in the text, but one has to look for it.A final reminder: as noted above, the book focuses on how the several layers of radar the UK's radar defences were set up. It is not is not a technical history of radar, and one won't find any sort of wartime memories.

This is a most remarkable book covering a highly complex subject, while at the same time remaining easy to read and to digest. The author has covered all of the major developments that occured during WWII,and most systems used by the RAF and the Army, with excellent historical context. The illustrations, particularly the drawings are out-standing and set a very high standard for anyone wishing to expand on this subject. Given the diversity of types of systems developed during the war this book doesn't quite cover everything, but it has a darned good stab at it.

Does what it says

Rather disappointing account of the building of the chain home and related radar sites. The book concentrates mainly on the actual sites themselves, the land, the wrangles with planning permission and residents objections, the committees and civil servants, ministers and experts. There's loads of statistics, details of upgrades, that sort of thing, but nothing much at all about the actual equipment or development of the technology. The two main contractors for uk radar in ww2, Metropolitan Vickers, who made the transmitters, and Cossor, who made the receivers, get mentioned only once in the whole book. Marconi and GEC also get mentioned maybe once each. No mention of how it worked, who built what exactly, how the equipment was operated or who was responsible for what. The word 'happidrome' is written once, without explanation of what one was or where the name came from. Most of the diagrams are line drawings, there are very few photos, and if I saw one map of the UK I must've seen 20! All in all a very vague account, most of which I'd already gleaned from Wikipedia and the radarpages.com. Very little incentive to pick it up and finish it.

I had been waiting for this book to be published and was not disappointed. It gives a clear picture of the development of radar during WW 2 in the UK. Recommended!

Very good comprehensive book with detailled information about the history of radar. A must for everybody who want to know more about radar!