Radio-location
" Secret weapons," one would have thought, are best not talked about till the war is over. It is difficult to explain, there- fore, the sudden burst of publicity accorded to " Britain's secret eye." Lord Beaverbrook, who gave it, was appealing for radio technicians from abroad to volunteer as operators in the new service ; but for that a less revealing publicity might have sufficed. It may be that the Germans have learned a.ready, if not the details of the invention, then (which is half the battle) the general direction in which to investigate. The researches of Mr. Watson Watt, on which radio-location is based, go back to 1935. They were intensively worked on after Munich, and the invention had developed sufficiently to play an important part in the Battle of Britain last year. It is now one element in the marked increase shown recently in our destruction of German night-bombers. Though the great reduction in the scale of German raids in the past five weeks has reduced also the opportunity of our night-fighters, their proportion of achievement does not seem to flag. The seven German machines brought down on the night of June loth may represent much the same percentage of the attackers as the 33 brought down on May loth. If so, they constitute an almost greater achievement ; since the raid of May loth was not only very large but very much confined to one area, whereas the small raids of June loth were widely scattered.
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