Tubie, the Vaccum Tube

All joking aside, the vacuum tube was an extremely important electronic device.  If a tube in your radar set failed, the enemy could attack without warning.  If a tube in your radio failed you could lose contact with your unit...etc. etc.

   "Bombs away!" was a WWII saying...
   From Camp Evans the war was fought with electrons, thus the title of Dr. Zahl's book

  "Electrons Away"

Quoting a June 1945 unpublished 'classified' document on file at the Fort Monmouth Command Historian Collection.

   "...it is recognized that without proper vacuum tubes, no piece of equipment would function.  It is, therefore, noteworthy that the vacuum tube developement for the Army Ground Forces and the Army Air Force is also carried on at Evans Signal Laboratory.  Probably the finest test equipment in the world is made available for the improvement of Army equipment, as well as being of great assistance to industry which is manufacturing the equipment for the Army."

To quote the Wednesday, August 15, 1945 issue of the Daily News, Vol 27. No 44. Page 7.

"U.S. Gives Radar Secrets, 'Major Reason' of Victory"

"The Army and Navy tonight unfolded the long-secret story of radar...."

"...In the technical field, where so much of this war has been fought, the failure of the Nazis and the Japs to keep pace with Allied radar has been probably the major single reason for defeat."

  and this story also has a photo "Radar equipment at Camp Evans, Belmar, N.J.".   If that isn't enough, another photo with the story has a photo of the father of Navy radar, Dr. A. Hoyt Taylor, who was the WWI Trans-Atlantic Communications Officier at the Marconi Belmar Station, before it became Camp Evans.    Camp Evans then went on to open the space age with radar using water-cooled tubes.

  Tubes not only won WWII they opened the space age...at Camp Evans.

Source: "Electrons Away" by Harold Zahl"

   "WHAT REALLY WON THE WAR. When one gets down to fundamentals, the winning of World War II is the story of the electron tube.   The bomb would not have been possible without the skills of those extending the technology of how to control and manipulate electrons in a vacuum environment.

   Radar, from the very beginning, was a story of unusual inventions such as magnetrons, klystrons, transmit-receive tubes, rectifiers, switching devices, and the list could go on and on.  The proximity fuse represented the final product of putting together a miniature radio in the nose of a shell, with the success of this device hinging primarily on the development of an electron tube that could withstand the terrific shock of being fired from a gun (the transistor had not as yet been invented).

   The entire area of tactical and strategic communications hinged on the availability of tubes with sufficient power and frequency versatility to make military radio communication systems very flexible.  For example, with the new highly directional relays rushed into operational use by dedicated people, General Patton could not have pushed his tanks forward at the speed he did because he would have quickly lost communications with supporting elements to his rear.

   The field of electronic countermeasures ( now called electronic warfare ) was a race between the Allies and the Germans to see who could first develop the tubes which would lead to the denial of the use of other newly developed electronic devices being rushed into combat service by both sides."

  We have information that Camp Evans helped develop the proximity fuse and assisted Los Alamos with radar expertise to fuse the atomic bombs.

Thanks Tubie...

<-chick here for a larger view
 

The March 1964 issue of Popular Electronics had a story on the VT-158
See THE SECRET TUBE THAT CHANGED THE WAR

Page updated January 18, 2004  page created September 24, 1998