Lee Davenport Dies at 95; Developed Battlefront Radar

Gerald · 10-01-11, 05:25 PM

Lee Davenport, a physicist who developed a radar device that helped bring Allied victories on major World War II battlefronts in Europe and the Pacific, died Friday in Greenwich, Conn. He was 95.

Lee Davenport, left, leaning against his invention, an SCR-584, in 1942, with Ivan Getting and Lt. Col. Arthur H. Warner.

The cause was cancer, his daughter, Carol Davenport, said.

Mr. Davenport was working toward a doctorate in physics at the University of Pittsburgh when he joined the secret Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in February 1941. Bringing together leading scientists and financed by the federal government, the Rad Lab, as it came to be known, forged technology for America’s anticipated entry into the war.

He oversaw the day-to-day work and the testing that created the SCR-584 (for Signal Corps Radio), a microwave radar device with a sophisticated scanning technique to track an enemy plane and a computer to adjust automatically the angle of antiaircraft guns to shoot it down.

As the M.I.T. laboratory deputy to the physicist Ivan Getting, a major figure in developing GPS, the Global Positioning System, in the postwar years, Mr. Davenport worked with companies like General Electric, Westinghouse and Bell Laboratories to produce more than 3,000 SCR-584 sets for the armed forces.

The device, far more complex than the radar used by the British to down German planes during the 1940 blitz, faced its first combat test when it helped gun crews shoot down German planes at Italy’s Anzio beachhead in early 1944.

Mr. Davenport, meanwhile, had gone to England, where he waterproofed SCR-584 units for the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Soon after the landings, he went to France to oversee use of the SCR-584 there.

“They issued papers for me to be known as a captain in the Signal Corps,” he told The Greenwich Citizen, a weekly newspaper, last year. “I had all the dog tags and identification.” He said that if the Germans had captured him and known he was a civilian, he would have been “shot as a spy.”

In mid-June 1944, the Germans began using pilotless aircraft known as “buzz bombs,” which crashed and exploded in London and surrounding areas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/sc...ml?ref=science

Note: September 30, 2011

10-01-11, 05:25 PM	#1
Gerald SUBSIM Newsman Join Date: May 2008 Location: Close to sea Posts: 24,254 Downloads: 553 Uploads: 0	Lee Davenport Dies at 95; Developed Battlefront Radar Lee Davenport, a physicist who developed a radar device that helped bring Allied victories on major World War II battlefronts in Europe and the Pacific, died Friday in Greenwich, Conn. He was 95. Lee Davenport, left, leaning against his invention, an SCR-584, in 1942, with Ivan Getting and Lt. Col. Arthur H. Warner. The cause was cancer, his daughter, Carol Davenport, said. Mr. Davenport was working toward a doctorate in physics at the University of Pittsburgh when he joined the secret Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in February 1941. Bringing together leading scientists and financed by the federal government, the Rad Lab, as it came to be known, forged technology for America’s anticipated entry into the war. He oversaw the day-to-day work and the testing that created the SCR-584 (for Signal Corps Radio), a microwave radar device with a sophisticated scanning technique to track an enemy plane and a computer to adjust automatically the angle of antiaircraft guns to shoot it down. As the M.I.T. laboratory deputy to the physicist Ivan Getting, a major figure in developing GPS, the Global Positioning System, in the postwar years, Mr. Davenport worked with companies like General Electric, Westinghouse and Bell Laboratories to produce more than 3,000 SCR-584 sets for the armed forces. The device, far more complex than the radar used by the British to down German planes during the 1940 blitz, faced its first combat test when it helped gun crews shoot down German planes at Italy’s Anzio beachhead in early 1944. Mr. Davenport, meanwhile, had gone to England, where he waterproofed SCR-584 units for the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Soon after the landings, he went to France to oversee use of the SCR-584 there. “They issued papers for me to be known as a captain in the Signal Corps,” he told The Greenwich Citizen, a weekly newspaper, last year. “I had all the dog tags and identification.” He said that if the Germans had captured him and known he was a civilian, he would have been “shot as a spy.” In mid-June 1944, the Germans began using pilotless aircraft known as “buzz bombs,” which crashed and exploded in London and surrounding areas. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/sc...ml?ref=science Note: September 30, 2011 __________________ Nothing in life is to be feard,it is only to be understood. Marie Curie