Metox

[Oleif]

Does the Metox radar detector turn into a homing beacon for Allied aircraft in SH3?
I cant belive it took them so long to find this out in the real war. Someone must have gotten a stern talking to.

[STEED]

I think it does.

[Curval]

According to the author of Iron Coffins that would mean it is modelled correctly.

[Threadfin]

The Germans thought this was the case. It wasn't. The Allies could not home on the "Biscay Cross". But the Germans were led to believe they could, and therefore deprived themselves of a valuable tool.

[VonHelsching]

Originally Posted by Oleif

Does the Metox radar detector turn into a homing beacon for Allied aircraft in SH3?
I.

Definitly no.

A radar detector is a receiver. It does not emit anything that can be traced.

[Heibges]

I think the British had a plot to make them think this was the case.

[Dantenoc]

Originally Posted by Heibges

I think the British had a plot to make them think this was the case.

Yes, the famous case where a captured RAF pilot "confesed" that the allies could trace the radar detector's signal for hundreds of miles... it was a load of bull-poo but the germans beleived him... the myth persists to this day for some folks too

[mike_espo]

Does the RWR Metox, Biscay cross work?? I was in a type IXC in 1944 scenario and it did not even make a noise, or nothing...my watch called it out.....

What effect does it have in the game?

[Kilamon]

Originally Posted by Dantenoc

Yes, the famous case where a captured RAF pilot "confesed" that the allies could trace the radar detector's signal for hundreds of miles... it was a load of bull-poo but the germans beleived him... the myth persists to this day for some folks too

Here's a fascinating read... http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/BlaUboat.pdf

[NoLine]

Originally Posted by VonHelsching

Definitly no.

A radar detector is a receiver. It does not emit anything that can be traced.

unfortunateley not, in my country (the netherlands) its forbidden to have a radar detector in your car, and the police uses a radar detector detector to catch the ones that do

cheers

NoLine

[MarshalLaw]

Radar detectors are a passive device. They do not emit a signal , only detects a radar signal that hits them. The radar detector in the game works well. It has saved my bacon on several encounters with ships and planes. HOWEVER the radar that you can get is nothing more than a homing beacon. Plus it is almost useless. If I'm not mistaken it only had a 40 degree arc on each side. In order to do a full 360 degree sweep, the u-boat had to go in a circle. what a waste.

[mike_espo]

A radar detector is passive: it does not emit any radiation whatsoever.

It has been established that after "Black May", that the BdU perpetuated that Metox emissions were responsible for the losses. They could not accept the fact that the allies were able to operate Radar at 9cm.

Once a British bomber was shot down over Holland, and the H2S radar examined, that they realized that was the reason for the losses.

The Germans thought it impossible, they could not build a radar capable of 9cm wavelegnths,so they blamed the Metox.

Info from: The U-Boat War by David Westwood. pp 206

[AntEater]

Certainly no "clever british plot".
There were certain "things which could not be" in german military research regarding U-Boats:
- Enigma is unbreakable
- Centimetric radar is impossible
To understand why it is important to know that military science was one of the weak points in Germany. While Germany did produce some amazing new weapons, a military research did not happen in the organized fashion as in the US or Britain.
German technological breakthroughs were either result of company work (jet engine) or charming individuals (Walther Submarine, Rocket Program) who were able to sell their work to high ranking officials.
Each branch had their own engineering departmen, which was staffed with people from the military or the military administration, but not real scientists.
Also it was strongly personalized:
Radar, like Codebreaking, had just one person in charge who simply sought to cover its back. It was like that with Admiral Maertens who always assured Doenitz that Enigma is unbreakable, it was like that with General Martini who was in charge of Radar development.
Of course that one brit told them this story, it was believed because it was an explanation that did not involve the "impossible" centimetric radar.
The best german scientists (or better, the best german scientists without von Brauns or Walthers marketing talent) spent the war at the universities, not working for the war effort. Konrad Zuse designed his first programmable computer in his living room and nobody official EVER gave a damn about him. In Britain he would have been "invited" to Bletchley Park in no time.
In any chase, it did not really do any harm as Metox was useless against centimetric radar, so it did not provide any warning at all.
So wether you left off Metox because of fear of detection or because of knowing it was useless did not really matter.
Of course it might still detect older metric ASV sets, but these were replaced pretty fast. Long ranging Uboats in the indian Ocean or the Brazilian coast might have put metox to some use, as the aircraft there did not get top of the line radar as soon as those in Britain or Iceland.

[tycho102]

Originally Posted by MarshalLaw

Radar detectors are a passive device.

No. Their functionality is passive, but their operation is far from passive.

Called "signal leak" or "signal egress", anything with an oscillator circuit will emit RF. Your toaster, your wristwatch, your LCD/CRT monitor, printer, keyboard, mouse. The amount of power it transmits is a function of design, and some designs have more leakage than others.

For example, your computer's BIOS may have a "spread spectrum" function. People sometimes refer to it as electromagnetic-interference, but it's just normal signal egress from your sound card and hard drive that cause problems. Signal egress is why ethernet uses "twisted pair" cabling.

At the time, using radio-tubes, the receiver sensitivity was not altered like it is today. The output power was increased or decreased, and the receiver was always operated at maximum sensitivity. This is why so many receivers were going out all the time, but point being that they emitted RF at their maximum design power...all the time. Radiotubes cannot be made sensitive enough to pickup the signal egress, but transistors can.



It's was theoretically possible to pickup the Metox detector, but the British would have needed a transistorized receiver (with SMD's of 1mm size and smaller) to do it. Which is exactly why the Germans were so stunned by that pilot's interrogation.

[jasondef]

So what you're saying is that there's no chance of getting a hold of a radar detector-detector-detector for your car in addition to a radar detector to thwart those pesky police speed traps with radar guns and radar detector detectors! :P