Episode 4
24 July 2004 - Duel in the Dark
The uproar in Downing Street was considerable. Just a year after Hitler grabbed power, a new, stiff breeze was blowing across Europe and it was not good. Britain was in serious danger. The country's natural moat, the English Channel, no longer posed much of a barrier because of the new breed of faster, longer range aircraft. "England is no longer an island," Britain's concerned political leaders were saying. The government of his majesty, King George, declared air defense its highest priority.
In this tense situation, the Scottish physicist, Watson Watt, came up with a revolutionary idea and set out to invent an air surveillance system using radio waves. His system would be able to identify airborne objects hundreds of miles away by night or day, rain or shine, fog or snow. His urgent task was to develop a shield against the growing signs in the 1930s that a new world war was imminent. Watt was convinced that his vision was unique.
But in not-so-far-off Germany, two young engineers were tirelessly working on the same trailblazing concept. The two self-taught young men, Paul Erbslöh and Hans Karl von Willisen, were hoping that their invention in future would prevent disasters like the sinking of the Titanic. Under the watchful eye of the German navy, they were close to developing a mobile radar system. They recognized too late in whose hands they had placed their fate and were overrun by the events of history.
"Duel in the Dark" is the fascinating story of scientists unknown to each other competing to develop the world's first radar on the eve of a terrible confrontation. This is a story, full of drama, disappointing setbacks, technological achievement, espionage and patriotism.
What began as a vision nurtured by a few individuals would revolutionize the art of war like no other invention before it. For the first time in history, military commanders could have early information in their hands about the movements of enemy troops and strategically re-deploy their own forces accordingly. A high-ranking general said: "The atom bomb ended the war, but radar won it!"
Until recently, nearly all the literature on radar gives credit to Watson Watt for inventing it, but based on completely new sources Mission X documents that radar was developed simultaneously in Britain and Germany. Here is a gripping, suspense-packed story about a previously neglected chapter in scientific history.
Today, radar is more important than ever in our daily lives. Mission X provides a glimpse into what was once one of the best-kept secrets in Britain. "Duel in the Dark" goes behind the fence of one of the most heavily guarded military bases of the Royal Air Force, where no camera team has ever filmed before, to observe how an innovative radar wall along the coast of southern Spain tracks drug smugglers and illegal refugees. There are also breathtaking pictures from one of the world's most precise radar systems that can identify objects as small as two centimeters in diameter some 1,000 kilometers out in space.
