RAF Museum Curator Ewen Cameron will discuss Bomber Command’s use of Radio Navigations Aids during the Second World War. This lecture will be broadcast live from the RAF Museum, Cosford.

This free lecture is part of the RAF Museum's Research Lecture Programme. If you would like to support the RAF Museum, you can make a donation at: https://support.rafmuseum.org/Donate-Now

By 1941, Bomber Command knew it had a problem.  Post raid reconnaissance photographs were revealing much less damage to targets than crew debriefings were suggesting and the analysis of photos taken shortly after bomb release revealed that, at best, only one in three aircraft were dropping their ordnance within five miles of a target.  With so much invested in the production of a large bombing force it was essential to reverse the trend which had seen a steady rise in losses for little material damage to the German Reich.

The problem was not so much a case of hitting the target but of guiding the aircraft to the target. The classic navigational techniques of direct map reading, astro-navigation, dead reckoning and radio direction finding proved to be inadequate in the dark and frequently cloudy skies of northern Europe.  The answer lay in a number of radio and radar devices which from 1942 turned the fortunes of Bomber Command from being an irritant to the German war machine, to being one of the most destructive man made forces the world had ever seen.

This lecture will cover the five major radio navigational aids used by Bomber Command during its strategic bombing campaign against the Axis forces in Europe.  It will look at the development of these devices and explore their operational use.  It will also look at the tactics that were devised to exploit the introduction of these aids

Finding the Way: Bomber Command’s use of Radio Navigations Aids, 1941-1945