Beam Benders - No 90 Signals Wing 1940-1945

Beam Benders is the history of No. 80 (Signals) Wing, the RAF organisation devoted to the noble wartime art of hearing what the enemy was transmitting and then making it considerably less useful.

During the early years of the Second World War, Luftwaffe bombers attacking Britain at night faced the irritating problem that cities become difficult to identify when lights are extinguished and somebody is firing anti-aircraft shells at you. German engineers supplied an elegant solution: radio-navigation beams that could guide aircraft towards their targets with alarming accuracy. British scientists and signals specialists responded with an equally elegant solution: lie to them electronically.

The resulting “Battle of the Beams” was fought invisibly across the night sky. German systems such as Knickebein, X-Gerät and Y-Gerät transmitted signals intended to lead bombers to British cities, factories and ports. No. 80 Wing detected, analysed, jammed and distorted those signals, creating false guidance that might persuade enemy crews to release their bombs harmlessly—or at least somewhere other than the place they had crossed the North Sea to destroy.

This was electronic warfare before anybody could purchase a convenient black box labelled Electronic Warfare. Equipment had to be developed hurriedly, stations established, transmitters adapted and mysterious German signals interpreted while raids were already taking place. The work combined physics, engineering, intelligence and improvisation, all conducted beneath the reassuring administrative umbrella of the Royal Air Force, where even bending an enemy radio beam presumably required the correct form in triplicate.

“Bending” could mean jamming a signal, masking it or retransmitting misleading information so that German navigational equipment confidently indicated the wrong course. It was an unusually cerebral form of combat in which success might consist of an enemy aircrew following its instruments perfectly and thereby missing Birmingham. The better the German navigation system worked, the more convincing the British deception needed to be.

The Beam Benders operated from an expanding network of stations filled with receivers, oscilloscopes, transmitters, cables and personnel listening intently to things most people could neither hear nor understand. Their battles produced no spectacular dogfights and very little heroic newsreel footage. A successful night might simply result in bombs falling onto empty fields, followed by technicians quietly adjusting a dial and making tea.

Laurie Brettingham follows the Wing from its formation in 1940 through five years of rapidly changing electronic warfare. As German navigation and radar systems developed, British countermeasures had to evolve with them. Each technical advance invited a countermeasure, which invited a counter-countermeasure, until the air war began to resemble an extremely hostile exchange between two engineering departments.

Illustrated with photographs, diagrams and operational material, the book explains both the equipment and the people who made it work. It reveals the ingenuity behind operations that remained secret long after the war and restores attention to specialists whose contribution was measured not in enemy aircraft shot down, but in attacks disrupted, targets missed and lives quietly saved.

Published by Midland Publishing in 1997, this is a fascinating account of one of the RAF’s less celebrated wartime formations. It will appeal to readers interested in electronic warfare, radio navigation, signals intelligence, the Blitz, RAF history and complicated machinery bearing names that sound like rejected characters from The Goon Show.

This copy is in As New condition, appearing unread and showing none of the interference, distortion or navigational uncertainty discussed inside. Sold by Crappy Old Books, where every signal is carefully monitored and books are occasionally diverted towards entirely unintended shelves.

Keep browsing: See more War books Other books by Laurie Brettingham