I think that was a style of radio speaking back in those days and it probably had a lot to do with the frequency response of the audio equipment in use back then.

I've been thinking so too nice

The Germans invented it

Waterbuty Clock of Connecticut, in business since the 1850s, made fuze timers during that war. Waterbury evolved to become Timex, one product of which you may wear on your wrist. Takes a licking, and keeps on ticking.

What for do you use proximity fuses and TNT in your home?

@@freggo6604 - One type of fuzes used light instead of radiowaves (or at least there was the idea of them - Churchill mentions it in his memoirs). That photocell is used in modern public pissoirs. Not at home, but still a peaceful kind of use.

Or lose it, either.

Thanks for your service. When and where did you serve?

CG Account Modernization of the education in western countries have been focussing less and less on context and more and more on facts I as a biology teacher hate it The pupils often believe leftist parties to automatically have the best interests of the environment and immigrants Me as a teacher allowed myself to shake these pupils into a state of awareness when I tell them the context But the majority of the pupils still call one another stupid when one speaks up about something a bit different then most believe to be true. Such as the Dutch fighting the Japanese in WW2 The Dutch were one of the first to be attacked by the Japanese but the other pupils just said things along the lines of "are you stupid? The Netherlands are a small European nation" Not even seeming to consider that they still had colonies in 1939

@@joeviking61 Britain also gave away a bunch of jet aircraft technology to the US right after WWII, and both rocket technology and air-to-air missile technology a couple of decades later.

joeviking61 Sounds you need to do some reading. The German 88’s has no equal. We had no such weapon that would penetrate the Maginot line turrets at 1.5 km.

William Chamberlain That they got from Germany.

Russ G cluster munitions and similar weapons have a 'safe to arm' delay to prevent 'fratricide' while they are still close.

they would also be operating on different radio frequencies. Each lot of fuzes would have each fuze using differing settings so you couldn't mix fuzes from different lot numbers or they might set each other off.

Secret Service

U'd have to know the enemy gun position first, which is several km away. Also pretty sure the fuzes have encryption of sorts to prevent this.

@Michael Colapietro we have jamming sets for those now, basically our ECM sets would overload the receivers so that they couldn't hear their own frequency and would hit the ground before detonating. It's how we keep radio-controlled IED's from going off. @260830107 the fuse doesn't arm until several seconds after it gets a kinetic shock of a certain level of gravity, caused by it being fired. Mechanical safeties using springs, pins, bb's machined incredibly small back then, nearly microscopic now.

How ever fast the Shockwave of the explosive is so for tnt like 6000 m/s

Yes. Rather typical how the British automatically assume full credit for everything. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze .

Yes, but they use semiconductor devices, instead of vacuum tubes.

They have a number of different things they do today - but just as this was a big secret during WWII - exactly how what they are doing today works - the people who really know - can't say. What I have to say here - is from published commercial sources (like Jane's) since I don't really know myself. There is a variation on what is described here. Here - you have something emitting radio waves - (which is what radar does) - and as soon as it gets a bounce back - it goes off. There are radar guided missiles - where the missile is continually tracking it's proximity to the target (making multiple calculations per second) and trying to close that distance by adjusting it's steering. IF the missile detects that it is no longer getting closer - but rather is getting father away - it goes off. So - in the case of the VT fuse - it detonates at a specific distance from the target. In the case above - it keeps trying to close - and will hit the target directly if it can - but if it calculates that it isn't getting closer any more - it goes off as close as it was able to get. Different systems use different tracking. Some of them use infra-red. Some of them may use multiple methods. Since the radars on these missiles are not as powerful as, say, one on a ship - often the ship will provide initial tracking - but - once the missile gets close enough for it's own radar to work - it will take over and the ships fire control radar - will go work on another target. During the Christmas Bombing of 1972 during he Vietnam war - the US jammed the North Vietnamese radar systems - so that they couldn't get a lock on the B-52's. The US had been reluctant to use this technology - as it was part of their ability to do nuclear strikes on the Soviet Union - and once they know you know how to do something - they can work to counter it. But - the US was dedicated to making the Christmas Bombing work and the B-52's needed this jamming to avoid all getting shot down. What the North Vietnamese did (possibly under Soviet Guidance, though possibly not) - was to just start shooting the AA Missiles up into the air where they thought a B-52 might be as they did have such as sound detection systems (as was used in WWII before radar and as a back up after it). If the missile got close enough - it's own radar could detect a target and it would go after it. The Americans were all approaching their targets from different directions (at night) - but - when they came OFF the target - they were doing it the same way each time. The Communists figured that out - and began shooting their missiles up into that area - and the US lost a number of B-52's. Then the B-52's stopped doing that - and the Communists were stuck. In the end - they had expended ALL of their AA Missiles and were defenseless against the B-52's. .

This film does give credit to the British.

DigNap15 Did you watch the video?

That's very informative; thanks!

yeah but we put in a shell. i mean it's like saying the M4 sherman was a british tank because Britain first designed the tank.

British invention with significant design enhancements in the USA

Well, half and half.. The Brits didn't have the industrial might, and American know-how was available in great quantity. So they did what any country that had a secret weapon but no real way to mass-produce or innovate it, haul it to your neighbor and ask for assistance. MIT's Radiation Lab was the place to be during those times, creating miracles from the cavity magnetron, turning it into the SCR-584 RADAR set that withstood the test of time, and are still in use in locations like China Lake, and the National Weather Service.

The British invention was the cavity magnatron which was the foundation for all the radar innovations. The Germans had nothing like it. The Brits did not have the resources at that time to exploit the technological edge the magnatron had given them. However, it was the MIT Rad Lab that put the talent and the money of the US taxpayer that made radar one of the essential developments that helped win WWII. The proximity fuse to me was one of those incredible developments. As radar sets went the VT fuse was a simple device compared to radars that were installed in ground stations, ship, submarine, and aircraft. The VT fuse was really more like a burglar alarm wired to a blasting cap that could withstand the acceleration of an artillery shell. It was a very clever design considering the technology available in the early 1940s.

The days of our years threescore and ten... people still read the Bible back then.

Yes, which is why they were kept so secret and initially only used where dud shells would not likely be retrieved by the enemy for study. Only very late in the war were the used over enemy troops. It was a very primitive setup, a low power transmitter carried by an enemy aircraft of the correct frequency would render it ineffective. The secret fell into the hands of soviet spies and ironically a more advanced version was used in the rockets used to shoot down Gary Power's U2.

Yes. An example of something similar was the German Fritz X Radio Guided Bomb en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_X This weapon was used to sink one of the Italian Battleships surrendering to the Allies and then used against the ships off Anzio. However - the Allies gradually figured out which frequencies the Germans were using to guide them in - and then just jammed them - causing the missiles to tumble from the sky when they lost guidance. Another incident that may have had similar factors involved was the death of Joe Kennedy, JFK's older Brother. He was supposed to take off a B-24 packed with explosives - and bail out. The Aircraft would then be flown to and then into a target using radio control. About the time he and the flight engineer were supposed to turn on the radio controls (which could detonate the explosives too) the plane just blew up. They don't know why as the biggest piece of it found was one of the wheels but there is speculation that a radio broadcasting on the frequency used to detonate the explosives caused the premature detonation. There was never any speculation that the Germans had done this - but rather that it was just a stray signal. .

Sounds more like British Made! with some important help by the US.

Wow, Americans really can't help themselves. It was fully conceived by the British. You're welcome, BTW.