"The Enlightenment" wrote in message ...

The tubes involved were special power amplifier tubes with heavy anode
cathode currents that must have been erosive. I do not believe they
had nearly 10,000 hours life. Amplifying DC was not possible because
directly unlike today when complimentary npn and pnp transistors are
available only valves were available and they had very particular
biasing requirements.

While I am not doubting your explanation of the turrets electronics, I
must wonder what the engineers were drinking back then. They obviously
did not talk much with the radar folks.

In many WW2 era radars (ship, ground, and air), vibrators are not
used. In fact, garden variety 6L6 tubes (of guitar amp fame, these
days) were a favorite, used to vary the field windings in some sort of
motor-generator (Amplidynes were used, even back to the pre-War Navy
CXAM days, but there were some other types).

This was a very good system - responsive, accurate, and able to swing
an antenna around that was much heavyier than the turrets on an
airplane. Why did the aircraft gun people not use this technology
until later?

During the Korean war the electromechanical computers of the B29 could
not compute for the closing rates of the MiG 15s. I don't see how
they would have coped with an Me 262 in that case.

This problem was also around in other tracking radar computers.

William Donzelli