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During the Second World War, there was an increasing need to be able to anticipate enemy attacks. Particularly to defend against air assaults.
Berlin-based radio and television company Telefunken developed the Würzburg radar, demonstrated it to Hitler in 1939. They chose the name of the unit at random, by pointing at a map of Germany and selecting ‘Würzburg’. The first working model was the ‘FuMG 62’. This abbreviation stands for ‘Funk-Sende-Empfangsgerät’, which translates to ‘Radio-Sender-Receiver’.
It was a gun laying radar – its purpose was to track incoming aerial targets so that anti-aircraft guns could aim accurately. Indeed, its maximum range was about 29 kilometres and it was accurate to about 25 metres in range. It had a parabolic shaped antenna with a diameter of about 3 metres and what’s more, in some models it was possible to fold it in half for transport.
The Luftwaffe used the devices in large numbers for anti-aircraft guns and night hunting. By the end of the war, they had built more than 4000 devices of various types.
1942 saw the introduction of the 62 D variant. In fact, this was the first radar with sufficient precision to allow guns to hit an air target without optical visibility. It also had an increased range of 40 km.
