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This test was carried out in the fields between Peacehaven and what is now Townsend Way, I went out and collected the silver strips.
Window (radar countermeasure)
Window was the WWII UK codename for a system called "chaff", intended to confuse German radar.
Chaff was under independent development by three countries during the early 1940s but its operational deployment was delayed because of the fear of the enemy using the technology against the first country to use it.
As far back as 1937, R. V. Jones had suggested that a piece of metal foil falling through the air might create radar echoes. In early 1942, a TRE researcher named Joan Curran, the only woman among the scientists, had investigated the idea and come up with a scheme for dumping packets of aluminum strips from aircraft to generate a cloud of false echoes.)
Devised for the USAAF by the American scientist Fred Whipple (according to Harvard Gazette Archives), it consists of huge volumes of aluminium foil strips cut to a length corresponding to the radar wavelength; these were dropped from aircraft, so producing huge numbers of spurious echoes. Other radar-confusing techniques included Mandrel, Piperack, and Jostle.
First developed in the spring of 1942, the Allies were fearful of using it because, as the British government's leading scientific adviser Professor Lindemann balefully pointed out, if we can use it against the Germans, they could use it against us and launch a new Blitz. This caused panic in Fighter Command and Anti-Aircraft Command, who managed to suppress it until July 1943, when "Bomber" Harris, Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of RAF Bomber Command, finally got approval to use it as part of Operation Gomorrah the raids against Hamburg.
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