1939: The outbreak of the second World War.


The outbreak of war in 1939 placed new urgency on the work at Ditton Park. This lead to the development of the Ionospheric Forecasting service which helped in providing reliable long distance radio communications. Other developments included radio direction finding, navigational aids, the location of thunderstorms and, perhaps the most important of the Radio Research Stations wartime achievements, the Adcock direction finder. As a result of the wartime success, the research programme was widened considerably and the new techniques of radar were applied to other fields such as meteorology.