When I first met Moshe Eisenberg, he told me that five naval radar sets had been ordered I did not know that he himself had been part of the purchasing mission.
We agreed that three sets would be assigned to the navy and two to the air force ground stations to report to air force and navy operation rooms, together with reports from observer stations. Of the navy sets, two would be placed aboard the two corvettes that had been impounded by the British which we would put into use when the British left, and one would be installed in Haifa near the lighthouse. I myself installed and operated this set on Stella Maris, not the air force.
When the equipment arrived, it was in fact yachting radar, fine for installing on small pleasure craft, but not really suitable for military use, where accurate range finding is necessary. But at least it was something.
For the installation in Haifa, we used the site where the British had established a radar station. We would have expected to cover a range just over the horizon, to about Herzlia or possibly to Tel Aviv. However, there was a strange phenomenon called a temperature inversion, first noticed in the Persian Gulf in about 1941. Usually, the higher you go, the cooler it gets. Along the coast of Israel, as you go higher to some 500 feet, it gets warmer, and then after 500 feet it gets cooler. The result is that radio waves see a mirror at 500 feet and are trapped in a duct 500 feet high, enabling the radar to see ships as far away as Port Said.
To install the sets on the two corvettes we needed wave guide – a rectangular copper tube made very accurately . There was some wave guide included with the sets, but not enough. Off the coast of Tel Aviv, two lieutenants and I managed to get aboard the wreck of the Altalena, and remove the wave guide from the mast.
I did not know any other members of Squadron 505. Looking through the list, the name Dorothy Jackson rings a bell. She had served in the WAAF and was an operator involved in tracking the VIs and V2s at the end of the war. We met in the Grand Arėnas camp in Marseilles and sailed on the same fishing boat, the Marie Anick, across the Mediterranean. We lost touch in Israel since she served in the air force and I served in the navy.
A final memoir: When I joined the Israel Navy, the first operation was to refuel the Reading Power Station at the mouth of the Yarkon River. We had acquired an oil tanker from Romania, and she was anchored offshore, attached to a pipe line. The navy had set up rings of small boats and observer stations on the coast to warn of air attacks. My job was to be the communication coordinator. The ballroom of the Yarkon Hotel was the Air Force Operations Room, with a huge table map of the area. I stood by the map in radio contact with the observers and the tanker, and had direct contact with the air force commander to activate fighters, if necessary.
I had been in that room almost ten years previously. The Yarkon Hotel had been built by my grandfather and run by my parents. My bar mitzvah was celebrated on Christmas Day 1938 in that very ballroom. I left for England a week later, and got stuck in England by the outbreak of the war.
Author: Harvey Miller
10th July, 2000