Radar vs. Signals Intelligence in British Successes

I feel that the intelligence work at Bletchley Park was more important to the U.K. success during 1940 than radar was. Essentially, I feel this way because radar, while certainly helpful, could only provide so much of an advantage. For instance, although Murray and Millett indicate an advantage for the U.K., at least in submarine warfare, owing to radar, writing that German U-boats did not yet have radar in 1942.[1] Therefore, radar-equipped British naval vessels were in a better position to communicate with each other. However, the down side to that advantage is that U-boats were also more difficult to detect in 1940 because they did not have radar in 1940, thus the comparative superiority of the Ultra program.

Given the need of the British navy to avoid U-boat packs lurking along convoy routes, Murray and Millett indicate clearly that signals intelligence would make a key difference.[2] In explaining how the Enigma code was first broken by Poland, which then presented its own findings to British intelligence,[3] the authors introduce the idea of the evolving nature of Enigma and its ability to work against itself. For instance, they write, "the British learned that the Germans were operating a weather ship off the coast of Iceland. In early May the Royal Navy mounted a well-planned cutting-out operation that captured the ship along with the Enigma keys for June. Two days later the Royal Navy […] captured U-110 […] and stripped the boat of all Enigma materials, including the keys for the highly secret 'officers only' traffic.[4] The Ultra program was no successful that even two investigations by Germany over lost campaigns failed because the Germans still believed that Enigma was unbreakable.[5]

Radar is not accorded that type of attention by Murray and Millett. Further, the Germans were ultimately able to get around British radar,[6] although this was long after 1940 and thus not a factor during the "standing alone" period. The authors do point out that the Germans' failure to comprehend the U.K.'s use of radar in 1940 was a key reason that Operation Sea Lion was abandoned.[7] However, this was clearly a matter of a failure on Germany's part, rather than an innovation on Britain's. Thus, the combination of Ultra's self-perpetuating nature (more intelligence yielding more intelligence) and its decisive role in the naval war demonstrate the superiority of codebreaking over radar as military innovations.

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     [1] Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War, 1937-1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2001), 255.
     [2] Ibid, 243.
     [3] Ibid, 244.
     [4] Ibid, 245.
     [5] Ibid, 246.
     [6] Ibid, 256.
     [7] Ibid, 87.