Radio Proximity Fuze Design

Here's some stuff.

Baldwin's book is good too.

--

John Larkin      Highland Technology, Inc 

The best designs are necessarily accidental.

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y fuze designs were developed, or researched, for anti-aircraft use, but no ne saw service.[9] These included acoustic fuzes triggered by engine sound, one based on electrostatic fields developed by Rheinmetall Borsig, and rad io fuzes. In mid-November 1939, a German neon lamp tube and a design of a p rototype proximity fuze based on capacitive effects was received by British Intelligence as part of the Oslo Report."

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Wasn't Baldwin that astronomer from APL?

You can see in this aerial bomb drop short video the bombs are within 70 f eet of one another. They should maintain that distance all the way down, bu t they don't explode because they don't have the requisite relative velocit y and hence Doppler. So you really don't want strict proximity.:-) Another misleading bit of military terminology as to be expected.

There might be a bunch of them. The book I like is "The Deadly Fuze." Or maybe fuse.

At the same time, pharmeceutical companies were developing patentable variations of penicillin, using federal dollars, when they were supposed to be reducing the production costs and increasing manufacturing volume of the public domain product.

RL

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mity fuze designs were developed, or researched, for anti-aircraft use, but none saw service.[9] These included acoustic fuzes triggered by engine sou nd, one based on electrostatic fields developed by Rheinmetall Borsig, and radio fuzes. In mid-November 1939, a German neon lamp tube and a design of a prototype proximity fuze based on capacitive effects was received by Brit ish Intelligence as part of the Oslo Report."

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"The Deadly Fuz" was a Dirty Harry/ Clint book. :^)

Are there some circuits and such in Baldwin's book? (page 3 of Fred's pdf, leaves me scratching...)

George H.

0 feet of one another. They should maintain that distance all the way down, but they don't explode because they don't have the requisite relative velo city and hence Doppler. So you really don't want strict proximity.:-) Anoth er misleading bit of military terminology as to be expected.

I thought the sulfadrugs were the de facto lead antibacterial of the day. It was a lifesaver in dealing with battlefield injury.

No, it's just the story.

The Baldwin book has no schematics just the personalities and story.

Here is a typical WWII circuit:

And here is some design reference explanation:

There is a distinction between the non-rotating fin stabilized projectiles like bombs and rockets that are subject to low launch G and are typically powered by air-driven turbine generator and the rotating spin stabilized gun fired projectiles that are subject to very high launch G - these were typically powered by chemical batteries activated by launch shock.

piglet

On a sunny day (Fri, 29 Jan 2021 08:04:45 +0000) it happened piglet wrote in :

Holly shit, these days I would use a CMOS cam and even steer the thing,,,

want the asm source ;-)? (only for trump^H^H^H^H^H republican followers of course)

took an afternoon to write it.... based on an older analog TV hack I wrote years back so I could actually play videos I made myself on my stupid protected by hollowood DVD player!

billions, sigh LOL

Penicillin wasn't widely available till near the end of the war.

A lot of the UK radar research group went on to be radio astronomers or physics researchers involving complex electronics and/or antennas.

But the Ralph Baldwin who wrote that book and the spelling of Fuze suggests he is an American author. Turns out he was a US optical astronomer and expert on lunar craters prior to the war. Nice biography on the Abe books advert for the book (cheaper copies are available).

The UK radio astronomer is John Baldwin - most famous these days for closure optical interferometry and high speed lucky imaging. I think he would have been a bit young in WWII to have played a major role.

My first year physics supervisor was Ed Shire who was one of the other UK inventors of the Doppler proximity fuse. He had some amazing stories of working on live radar systems in a corotating hut and other exploits but never mentioned his part in the proximity fuse. It was only on seeing his obituary in the The Times "Ed Shire a device to destroy the flying bomb" that we discovered the part he had played in its invention.

His picture is in the national portrait gallery (with credits):

His entry in Wiki is sadly lacking.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

==================

** Yeah - like a bone crushing 20,000 G.

Muzzle velocity 800m/s achieved in circa 4 ms.

Ouch.....

..... Phil

Yes, the nose cone antenna on the prototypes became disconnected when the solder melted due to heat from air resistance! On the way to fixing that they accidentally invented the ablative heat shield which became useful for spacecraft reentry.

piglet

I took that picture!

and a few others from an old circuits handbook. People used to publish circuit handbooks.

--

John Larkin      Highland Technology, Inc 

The best designs are necessarily accidental.

Thanks piglet, (an JL..) The second one is a big file! GH

I have several. They come in super handy when some opposing *ahem* expert tries to argue that some circuit is novel when it's been widely known since the 1960s.

I've sure never built any of those circuits, though. 'Clunky' doesn't begin to cover it.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com

Haha! The power of the web.

Neon walrus relay logic

piglet

Ablative heat shields and discarding sabots came later. During the initial testing of artillery rounds, the failure rate was far too high. The rounds were shipped to the test range packed in cosmoline. One day, someone forgot the remove the cosmoline before test firing. The failure rate suddenly became close to acceptable. The friction of the shell moving through the barrel was causing the shell to become too hot. The grease lubricated the barrel, which reduced friction, and consequently reduced heating.

--
Jeff Liebermann                 jeffl@cruzio.com 
PO Box 272      http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Ben Lomond CA 95005-0272 
Skype: JeffLiebermann      AE6KS    831-336-2558

They are funny. My big one, Markus 1971, has an introduction about how all the circuits that you need are right here.