On May 13, 1935, a small convoy-two Royal Air Force lorries, a
couple of cars, six men-pulled into the seafarers’ village of
Orford, about 150 kilometers northeast of London. Armed with
some crude equipment, the men quickly set up shop in abandoned
air force huts. Their secret mission: to save the United Kingdom
from air attack. It was almost five years to the day before
Hitler’s invasion of Western Europe. But their early start
developing the technology now known as radar proved critical in
warning of approaching bombers in the Battle of Britain-saving
thousands of lives and ultimately forcing the Nazis to abort
plans to invade Great Britain. Whenever the debate about U.S.
development of a missile defense system heats up-and this month
marks the 20th anniversary of the “Star Wars” speech in which
Ronald Reagan proposed a system to render nuclear weapons
“impotent and obsolete”-I think of Britain’s radar pioneers. The
analogy is far from perfect. Success for the British meant
shooting down a small percentage