Before Radar: How The Hearing of ”Aircraft Listeners” Saved Lives

💬 Long before radar, armies relied on people with enormous metal trumpets strapped to their heads to listen for approaching aircraft. Aircraft listeners had the bizarre but vital job of detecting the sound of enemy planes, working in exposed positions and often in difficult conditions to give early warning of an incoming attack.

⚡Before radar transformed air defence, these acoustic listening devices were used to track aircraft by sound. Operators would work together to determine the apparent direction and elevation of an aircraft, while another operator could plot their observations and use pre-calculated flight curves, speed and altitude corrections to work out where the aircraft was and where it was heading. But as radar developed, these strange listening stations became obsolete almost overnight - a fascinating example of how a vital job can disappear when technology changes, and a lesson that rings true for many of us in the modern world.

In this episode, we discuss how aircraft listeners operated, and how this early aerial-warfare defence mechanism saved countless lives - at the sacrifice of the aircraft listeners own safety and health - only to be made redundant and almost forgotten to history within a few short years.

Don't miss an episode - subscribe now:https://podfollow.com/what-we-did-before

About the podcast:

What We Did Before is a podcast where we chart the history of modern inventions, from how we kept food fresh before fridges, to how we survived without shoes and what came before AI.

About your hosts:

Ollie Guillou is an award-winning podcast producer and broadcaster. He's co-founder of OG Podcasts, working with the likes of New Scientist, Dr Karan and Lessons From Our Mothers.

Matt Pyle is a lead software developer and tech enthusiast with a keen interest in media, and a love for interesting conversation and learning.

Connect with Ollie:

Website: www.ogpodcasts.co.uk 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ollie-guillou 

Email: hello@ogpodcasts.co.uk

Sources:

Тревожные ночи Москвы. Автор – Н. Грановский. Москва. 1941 г. By Mos.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=186335796

Soldiers operating an acoustic airplane locator during World War 2, Trelleborg, Sweden, 1940. By Carl Gunnar Rosborn - My father, I´m now the only owner., Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7568060

Three acoustic early warning devices 2360m east of Jack's Court By Teseum - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=94396566

Support the show