Summer 1939. War is coming. The British believe that through ingenuity and scientific prowess
they alone have a war-winning weapon: radar. They are wrong. The Germans have it too. They
believe that their unique maritime history means their pilots have no need of navigational
aids. Flying above the clouds they like the seafarers of old had the stars to guide them and
that is all that is required. They are wrong. Most of the bombs the RAF will drop in the first
years of the war land miles from their target. They also believe that the Germans without the
same naval tradition will never be able to find targets at night. They are again wrong. In
1939 the Germans don't just have radar to spot planes entering their airspace they have radio
beams to guide their own planes into enemy airspace. War is coming and it is to be a different
kind of war. It will be fought as expected on land and sea and in the air. It will also be
fought on the airwaves. It will be fought between scientists on both sides at the forefront of
knowledge and the agents and commandos they relied on to bolster that knowledge. Luckily there
was one young engineer Reginald Jones helping the British government with their own
scientific developments. In June 1940 when Jones quietly explained the beams the Germans had
devised to a room full of disbelieving sceptics Churchill later described the moment as like
sitting in the parlour while Sherlock Holmes finally reveals the killer. Churchill immediately
supported Jones's efforts to develop radar technology that went on to help the Allies win the
war. Relying on first-hand accounts from Reginald Jones as well as papers recently released by
the Admiralty The Battle of the Beams fills a huge missing piece in the canon of WW2
literature. It is a tale that combines history science derring do and dogged determination
and will appeal as much to fans of WW2 history as to those fascinated by the science behind the
beams that changed our lives. The radio war of 1939-45 is one of the great scientific battles
in history. This is the story of that war.
