"You don't want to hear what Chiefs have to say about Marine officers, Mr. Frade," Chief Schultz said. "You just want a look at it, or do you want me to fire it up for you?"
"A look now, and after Mr. Ettinger has finished his report, I'd like to see it in operation."
"They're right out in back, Mr. Frade."
"Tell me about radar, Chief," Clete said after Schultz had completed his demon-stration of his truck-mounted radio station.
"They're really sending one down here?"
"It's in Brazil, with a team to set it up and operate it."
"I think they're pissing into the wind," Schultz said.
"Tell me why."
"You know how it works?"
"Tell me."
"They found out-at Bell Labs, in New Jersey-that at the higher frequen-cies, radio waves bounce. So they send out directional radiation. You know what I'm talking about?"
Clete shook his head, "no."
"You try to narrow the radiation field. Like, a civilian broadcasting system tries to get a wide radiation pattern. Like a stone dropped in the water, you know? Expanding circles? So the signal can be picked up by as many receivers as possible?"
Clete nodded.
"With radar, you try to do the opposite. Send out as narrow a field of radi-ation as you can. Then you've got a receiving antenna. It looks like a great big saucer. The signals from the transmitter bounce back to the saucer. Still with me?"
Clete nodded again.
"The antenna moves, sometimes through a 360-degree circle, sometimes just through a part of the circle. OK. So if you're using the radar at sea, for ex-ample, the signals will not bounce back to the antenna, unless they hit some-thing-a ship-that they can bounce off. When that happens, and the signals bounce back, all you have to do is figure how long it took them to do that."
"How do you do that?"
"Radio signals move at the speed of light. That's the constant. The radar can tell-this is the theory-how far away whatever the signal bounced off of is by how long it took the signal to come back. Then they can put that up on a cathode-ray tube. You know what that is?"
Clete shook his head, "no."
"Remember at the 1940 World's Fair in New York, when they broadcast pictures of people? What you saw the pictures on was a cathode-ray tube. So anyway, you mark on the screen the distances. So many microseconds for the signal to bounce back from whatever it hits-they call that the 'target'-and it's, say, two miles away. So many more microseconds, and it's, say, five miles away. And because you're pointing the receiving antenna-like the radio direc-tion finder on airplanes-you know in what direction the target is. That's the theory, Mr. Frade."
"What's the reality?" Clete asked.
"They had radar at Henderson Field, right?"
"Yeah."
"What did it do?"
"When it worked, it told us when Jap airplanes were coming."
"That it'll do. And it'll tell you the direction. But not the distance with any precision. Mr. Pelosi said they told him they can locate something within a hun-dred yards. I'll believe that when I see it."
"And you don't expect to see it?"
Schultz shook his head, "no."
"Chief, what if the radar they sent down is absolutely the latest thing?"