After the end of the Battle of France and the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk during Operation Dynamo, much of Britain's war production and effort was channelled into RAF Bomber Command and the strategic bombing offensive against Germany.
However, bomber losses on each raid began to increase during 1941, which British intelligence concluded was due to German use of advanced radar equipment.

The British and Germans had been competing in radar technology for nearly a decade at this point, with the German technology often at the same level as the British or surpassing them due to heavy investment in the fledgeling technology.
By the beginning of the Second World War, Britain had devised effective radar systems, primarily through the work of Robert Watson-Watt, although much of the technology was still rudimentary in nature and Watson-Watt and other scientists had failed to devise an effective night-defence system in time for the German night-time bombing of Britain during 1940.

Another British scientist working on radar systems and techniques was R. V. Jones, who had been appointed in 1939 as Britain's first scientific intelligence officer, and had spent the first years of the conflict researching how advanced German radar was in comparison to Britain, convincing doubters that the Germans actually had radar.

By examining leaked German documents, crashed Luftwaffe bombers, Enigma decryptions, and through German prisoner of war interrogations, Jones discovered that high-frequency radio signals were being transmitted across Britain from somewhere on the Continent, and he believed they came from a directional radar system.
Within a few months of this discovery, Jones had identified several such radar systems, one of which was being used to detect British bombers; this was known as the "Freya-Meldung-Freya" array, named after the ancient Norse goddess.
Jones was finally able to see concrete proof of the presence of the Freya system after being shown several mysterious objects visible in reconnaissance pictures taken by the RAF near Cap d'Antifer in Normandy – two circular emplacements in each of which was a rotating "mattress" antenna approximately 20 ft (6 m) wide.
Having found proof of these Freya installations, Jones and the other scientists under his command could begin devising countermeasures against the system, and the RAF could begin to locate and destroy the installations themselves.

Jones also found evidence of a second part of the Freya set-up, referred to in Enigma decrypts as "Würzburg", but it was not until he was shown another set of RAF reconnaissance photographs in November 1941 that he learned what Würzburg was.
The Würzburg radar device consisted of a parabolic antenna about 10 ft (3 m) in diameter, which worked in conjunction with Freya to locate British bombers and then direct Luftwaffe night fighters to attack them.
The two systems complemented each other: Freya was a long-range early-warning radar system, but lacked precision, whereas Würzburg had a much shorter range but was far more precise.
Würzburg FuSE 62 D, also had the advantage of being much smaller than the Freya system and easier to manufacture in the quantities needed by the Luftwaffe to defend German territory.
After the end of the Battle of France and the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk during Operation Dynamo, much of Britain's war production and effort was channelled into RAF Bomber Command and the strategic bombing offensive against Germany. However, bomber losses on each raid began to increase during 1941, which British intelligence concluded was due to German use of advanced radar equipment.
The British and Germans had been competing in radar technology for nearly a decade at this point, with the German technology often at the same level as the British or surpassing them due to heavy investment in the fledgeling technology. By the beginning of the Second World War, Britain had devised effective radar systems, primarily through the work of Robert Watson-Watt, although much of the technology was still rudimentary in nature and Watson-Watt and other scientists had failed to devise an effective night-defence system in time for the German night-time bombing of Britain during 1940.
Another British scientist working on radar systems and techniques was R. V. Jones, who had been appointed in 1939 as Britain's first scientific intelligence officer, and had spent the first years of the conflict researching how advanced German radar was in comparison to Britain, convincing doubters that the Germans actually had radar.
By examining leaked German documents, crashed Luftwaffe bombers, Enigma decryptions, and through German prisoner of war interrogations, Jones discovered that high-frequency radio signals were being transmitted across Britain from somewhere on the Continent, and he believed they came from a directional radar system. Within a few months of this discovery, Jones had identified several such radar systems, one of which was being used to detect British bombers; this was known as the "Freya-Meldung-Freya" array, named after the ancient Norse goddess. Jones was finally able to see concrete proof of the presence of the Freya system after being shown several mysterious objects visible in reconnaissance pictures taken by the RAF near Cap d'Antifer in Normandy – two circular emplacements in each of which was a rotating "mattress" antenna approximately 20 ft (6 m) wide. Having found proof of these Freya installations, Jones and the other scientists under his command could begin devising countermeasures against the system, and the RAF could begin to locate and destroy the installations themselves.
Jones also found evidence of a second part of the Freya set-up, referred to in Enigma decrypts as "Würzburg", but it was not until he was shown another set of RAF reconnaissance photographs in November 1941 that he learned what Würzburg was. The Würzburg radar device consisted of a parabolic antenna about 10 ft (3 m) in diameter, which worked in conjunction with Freya to locate British bombers and then direct Luftwaffe night fighters to attack them. The two systems complemented each other: Freya was a long-range early-warning radar system, but lacked precision, whereas Würzburg had a much shorter range but was far more precise. Würzburg FuSE 62 D, also had the advantage of being much smaller than the Freya system and easier to manufacture in the quantities needed by the Luftwaffe to defend German territory.
Operation Biting