Royal Radar Establishment

The Royal Radar Establishment was a research centre in Malvern, Worcestershire in the United Kingdom. It was formed in 1953 as the Radar Research Establishment by the merger of the Air Ministry's Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) and the British Army's Radar Research and Development Establishment (RRDE). It was given its new name after a visit by Queen Elizabeth II in 1957. Both names were abbreviated to RRE. In 1976 the Signals Research and Development Establishment (SRDE), involved in communications research, joined the RRE to form the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE).
The two groups had been closely associated since before the opening of World War II, when the predecessor to RRDE was formed as a small group within the Air Ministry's research centre in Bawdsey Manor in Suffolk. Forced to leave Bawdsey due to its exposed location on the east coast of England, both groups moved several times before finally settling in separate locations in Malvern beginning in May 1942. The merger in 1953 that formed the RRE renamed these as the North Site (RRDE), at , and the South Site (TRE), at . In 1991 they were partially privatized as part of the Defence Research Agency, which became Defence Evaluation and Research Agency in 1996. The North Site was closed in 2003 and the work was consolidated at the South Site, while the former North Site was sold off for housing developments. The RSRE is now part of Qinetiq.
The earlier research and development work of TRE and RRDE on radar was expanded into solid state physics, electronics, and computer hardware and software. The RRE's overall scope was extended to include cryogenics and other topics. Infrared detection for guided missiles and heat sensing devices was a major defence application. The SRDE brought satellite communications and fibre optics knowledge.
Administrative history.
The earliest concerted effort to develop radar in the UK dates to 1935, and Robert Watt replied to an Air Ministry question about radio-based death rays by stating they were impossible, but using radio as a detection means was possible. After a simple practical demonstration, a prototype system was built at Orfordness on the east coast of England. While on a Sunday drive in the area, Watt noticed the large and unused Bawdsey Manor, and this was leased by the Air Ministry to become first radar research centre in the country. Soon after taking over Bawdsey in 1936, the British Army heard of their efforts and formed a group to work with them to develop ground-based applications. The first project of this "Army Cell" was a ranging system for anti-aircraft artillery, but they soon added the Coast Defence radars and began work on the proximity fuse.
At the outbreak of the war in 1939, the location of Bawdsey, right on the east coast, was considered far too exposed to attack. The Air Ministry team quickly moved to Dundee in Scotland, where the former Air Ministry Experimental Station became the Air Ministry Research Establishment (AMRE). The Army group moved to Christchurch, outside Bournemouth, becoming the Air Defence Experimental Establishment (ADEE). The facilities in Dundee proved far too small and isolated, and in May 1940 they moved again, this time to Worth Matravers on the south coast of England, also a short distance from Bournemouth. This was accompanied by yet another renaming, now becoming the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE).
Ultimately they began to worry that this location was also too exposed, and when they heard a German paratroop unit had moved to France directly across the English Channel, they decided to move once again. The ADEE, by this time once again renamed to the Air Defence Research and Development (ADRDE), moved to underutilized Air Ministry buildings on the north side of Malvern in May 1942. This, of course, resulted in yet another name change to the RRDE. The TRE followed shortly thereafter, taking up residence in buildings across from Malvern College on the south side of town.
TRE was part of the Ministry of Supply and, when it was formed, so was RRE. In 1959, control passed to the Ministry of Aviation. When this was abolished in 1967, control passed to the Ministry of Technology, then to the Ministry of Aviation Supply, in 1970, and to the Ministry of Defence in 1971. In 1976 RRE merged with the Signals Research and Development Establishment (SRDE) to form the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE), which became part of the Defence Research Agency (DRA) in 1991. Later (1995), DRA was absorbed into DERA, the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency. DERA split on 2 June 2001 into two parts, a government body called Dstl (Defence Science and Technology Laboratory) and a company destined for privatisation, which became QinetiQ.
The technical departments of RRE were grouped, initially, into six Divisions: airborne radar, ground radar, guided weapons, basic techniques, physics, and engineering. The organization and personnel are described further, in a collection of linked web sites.
W. J. Richards, CBE, was Director of TRE at the time of the merger and continued as Director of RRE. William Henry (Bill) Penley, Head of Guided Missiles, took over for a year in 1961. Then George Macfarlane (after postings outside RRE) became Director in 1962.
The Physics Division – some of the staff and their work.
At the time of the name change to Radar Research Establishment in 1953, the senior staff included:
Other members of the Physics Division who made significant contributions to several fields of endeavour include:
In 1956, R.A. Smith presented a comprehensive account of the contributions of RRE to physics to the Royal Society.
Radar, Guided weapons and Engineering Divisions.
Although less conspicuous among academic scientists, these divisions were major players in the defence community, both in policy decision making and as an interface with industry. Development and production contracts brought staff of several companies on site, and extramural contracts strengthened ties with industry still further. "in radar alone: Plessey and Decca for aerials and waveguides, Plessey, Hilger & Watts, Clarke Chapman and Curran for millimetre-wave radar, and Mullard for precision bombing and radar reconnaissance". On returning to RRE as Director in 1962, George Macfarlane reorganized the technical departments into: Military and Civil Systems (comprising Ground Radar and Air Traffic Control, Guided Weapons and Airborne Radar groups), Physics and Electronics (comprising Physics and Electronic Groups) and Engineering. "Despite the policy shift away from fighters ... to guided weapons for UK air defence, ... RRE continued to argue for strike aircraft and kept up the necessary radar research programs."
In December 1968, the report on the programming language ALGOL 68 was published. On 20–24 July 1970, a working conference was arranged by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) to discuss the problems of implementing the language. A small team from RRE attended to present their compiler, written by I. F. Currie, Susan G. Bond, and J. D. Morrison. ALGOL 68 was complex: implementing it was estimated to need up to 100 man-years, using multi-pass compilers with up to seven passes. The RRE team described how they had already implemented a one-pass compiler, which was already in production for engineering and scientific uses. It was the first working version of ALGOL 68.
Senior staff, of the divisions at various times included
More than 50 books were written by members of the establishment under its successive names. Details are included in the list of references below, and in the TRE article. Many more were in series that members of the staff edited.
In 1968, the Minister of Supply assured a member of parliament that the results of research at RRE on infra-red detectors would be made available to British industry.
A former member of the RRE, Martin Woodhouse, later became better known as a novelist.