THE DECCA LEGACY - Wootton Bridge Historical

CHAPTER 27
MORE ABOUT EARLY DECCA MARINE RADARS
(John Beattie)
A recent issue of the DEHS (Defence Electronics History Society) publication TRANSMISSION LINES
contained a LETTER TO THE EDITOR which with the consent of the author is reproduced below:-
THE DECCA LEGACY
I was very interested to read the Review 0f the “The Decca Legacy, A View From inside the Radar
Company” in Vol. 16, No1, and the note by Peter Butcher in Vol.16, No.2. I worked on the marine side
of Decca Radar (and Racal) from 1957 till 1993 and then consulted for the latter. I worked at first in the
Trials Section, as the sailor in the Radar Development Laboratories at Davis Road, Chessington, with
Mike Cowlard, one of the contributors. I met Ron. Burr, now the Editor of this fine book, when he was
working in what we now called “heavy radar”.
This book is clearly an outstanding account of the “heavy radar and display side” but only tells half the
story of the Decca Legacy. After the sale of the “heavy radar” to Plessey in 1965 a new company was
registered as Decca Radar Ltd.(1965) and this note is about some of the work of the Marine Radar
Division and some of the other main activities. It also corrects some errors in the book. The Marine
Radar Division had sold over 100,000 radars by 1981 and was awarded a record six Queen’s Awards to
Industry, the first company to appear in the Guinness Book of Records with six between 1969 and 1979.
They won another three after Racal took over in 1980.
Amongst it long list of firsts was the first transistor marine radar, the Decca D2002 , of which 8000 were
sold and the small boat radar the Decca 101 of which 21,000 were sold. They produced the first colour
ARPA display. For naval radar over 2000 Type 974s and 650 Type 978s were sold some with the
“TRACK MASTER” True Motion system. They also supplied about 10 Type 979 Survey radars and the
current S band 1009 with colour ARPA display.
Other innovations were the 2459 a combined X and S Aerial array and correlation colour display system
with the first strike “RED” feature. They also supplied the CAAIS display with a hybrid rotating and
fixed coil system, the work of the late Peter Skinner, a brilliant engineer.
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