The pioneers of radar

SIR – I trust the proposed movie about Alan Dower Blumlein, the inventor of the H2S airborne radar system (report, June 18), will include Robert WatsonWatt and his team, who developed radar in the Thirties at the Quilter family manor in Felixstowe, Suffolk.

Some of the workers had rented houses from my grandmother, and apologised for having to leave without giving proper notice come September 1939. On the night of September 3, the air raid siren went off and a German plane came down off the coast very near the manor. The story the next day was that a secret ray had hit it and caused it to crash.

This was not true, of course: it had flown through a searchlight and ack-ack had got it. However, the rumour was never denied. Jo Tanner

Deltona, Florida, United States

SIR – A British film entitled School For Secrets was released in 1946 with the approval of the Air Ministry.

It featured David Tomlinson as the radar specialist Mr Watlington – presumably a fictionalised version of Alan Blumlein. Norman Nokes

Whitley Bay, Northumberland