Historic Radar

Preserving a Historic Wurzburg Radar from WW II

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The discovery and relocation of a historic Wurzburg radar

At the end of the Second World War the United States transported three enormous German radars, called Giant Wurzburgs, to Virginia. There, the radar antennas were set up near the modern-day location of Dulles Airport and were put into the service of science. The giant parabolic reflectors were equatorially mounted to track the sun and were connected to radio receivers to study solar radio noise.

Eventually the antennas were moved from Virginia to a research facility near Boulder, Colorado. They were painted red, white and blue and were used during the 1960s for more solar radio noise measurements. Eventually the antennas were cycled out of service. Two of the antennas were in bad condition and were scrapped. The third, which had been painted red, was mothballed. I know it sounds strange to feel sorry for an inanimate object, but I felt sorry to see that historic old antenna sitting in the weeds, no longer used or even known.

The Giant Wurzburg antenna is truly a work of art--I’ve never seen anything constructed the way it is. It is built like the framework of a dirigible, and in fact seems to made of some sort of aluminum-magnesium material such as would have been used in aircraft and dirigible construction. Its WW II paint, a sort of light-tinted hospital-green color, was still in good condition, visible in many places where the more recent red paint from the 1950s and 1960s had flaked off the surface.

In the spring of 2006 I visited the Historical Electronics Museum in Linthicum, MD and inquired as to whether the HEM might be interested in having one of the world’s last Giant Wurzburg radar antennas. They were. Arrangements were made for the legal and physical transfer, and in the fall of 2006 a contractor who specializes in moving historic aircraft arrived at the Wurzburg site north of Boulder. It took two days to disassemble the giant antenna into three parts and load those parts onto two flatbed trailers for shipment to Nebraska and then on to Linthicum.

When this historic radar antenna is exhibited outdoors at the HEM it will become only the third Giant Wurzburg to go on exhibit in the world. There is one other Giant Wurzburg in Britain at an air museum near Cambridge and another in France. Now there will be one that people can see in the United States. It was just a minor effort on my part, but it makes me feel good to see this old radar preserved for the future education of HEM visitors.

Mothballed historic Wurzburg radar antenna

Wurzburg rear oblique view

Wurzburg gore details

Wurzburg original German markings

Wurzburg disassembly 01

Wurzburg disassembly 02

Wurzburg gores on trailer

Wurzburg all ready to go