Exercise Ardent
1952 RAF military exercise / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Exercise Ardent?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
Exercise Ardent was a massive military exercise carried out by the Royal Air Force (RAF) over the United Kingdom in 1952. It pitted Bomber Command against a combined defensive force from Fighter Command, Fleet Air Arm, several squadrons of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and additional units from the USAF and various European NATO allies. Additionally, various British Army and Territorial Army anti-aircraft forces were included, along with the Royal Observer Corps and their RAF liaisons. Over 200,000 members of the various armed forces were involved in total, with around 1,300 aircraft[1] flying over 7,500 sorties.[2] It was the largest air exercise held since World War II,[3][2] besting even the multinational Operation Sky Shield of the early 1960s.
The exercise ran in several phases from 3 to 12 October. In most raids, Avro Lincoln and Boeing Washington bombers formed the majority of the attacking force, simulating Soviet Tupolev Tu-4 bombers, while English Electric Canberras and de Havilland Mosquitos were used in a variety of supporting roles during the mock attacks. In some of the operations, fighters from continental bases were used to simulate additional attackers. Defending forces included Gloster Meteor and de Havilland Vampire day and night fighters, RCAF Canadair Sabres and USAF F-86s.
The outcome was not encouraging. At night, interception rates were no better than they had been during the war in spite of the dramatic performance improvements of the fighters. Worryingly, it was repeatedly found that once the bombers crossed the coastline they became difficult to track and could roam around the countryside without problem. Matters were much better by day, when the fighters could hunt down the bombers on their own after being given initial information about the approach directions. Even then, the Canberra proved extremely difficult to intercept, and those few interceptions that did occur were entirely by luck.
The main issue causing these problems was the speed of the ground controlled interception system that tracked the bombers and vectored the fighters. This was accomplished as it had been during the war, with dozens of WAAFs moving wooden markers around large maps. This led to demands to upgrade the ROTOR radar network with the installation of the AMES Type 80 radars that performed all of these operations from a single large radar display. By the mid-1950s, the Type 80s had replaced the earlier Chain Home and AMES Type 7 of ROTOR, greatly improving interception capability.