The Architect of the Invisible Shield: Robert Watson-Watt

The defining battle of World War II was fought not with guns, but with an invisible shield of radio waves. Meet the man who built it. Robert Watson-Watt, a pragmatic Scottish physicist, spent two decades obsessed with tracking the chaos of lightning strikes—a pursuit that seemed purely academic. But when the German air threat loomed, the British government sought a miracle, and Watson-Watt was the only man who knew how to provide it. The Architect of the Invisible Shield traces the electrifying true story of how Watson-Watt turned his obscure research on atmospheric radio waves (sferics) into the critical invention of the 20th century: Radar. This is the comprehensive history of the Daventry Experiment—the single, heart-stopping moment that proved aerial detection was possible—and the subsequent, monumental effort to construct the Chain Home network that saved the Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain. From his humble working-class origins to his secret wartime missions, his contentious patent battles, and his advocacy for air traffic safety in later life, discover the complex, brilliant figure who engineered the most powerful defensive system of the war and whose legacy still guides every aircraft in the sky today. Approx.150 pages, 29500 word count