Arnold Wilkins

Arnold Frederic Wilkins OBE (20 February 1907 – 5 August 1985) was a pioneer in developing the use of radar. It was Arnold Wilkins who suggested to his boss, Robert Watson Watt, that reflected radio waves might be used to detect aircraft, and his idea led to the initial steps in developing ground-to-air radar in the UK. Wilkins also provided all the theoretical calculations to back-up his idea of aircraft detection, and it was his lashed-up system that he used in the Daventry Experiment to demonstrate that his idea would work. With the Daventry experiment, Wilkins successfully detected an aircraft (up to eight miles away) by reflection of radio waves for the first time in history.

Born in Chorlton, Cheshire, Wilkins was the son of John Knowles Wilkins of Chester and was educated at Chester City & County School, Manchester University and St. John's College, Cambridge.

He was usually known as 'Skip' Wilkins and worked at the Radio Research Station (RRS) with Robert Watson-Watt. In an experiment on 26 February 1935 in a field in Northamptonshire at Stowe Nine Churches, Watson-Watt and Wilkins became the first to prove the possibility of radar. Known as the Daventry Experiment, this demonstration detected a Royal Air Force Heyford bomber aircraft at a distance of eight miles. In mid-May 1935, Wilkins left the Radio Research Station with a small party, including Edward George Bowen, to start further research at Orford Ness, an isolated peninsula on the coast of the North Sea. By June they were detecting aircraft at 27 km, which was enough for scientists and engineers to stop all work on competing sound-based detection systems. The successful results of the initial test led to the setting up of a research station that was to become the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE).

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