Wacław Struszyński

Wacław Struszyński (1904–1980) was a Polish electronics engineer who made a vital contribution to the defeat of U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic. He designed a unique and complex radio antenna which enabled effective high frequency (HF) radio direction finding systems to be installed on Royal Navy convoy escort ships. Such direction finding systems were referred to as HF/DF or Huff-Duff, and enabled the bearings of U-boats to be determined when the U-boats made radio transmissions.

Struszyński was born in Moscow in 1904, and the family moved to Warsaw in 1916. He qualified as Dipl. Ing. at the Warsaw Institute of Technology in 1928, and joined the Polish State Telecommunication Establishment, where he became head of the Direction Finding Division. When Poland was invaded in 1939, he was evacuated from Warsaw, and reached England in 1940.

In World War II, the U-boat 'wolf-packs' were organised by high frequency radio, in which long range communication was achieved by the reflection of radio signals from the ionosphere. German radio signals were decoded at Bletchley Park in England (termed Ultra intelligence), and when this revealed the intentions of the U-boats, convoys could be routed to avoid them. However, the convoys always had to be prepared for possible attacks.

There was an urgent need for convoy escort ships to know the bearings of U-boats, by determining the direction of the source of their radio transmissions. However, the technical problems of realising a seaborne high frequency direction finding system were severe in comparison to those of a land based system. This was mainly due to the very detrimental effect of radio signal reflections from the ship's superstructure, which could cause severe errors in the required measurement of U-boat bearings.

The key to an operational system was the design of an effective seaborne direction finding antenna, which was an extremely difficult task.

On his arrival in England, Struszyński joined the staff of HM Signal School (later called the Admiralty Signal Establishment), and in a very short time, he not only proposed a solution to the problem of reflected signals, but also introduced 'sense' into the antenna, to distinguish between radio signals arriving from the correct direction to those offset in direction by 180 degrees. He also led a team at HM Signal School that developed a practical antenna, which enabled effective high frequency direction finding systems to be installed on Royal Navy convoy escort ships.

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