The Air Defence Experimental Establishment (ADEE) was a civil agency run by the British

War Office The War Office was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the new Ministry of Defence (MoD). This article contains text from ...

, the civilian side of the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

. It was primarily tasked with developing

sound ranging In land warfare, artillery sound ranging is a method of determining the coordinates of a hostile battery using data derived from the sound of its guns (or mortar or rockets) firing. The same methods can also be used to direct artillery fire at ...

of enemy

artillery Artillery is a class of heavy military ranged weapons that launch munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during siege ...

, and the development of

anti-aircraft Anti-aircraft warfare, counter-air or air defence forces is the battlespace response to aerial warfare, defined by NATO as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action".AAP-6 It includes surface based, ...

weapons and techniques, notably

searchlight A searchlight (or spotlight) is an apparatus that combines an extremely bright source (traditionally a carbon arc lamp) with a mirrored parabolic reflector to project a powerful beam of light of approximately parallel rays in a particular direc ...

s. It was originally formed as the

Searchlight Experimental Establishment The Searchlight Experimental Establishment, or SLEE, was a Royal Engineers research group who studied the improvement of searchlights and other anti-aircraft systems like sound locators and predictors. The SLEE initially formed up at Woolwich Com ...

(SLEE) at

Woolwich Woolwich () is a district in southeast London, England, within the Royal Borough of Greenwich. The district's location on the River Thames led to its status as an important naval, military and industrial area; a role that was maintained throu ...

in 1917 out of a group within the Experimental Section of the

Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is a corps of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is heade ...

. In 1923 it moved to

RAF Biggin Hill London Biggin Hill Airport is an operational general aviation airport at Biggin Hill in the London Borough of Bromley, located south-southeast of Central London. The airport was formerly a Royal Air Force station RAF Biggin Hill, and a smal ...

and in 1924 was renamed the Air Defence Experimental Establishment. In 1939 it moved to

Christchurch, Dorset Christchurch () is a town and civil parish in Dorset on the south coast of England. The town had a population of 31,372 in 2021. For the borough the population was 48,368. It adjoins Bournemouth to the west, with the New Forest to the east. Part ...

. In 1941 it was joined by another development group known simply as the "Army Cell" that had been working on

radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...

systems at

Bawdsey Manor Bawdsey Manor stands at a prominent position at the mouth of the River Deben close to the village of Bawdsey in Suffolk, England, about northeast of London. Built in 1886, it was enlarged in 1895 as the principal residence of Sir William Cu ...

. The two groups were merged to become the

Air Defence Research and Development Establishment The Air Defence Research and Development Establishment (ADRDE) was a civilian research organization run by the War Office that primarily studied the development of radar for British Army use. It was formed in 1941 from the merger of the Air Defenc ...

(ADRDE). The radar groups from the

Air Ministry The Air Ministry was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force, that existed from 1918 to 1964. It was under the political authority of the Secretary of State ...

, by this time known as the

Telecommunications Research Establishment The Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) was the main United Kingdom research and development organization for radio navigation, radar, infra-red detection for heat seeking missiles, and related work for the Royal Air Force (RAF) d ...

(TRE), moved to nearby

Swanage Swanage () is a coastal town and civil parish in the south east of Dorset, England. It is at the eastern end of the Isle of Purbeck and one of its two towns, approximately south of Poole and east of Dorchester. In the 2011 census the civil ...

that same year.

References

* Military research establishments of the United Kingdom 20th-century military history of the United Kingdom Radar {{Mil-hist-stub