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This sale is for aVery rare authentic, autographed PSA/DNA Certified8x10 glossypicture signed byJOSEPH LOCKARD who was the radar operator at Opano radar site in Hawaii the morning of december 7 1941 and detected the Japanese planes enroute to bomb Pearl Harbor. He detected the planes and called Mr. Kermit Tyler who told him to disregard, and told him that it was probaly a squadron of B-17\'s from the states.. It is signed, \"Joseph L. Lockard, Radar Operator, Pearl Harbor, Detected Jap Planes\". He has been potrayed in movies and documentaries.
Opana Radar SiteFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaOpana Radar SiteU.S. National Register of Historic PlacesU.S. National Historic LandmarkLocationKawela Bay, than one datesAdded to NRHPSeptember 19, 1991[1]DesignatedNHLApril 19, 1984[2]
TheOpana Radar Siteis aNational Historic LandmarkandIEEE Milestonethat commemorates the first operational use ofradarby the United States in wartime, during theattack on Pearl Harbor. It is located off theKamehameha Highwayjust inland from the north shore ofOahu,Hawaii, south ofKawela Bay. It is not open to the public.
Contents[hide]
- 1History
- 2Attack on Pearl Harbor
- 3Today
- 4See also
- 5References
- 6External links
History[edit]
In December 1939, the U.S. military established an Aircraft Warning Service (AWS) using radar to defend American territory. It employed theSCR-270 radar, the first United States long-range search radar created at the Signal Corps laboratories atFort Monmouth,New Jersey, circa 1937.[3]The radar\'s operating frequency was 106 megahertz and it had a maximum range of 150 miles, or greater if the equipment was at an elevated site.[4]
Under the command of Col. Wilfred H. Tetley the AWS established six mobile radar detector sites on O\'ahu at Kawaiola,Wainaae,Ka\'a\'awa,Koko Head,Schofield Barracks, andFort Shafter. On Thanksgiving Day in 1941, the Schofield Barracks radar set was moved to the Opana Radar Site, a location 532 feet above sea level with an unobstructed view of the Pacific Ocean. The set comprised four trucks carrying the transmitter, modulator, water cooler, receiver, oscilloscope, operator, generator and antenna.[3]
Attack on Pearl Harbor[edit]
On December 7, 1941, the Opana Radar Site was manned by Private Joseph L. Lockard and Private George Elliot, who detected approaching aircraft at 7:02 am (past the end of the site\'s scheduled operating day). Since the truck to take them to breakfast was late, the pair continued to practice with the radar equipment.[2][3]
The men reported their findings to the temporary information center atFort Shafter. Pvt Joseph McDonald took the call. Private McDonald found Lt Kermit Tyler when he entered the plotting room when he timed the message. Tyler told him that it was nothing. McDonald called back the Opana Radar site and spoke to Pvt Joseph Lockard. Lockard was excited, he had never seen so many planes.Infected with Lockard\'s excitement, McDonald returned to Tyler. McDonald suggested to Tyler to call back the plotters and notify Wheeler Field of the sighting. When Tyler again indicated that it was nothing, McDonald insisted that Tyler talk to Lockard directly.[3]The information center staff had gone to breakfast and Lt.Kermit Tyler[5]received the report.[3]Tyler reasoned that the activity was a flight of ArmyB-17 Flying Fortressbombers, and advised the radar crew not to worry. Tyler told investigators that a friend in the Bomber group advised him that whenever the radio station played Hawaiian music all night, a flight from the mainland was arriving, and using that for navigation homing. McDonald was relieved at about 7:40 and returned to his tent waking his tent mate up by saying \"Shim the Japs are coming\". Elliot and Lockard continued plotting the incoming planes until 7:40 when contact was lost. Shortly before 8:00 am they headed to Kawailoa for breakfast and only learned about the attack when they arrived. Elliot and Lockard rushed back to Opana and operated the radar until the attack ended.[3]
Back
Pearl Harbor – PVT Joseph Lockard1942
At an observance of World War II\'s 50th anniversary, a former Signal Corps member recalls only too well how the war began for the United States. Joseph Lockard was an Army private in Hawaii, manning a radar site on Oahu called Opana Point.
The radar, an SCR-270B, was very new — so new the people responsible for it, the Signal Aircraft Warning Company, Hawaii, were still in a training status — and very secret. Its antenna generated an electrical pulse into the sky. If anything interrupted the electrical beams, the radar\'s oscilloscope reflected the object as an echo.
Some echoes appeared constantly, such as from the nearby hills and cliffs, but others were temporary, and those were the ones be alert for. They showed and tracked planes intersecting the radar transmitter\'s beams.
Lockard and Pvt. George Elliott were waiting for a truck to take them back to their camp for breakfast. They kept the equipment on while they waited.
At 7:02 a.m., a large and luminous echo such as neither had seen before appeared on their oscilloscope. The more experienced Lockard took over the dial controls, and Elliott went to the plotting board. They calculated a large flight of planes 132 miles off Kahuku Point, approaching at three miles a minute.
The date was Dec. 7, 1941.
Lockard and Elliott notified the information center at Fort Shafter. On duty was switchboard operator Pvt. Joseph McDonald and new Air Corps Lt. Kermit Tyler. The plotters had left a few minutes earlier.
When Lockard told Tyler what was on the radar, the officer said, in effect, \"Forget it.\" It was 7:20 a.m. — Tyler assumed the planes were B-17s from the West Coast, bombers from Hickam Field or Navy patrol planes.
At Opana the two soldiers continued to follow the temporary echo until 7:39 a.m., when it was lost in the permanent echo created by the surrounding mountains. A short time later, the truck came to take them to breakfast.
Lockard and Elliott could see the black, oily smoke down in the harbor on their way to camp; back at camp, they knew immediately what they\'d seen on radar.
Lockard, 19 years old at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, had been in the Army a little more than a year. On July 12, 1942, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Signal Corps, one day ahead of the rest of his class of 855 new Signal Corps officers at Fort Monmouth, N.J.
At the time of his interview, 54 years later at his home in Harrisburg, Pa., he still thinks about if \"the attacking planes had left their carriers 15 minutes earlier.\"
Lockard said the significance is that radar in Hawaii operated for only three hours — 4-7 a.m. — and in the peacetime Army in Hawaii, after 7 a.m. \"everybody took off like the roadrunner. So nobody was there, but had the planes been picked up when the plotters were in place, the observers were there and so forth, it might have been a little bit different,\" he said. \"They may have been able to alert the gun crews on the ships and gotten a few planes in the air.\"
The radar unit that did its job that morning in Hawaii can\'t be found anywhere now, according to Lockard.
He said it was a portable unit that fit in four trucks. The antenna was a steel tower folded over on itself, with nine bays clamped onto it. When in position, it stood 50 feet, according to Lockard.
How the radar worked was very primitive compared with today, said Lockard, \"The difference between a Model T and a Corvette.\"
The antenna was swept back and forth and controlled by a rheostat underneath the oscilloscope. A target appeared as a blip on the scope\'s baseline. The target\'s azimuth was determined by sweeping back and forth until it peaked, getting the highest resolution.
\"At that point you\'d tell the plotter to mark the azimuth and he\'d read the number at the pointer on the antenna,\" Lockard said. \"At the same time you\'d look down at the dial on the oscilloscope that registered the miles and call out the miles to him. He had on his plotting table an overlay on a map guide and a ruler pivoted at the antenna location, and he would scale off the miles and make a mark, noting the time from a clock right over his head.\"
Lockard left the Army in December 1945 and held a variety of jobs. He started first as a trackman for Pennsylvania Railroad; when he left, he was a maintenance supervisor. He worked for Sylvania Electric and then AMP Incorporated, from which he retired in 1986.
He was an inventor for AMP and holds some 40 patents for switches and connectors. He has the original patent, for instance, on the switch inside your garage-door opener.
\"Get lucky,\" said Lockard to today\'s signalers. \"I don\'t know of anything to compare (serving in the Signal Corps) with. I can\'t think of a branch of the service in which a young person can get better training or education to benefit from the new technological age.\"
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