Reg Batt began his career in telecommunications with the Post Office in 1937 before joining the Air Ministry Research Establishment at Worth Matravers in 1940.  He worked in Lovell's team developing centimetric systems. When Lovell wanted to see if his crude experimental equipment working on a wavelength of about 10 centimetres would detect a moving target, Reg fitted a sheet of metal to his bicycle and rode it along the cliff edge at St Alban's Head. He was detected very clearly by the equipment and the team rushed off to Leeson House to tell Prof Dee leaving Reg to find out later that it had been a success. He continued with the AI development and then worked on OBOE the very accurate blind bombing system.

After the war he joined Bush Radio in London, and in 1959 he moved to work for the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) at Winfrith, Dorset.

In 1991 he published a first hand account of his wartime experiences in radar development under the title 'The Radar Army' - see below. He became secretary for the Purbeck Radar Museum Trust in the early 1990s, but died a few years ago as a delayed result of a car crash in which his wife died.

Dr Bill Penley, Jan 2011