Eric Christopher Stanley Megaw MBE (1908 – 25 January 1956) was an Irish (Belfast-educated) engineer who refined the power of the

cavity magnetron The cavity magnetron is a high-power vacuum tube used in early radar systems and currently in microwave ovens and linear particle accelerators. It generates microwaves using the interaction of a stream of electrons with a magnetic field ...

for radar purposes (detection of U-boats) in the Second World War. He was appointed an MBE in 1943.

Early life

He was born in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 ...

. Two of his younger brothers,

Peter Megaw Arthur Hubert Stanley "Peter" Megaw, (20 July 191028 June 2006) was an architectural historian and archaeologist. He specialised in Byzantine churches. He served as Director of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus between 1935 and 1960 and as ...

and Basil Megaw, attended the same

grammar school A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented secondary school, ...

as him in

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingd ...

. He was the son of Arthur Stanley Megaw who married Helen Smith. He attended

Campbell College Campbell College located in Belfast, Northern Ireland and founded in 1894 comprises a preparatory school department (junior age) and a senior Northern Ireland 'Voluntary Grammar' school, the latter meaning, in terms of provision of education, a ...

and

Queen's University Belfast , mottoeng = For so much, what shall we give back? , top_free_label = , top_free = , top_free_label1 = , top_free1 = , top_free_label2 = , top_free2 = , established = , closed = , type = Public research university , parent = ...

. He was an active

radio amateur An amateur radio operator is someone who uses equipment at an amateur radio station to engage in two-way personal communications with other amateur operators on radio frequencies assigned to the amateur radio service. Amateur radio operators ha ...

, and while still at school was the first amateur operator to manage contact between Ireland and Australia. After graduating from Queen's at the age of 20, he was awarded a research fellowship at

Imperial College, London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

Career

Cavity magnetron

He was the leader of a group working on the cavity magnetron from April 1940 in north-west London. The cavity magnetron was producing power of around 500W (E1188 version). Eric Megaw changed the design, coating the cathode with oxides (E1189 version) and eight segments from six, to increase the power to 100 kW by September 1940, enough to detect submarines. The first trial on board an aircraft took place in March 1941. The greatly-improved cavity magnetron would be valuable to the

Tizard Mission The Tizard Mission, officially the British Technical and Scientific Mission, was a British delegation that visited the United States during WWII to obtain the industrial resources to exploit the military potential of the research and development ( ...

Personal life

He was fluent in French, German and Italian. His name has sometimes been erroneously spelled ''Eric McGaw''.

References

* ''The Development of Radar Equipments for the Royal Navy, 1935–45'', page 111,

Naval Radar Trust A navy, naval force, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare, naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral zone, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and ...

1995 * ''Technical and Military Imperatives: A Radar History of World War 2'', page 153

External links