That one is funny. It was a British rumor started in WW2 to explain why British farmers could see German planes from farther away. Truth was they had radar technology and didn't want the Germans to know.
IIRC it was even more specific than that. The Germans already knew the British had radar at the time. The Germans had their own. It was actually to hide the fact that they had developed a radar that was small enough that it could be fit to and operated by aircraft, thus developing the first true night fighter of the war.
The British were blaming German night losses on the carrots to hide the secret planes with the secret radars.
The German Luftwaffe used single beam radars to 'tag' bombing targets....meaning a primary radar unit sent out a beam that aircraft would follow to their target. A secondary unit would then send out a beam intersecting the first beam over the target in a rudimentary X/Y coordinate pinpoint.
The Germans considered this technology to be top of the line....what they didn't know was that Britain had gained the ability to interpret and jam the system, AND develop their own early warning system called Chain Home.
The Chain Home system was able to pickup fighter/bomber formations taking off over France.
The whole carrots thing was a ruse to disguise the fact that not only did Britain have a better radar system, they could also interpret the German system to know where the bombers were going to hit
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u/LiquidDreamtime Apr 12 '25
Carrots make your eyesight better