On May 13, 1935, a small convoy-two Royal Air Force lorries, a couple of cars, six men-pulled into the seafarers' village of Orford, about 150 kilometers northeast of London. Armed with some crude equipment, the men quickly set up shop in abandoned air force huts. Their secret mission: to save the United Kingdom from air attack. It was almost five years to the day before Hitler's invasion of Western Europe. But their early start developing the technology now known as radar proved critical in warning of approaching bombers in the Battle of Britain-saving thousands of lives and ultimately forcing the Nazis to abort plans to invade Great Britain.

Whenever the debate about U.S. development of a missile defense system heats up-and this month marks the 20th anniversary of the "Star Wars" speech in which Ronald Reagan proposed a system to render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete"-I think of Britain's radar pioneers. The analogy is far from perfect. Success for the British meant shooting down a small percentage of enemy bombers; in defending against a nuclear attack, even a 95 percent kill rate could mean atrocious losses. Still, there are striking parallels. Like today's nuclear missile threat, the threat to England in 1935 was vague. Radar then was completely unproved, as is missile defense these days ("Why Missile Defense Won't Work," TR April 2002). And like many of today's experts, leading authorities believed an effective defense was not feasible. As former prime minister Stanley Baldwin had famously told the House of Commons, "the bomber will always get through."