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‘Battle of the Pips’

The Oxford Companion to World War II | 2001 | 700+ words | Copyright

‘Battle of the Pips’, so-called because of the blips, or pips, that appear on a radar screen to indicate contact with a ship or aircraft. At 0007 on 26 July 1943, a US flying boat reported radar contact with seven ships 320 km. (200 mi.) south-west of Attu, one of the Aleutian Islands in the North Pacific. American warships patrolling off another Aleutian island, Kiska, which had been occupied by the Japanese during the Aleutian Islands campaign, went to investigate. They, too, picked up radar contact and, thinking it was a convoy bound for Kiska, they engaged it.

A total of a thousand shells were fired, the wakes of torpedoes were sighted, and flares and lights reported. Below decks men felt the ‘shock’ of imagined near misses and one had a battle-induced nervous breakdown. While the ‘battle’ was raging the Japanese evacuated Kiska undisturbed and it was dawn before the radar targets were identified as return echoes from mountains more than 160 km. (100 mi.) away.

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I. C. B. DEAR and M. R. D. FOOT. "‘Battle of the Pips’." The Oxford Companion to World War II. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. 27 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

I. C. B. DEAR and M. R. D. FOOT. "‘Battle of the Pips’." The Oxford Companion to World War II. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. (May 27, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O129-BattleofthePips.html

I. C. B. DEAR and M. R. D. FOOT. "‘Battle of the Pips’." The Oxford Companion to World War II. 2001. Retrieved May 27, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O129-BattleofthePips.html

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