Radar and the Raft by Jeff Lantos

Radar and the Raft traces the invention of Radar through the harrowing story of a missionary family torpedoed and rescued during World War II.

Radar and the Raft: A True Story about a Scientific Marvel, the Lives It Saved, and the World It Changed by Jeff Lantos. Charlesbridge, 164 pages plus index and notes.

Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages 10-12; Teen, ages 12-15

Recommended for: ages 12-15

In the summer of 1942, Ethel Bell and her two children, Mary and Robert, were in a bind. Ethel was a long-term Baptist missionary who had labored in the field with her husband George. Now widowed, Ethel had been serving in Ivory Coast since 1938, but with the Nazi occupation of French West Africa her world had turned upside-down. The Bells were trapped behind enemy lines until friends helped them flee to Ghana (British territory). After weeks in the capitol city of Accra, they secured passage on the SS West Lashaway, an American cargo ship bound for the Caribbean. Their worries were over—until a German torpedo struck the Lashaway in the South Atlantic and spilled survivors into the sea. Mrs. Bell and her children, along with another child and fifteen sailors, found precarious refuge on a 10’ x 8’ raft.

That’s the dramatic setting for the story of radar, an invention developed over two centuries by some of science’s greatest names: Faraday, Hertz, Maxwell, Marconi, Tesla, and many others. The incremental discoveries of magnetism, electromagnetism, and electromagnetic waves built upon each other to produce the allies’ secret detection system for taking down deadly, costly German U-Boat attacks. While searching for U-Boats in the South Atlantic, radio operators detected an unknown object which they took for a submarine and alerted allied ships in the area. Mistaking the tiny raft for a U-Boat conning tower, the HMS Vimy was steaming into torpedo range before recognizing its mistake. After twenty days on the open sea, the dehydrated and half-starved passengers were finally rescued—thanks to radar.

The author uses a conversational tone, with a novelist’s skillful use of dialogue and character development and a master teacher’s flair for explaining scientific concepts clearly. That makes for a book with wide appeal for middle-graders and early teens. He does not slight Mrs. Bell’s religious convictions and liberal quotation of Bible passages—as well as the skepticism and hostility of some of the sailors after weeks of tossing on a raft with little hope of rescue. The technique of intertwining technology with one incident of its benefits is unique, but it works.

Consideration:

• There’s some cursing (a few instances of the d— word and the h—  word), as well as misuses of God’s name, all uttered under extreme stress. In some cases it’s hard to tell if “God” is profanity or a form of prayer.

Bottom Line: A gripping true story that blends scientific discovery, faith, survival, and rescue.

Also at Redeemed Reader:

• Reviews: More dramatic rescues at sea include Torpedoed!, The Finest Hours, Abandon Ship, and Attacked at Sea.
• Reviews: What would we do without inventors? Two large-format picture books about the general subject are 100 Things to Know about Inventions and The Way Things Work Now.
• Review: For adults and teens, the fascinating story of another navigation breakthrough: Longitude.

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