Alden Winn : Professor and WW II Veteran

by Gordon Kraft

Not many people work in the same place for fifty years. Loyalty, self-sacrifice, dedication and hard work are characteristics sometimes lost in today’s mobile society. By now you probably have already figured out that this article is about Alden Winn. Many of you will remember him as the chairman of the Electrical Engineering Department. He was chairman for seventeen years. He started working at UNH before Kingsbury Hall was built. It was Alden’s hands that installed much of the power panel where many of you had sophomore labs. Alden was also chairman of the Durham Town Board of Selectman for many years. It was largely due to Alden’s work that the Great Bay was saved from large-scale development by a major petroleum company. It was Alden Winn who stood up to Aristotle Onassis and blocked that project. But most of you know all that already. What you probably don’t know was that Alden Winn was also a war hero. Alden Winn’s engineering instincts played a large role in World War II. It’s that story that this article is all about.

In 1944, World War II in Europe was in full swing. Hitler’s armies were on the move headed across Belgium toward the sea. If they made it to Antwerp, they could destroy American supply lines, control all of Belgium, and change the course of the war. Alden Winn was a young officer assigned to the 52nd Anti-aircraft Brigade of the Ninth Air Force stationed on the Muese River in February 1944. He was unique in that he was one of a very few people who understood the operation of radar systems. He had been educated at MIT in the principles and fundamentals of the new technology. Radar was in its infancy. Due to battlefield confusion, several portable radar units intended for aircraft landing guidance systems in the Pacific had been shipped mistakenly to Europe. Nobody knew how to operate the units or even if they would actually work at all. Alden was assigned the task of testing the units to see if they could be of any value in providing extra information to the artillery and anti-aircraft units. Alden set up one of the units, which was powered by portable generators, and tried it out. In a matter of hours the rubber belts on the generator failed. The first belt was replaced and it too failed. The units were virtually useless. First Alden tried to locate a source of new or better belts. No source was available in Belgium at that time. The country was at war and resources were in short supply. The only alternative was to redesign the pulleys to put less stress on the belts. Again Alden tried to find the right size pulleys. None were available. So Alden decided he had to make them from scratch. So he went to the "junkyard" where there were hundreds of planes on the ground, shot down during the fighting. In a Jeep Alden went out and searched from plane to plane. At times he had to pull over and take cover from bomber air raids. Eventually he was able to salvage enough scrap aluminum to make the new pulleys. Alden came up with the design and located a local machine shop that could mill out the new pulleys. The new pulleys worked and the radar units became operational, but that was only half the problem.

If the radar units were to be used in the field, someone had to operate them. Nobody in all of Europe was trained to operate the new systems. Alden had to find people who were willing to learn about the new technology and would be willing to put in hours to operate them along the front lines. Alden realized that the best people for this job would be the people whose necks were on the line, the American pilots. He trained the pilots to operate the systems and convinced them to operate the systems during their off shifts. A network of these redesigned radar systems was established. Since the systems had limited range they needed to be operated right near the front lines. The goal was to obtain some level of early warning so that if the Germans attacked through the air, the Americans could get their planes in the air before they were destroyed on the ground. Within days of the installation of the radar network, the German Luftwaffe planes attacked. Alden’s radar network worked, giving the Americans about twenty minutes warning of approaching German planes. Instead of finding American planes on the ground, the Germans met fierce resistance in the air. Many German planes were destroyed and the war started turning in the favor of the Americans. Essentially, these radar systems and subsequent air battles marked the downfall of the German Air Force. The history books record these battles as the high water mark in the German progress toward the sea [1]. It was the turning point, the beginning of the end for Hitler and his army.

For his contributions in the Battle of the Bulge, Alden was awarded the Bronze Star, the highest honor a non-battlefield American serviceman can receive. It was his attention to details, perseverance, problem solving skills, and his ability to work with people that helped turn the tide that day in 1944. Were it not for Alden Winn, the world as we know it today might be significantly different. Of course, he’ll tell you he was only doing his job.

This year Alden officially retired from the position he has held for the last few years in the CEPS Dean’s Office helping to coordinate educational programs at UNH for high school science students.

If you would like to help us as we honor Alden Winn for fifty years of incredible contributions to the ECE Department, the Durham community, and the world, please drop us a note.

[1] For a much better account of this battle you might want to read "Hitler’s Last Gamble- The Battle of the Bulge 1944-45", by T.N. Dupuy.