alt Hacker NewsAh, thanks. As I think about it, you're right. There was a Lorentz landing system in bombers that was far too accurate for just landing. Intelligence gathering extracted that from the crew's conversations. That was how they hid their direction finding... But the system already existed.
I think I got confused with radar, but radar isn't beams as such.
It is amazing how war accelerates technology development. Radar and the Manhattan project are cases in point, probably squashing 20 years of normal research into 3. Drones in Ukraine are a contemporary example.
However, when the war is over, things stagnate: The UK bombed the Falklands in 1982 with a radar which was essentially an upgraded wartime H2S/H2X set.