Radar has high current/high voltage implications that may very well have favored tubes at that point. Not the same low power electronics. If the plane needed

Radar has high current/high voltage implications that may very well have favored tubes at that point. Not the same low power electronics. If the plane needed to have a high power radio transmitter tubes might have been superior at that time too. It was still pretty early in the history of the transistor and active radar and radio transmitters are very different than consumer radio receivers.