As a result of these factors, bombing accuracy suffered, with more than half the bombs dropped landing over 1, feet from their targets. Colonel Curtis E. LeMay provided a partial solution to the problem by identifying the best bombardiers in each squadron and designating them as lead bombardiers. Bombardiers in the other squadrons would drop their bombs when the lead bombardier dropped his. The real break came in late , however, with the introduction of the long-range P Mustang fighter, which when equipped with drop tanks could escort bombers all the way to Berlin.
After Allied forces moved across France in , accuracy was further improved via Oboe, a radar-navigation and blind-flying system using ground stations measuring distance to a radar beacon carried by the aircraft. Pathfinder aircraft, introduced on September 27, , to mark targets with smoke, also helped, as did H2X airborne radar, especially in winter. Furthermore, by bombing was being carried out at lower altitudes. Accessories included the glide bombing attachment GBA , which allowed the bombardier to perform vertical evasion maneuvers during a bomb run.
Filter kits from Polaroid helped the bombardier see the target by cutting down on glare and haze. The Norden featured two principal parts: the sight head and the base unit, or stabilizer, atop which the sight head was mounted.
An essential part of the autopilot, the stabilizer could still function without the sight head installed. Using a telescopic attachment on the sight, the bombardier established and compensated for deflection to synchronize the instrument. Bombs were then released automatically when the bomber reached the point computed by the sight. The AFCE linked to the autopilot enabled the bombardier to control lateral movement of the plane through his adjustments of the sight.
Until late , the Norden bombsight was always protected by exceptionally heavy security. Sights were normally stored in air-conditioned, dustproof vaults that were patrolled by armed guards. During training, USAAF bombardiers had to swear a solemn oath to guard the secret weapon with their lives see sidebar below , and they were responsible for destroying it in the event of an emergency landing behind enemy lines.
Whenever a bombardier or ordnance technician carried a sight out to an aircraft, two armed guards accompanied him. After hundreds of Norden-equipped bombers were shot down over enemy territory during , Allied officials knew that the Germans had surely studied the bombsight and learned its secrets. As a result, security was finally relaxed. When the war ended, details of the ingenious device were finally made public. But U. Herman W. Lang, a naturalized U.
Recruited as a member of the Duquesne Spy Ring, in Lang gained access to the plans for the bombsight and hand-copied the blueprints, which were then smuggled to Germany via ocean liner. The pilot could set the rough heading that he wanted the aircraft to hold.
The effect was much more accurate, with a quicker response time than the human pilot would be able to accomplish. What it did was take a bunch of parts and put them together into one tool that solved a practical problem. The technology was there. The only revolutionary thing was putting it all together and using it in a new way. Carl Norden was a Dutch engineer who emigrated to the US in He worked for the Navy on various projects, including working on improving their Course Setting Bomb Sights.
But the government wanted a fully automatic system that was easier to use and more accurate than the old CSBS. Norden got the contract to build what became known as the Mark XV in He worked tirelessly to develop all of the bits and pieces and delivered the finished product in The Carl L. Norden Company incorporated that year and began producing bombsights for the Navy, and later for the Army Air Corps as well. The Air Corps referred to the unit as the M Norden bombsights eventually became the standard piece of equipment for the high-altitude bombers of World War II.
Most famously, the B Flying Fortresses were outfitted with reliable and accurate Norden bombsights. The Korean and Vietnam conflicts saw the last use of conventional visual bombsights such as the Norden. For high-speed jet aircraft, a conventional bombsight with a spotting scope is nearly useless. Radar-based systems eventually replaced traditional bombsights, but even these had their drawbacks. Instead of relying solely on gravity to do the job, these bombs have guidance systems that can home in on a target as they fall.
Bombs can be laser-guided to guided by GPS. Norden was contracted to work for the Navy, and even the Army only had the faintest idea of what was being worked on when he started. Workers who built the bombsights at factories around the US were sworn to secrecy. Despite the efforts to keep the bombsight under wraps, details leaked out. Designs had been passed to the Germans before WWII even started, and with them, they built their own very similar device.
The Lotfernrohr 7 worked well for them, pushing out many earlier bombsights and emerging as the primary unit used by the Luftwaffe towards the end of the war. Did it change the outcome of the war? Was it any better than its only other competitor, the Sperry system? Regardless of where you stand on the issue, the Norden bombsight can be credited with simplifying bombing operations and improving overall effectiveness.
The system had its problems, but it did work very well under the most grueling conditions. Table of Contents What is a Bombsight? CC0 Carl Norden. Here was an army that had just had experience in the First World War, where millions of men fought each other in the trenches, getting nowhere, making no progress, and here someone had come up with a device that allowed them to fly up in the skies high above enemy territory and destroy whatever they wanted with pinpoint accuracy.
And the U. And to put that in perspective, the total cost of the Manhattan project was three billion dollars. Half as much money was spent on this Norden bombsight as was spent on the most famous military-industrial project of the modern era. And there were people, strategists, within the U. And for Norden as well, this device had incredible moral importance, because Norden was a committed Christian. In fact, he would always get upset when people referred to the bombsight as his invention, because in his eyes, only God could invent things.
He was simply the instrument of God's will. And what was God's will? Well God's will was that the amount of suffering in any kind of war be reduced to as small an amount as possible. And what did the Norden bombsight do?
Well it allowed you to do that. It allowed you to bomb only those things that you absolutely needed and wanted to bomb. So in the years leading up to the Second World War, the U. And they trained 50, bombardiers on how to use them — long extensive, months-long training sessions — because these things are essentially analog computers; they're not easy to use.
And they make every one of those bombardiers take an oath, to swear that if they're ever captured, they will not divulge a single detail of this particular device to the enemy, because it's imperative the enemy not get their hands on this absolutely essential piece of technology. And whenever the Norden bombsight is taken onto a plane, it's escorted there by a series of armed guards.
And it's carried in a box with a canvas shroud over it. And the box is handcuffed to one of the guards. It's never allowed to be photographed. And there's a little incendiary device inside of it, so that, if the plane ever crashes, it will be destroyed and there's no way the enemy can ever get their hands on it.
The Norden bombsight is the Holy Grail. So what happens during the Second World War? Well, it turns out it's not the Holy Grail. In practice, the Norden bombsight can drop a bomb into a pickle barrel at 20, ft. And of course, in wartime, conditions aren't perfect. First of all, it's really hard to use — really hard to use. And not all of the people who are of those 50, men who are bombardiers have the ability to properly program an analog computer.
Secondly, it breaks down a lot. It's full of all kinds of gyroscopes and pulleys and gadgets and ball-bearings, and they don't work as well as they ought to in the heat of battle. Thirdly, when Norden was making his calculations, he assumed that a plane would be flying at a relatively slow speed at low altitudes. Well in a real war, you can't do that; you'll get shot down.
So they started flying them at high altitudes at incredibly high speeds. And the Norden bombsight doesn't work as well under those conditions. But most of all, the Norden bombsight required the bombardier to make visual contact with the target. But of course, what happens in real life? There are clouds, right. It needs cloudless sky to be really accurate. Well how many cloudless skies do you think there were above Central Europe between and ?
Not a lot. And then to give you a sense of just how inaccurate the Norden bombsight was, there was a famous case in where the Allies bombed a chemical plant in Leuna, Germany. And the chemical plant comprised acres. And over the course of 22 bombing missions, the Allies dropped 85, bombs on this acre chemical plant, using the Norden bombsight. Well what percentage of those bombs do you think actually landed inside the acre perimeter of the plant?
And of those 10 percent that landed, 16 percent didn't even go off; they were duds. The Leuna chemical plant, after one of the most extensive bombings in the history of the war, was up and running within weeks.
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