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Okay, that's good to know.For II. above, yes, that is correct.
So you'd want the aim-point to be slightly ahead of the target, so when the first bomb start dropping out they'll land short, the bulk will land on the target, and the remaining few will go long...The theory was that if they all got dropped at the same time, and they missed, the entire load was wasted. If they "staggerd" then slightly, then there was a higher probability at least some would hit close enough to do some damage.
Do you know which planes could?Interestingly enough, there weere several planes that could release all at the same time.
Like that wobbling/directional hunting thing that they'd sometimes do? I've seen that happen with some bombs coming out the bay...The main problem with doing it was that, many times, the bombs would not quite fall completely aligned with the relative wind, and they would sort of rock around before settling out nose first.
I thought they had some kind of propeller/screw like device which was spun by the wind and after a certain number of spins, it would arm... I've seen a B-24 get a wing taken of by a falling bomb (it didn't blow up, but that bomber was doomed).If they managed to hit one another while rocking around, they could and sometimes did explode right under the bomb bay, taking the bomber out or, at minimum, severely damaging it. There were more than a few instance of that happening.
Honestly, up to this point, I thought the minimal interval was how quick the bomb-shackles could let go of all the bombs and they would all be able to clear the bay, lol.Thye solution arrived at was to slightly stagger the bomb releases, resulting in a typical bombing pattern.
I know the B-29 had an electronic sequencer so that they didn't have CG shifts as they dropped...There were also some deliberate choices made on the order of release, some being simultaneous but not adjacent in the bomb bay.
I assume the report was made by another crew?they still occasionally had the "bombs exploded right under the bomb bay" missing aircraft report.
Was the altitude of the target set on the bombsight, or guesstimated?when a bomber released a bomb, the distance of fall is not the altitude of the aircraft. It is the altitude of the aircraft minus the altitude of the target.
And gravity pulls down with a force of 1g provided the bomb is going straight down and presumably some fraction if it's on an angle.The bomb also accelerates due to gravity, but not infinitely. Like a skydiver, it has a terminal velocity beyond which it will not go any faster due to air drag, just like an aircraft. It accelerates until thrust (gravity) equals drag.
Cdo is like coefficient of drag? What's an equivalent flat-plate area?Each type had it's own Cdo and equivalent flat plate area.
And mathematics was never my strong point...Artillery calculations are quite involved, and bombs are no less complicated to calculate.
How did they determine crosswind on land? On water, they'd probably use the shape of the waves...Artillery math can be boiled down into tables assuming no crosswind, and I'd think bombs are simular. The bombsite needs to look at the fall distance, make the time-of-fall computation accounting for the bomb type being dropped, and account for any entered crosswind components.
What constituted medium altitude?In tests, the Norden bomb bombsight demonstrated a CEP of just 27 m at medoium altitudes.
Was this based on each bomber, or the whole formation?In practice, it wasn't quite so good, with 1943 CEP average at 370 m.
The USN realized by 1940 that the Norden would be inadequate for ship-bombing if I recall. Dive bombing and torpedo bombing were already being used, they might have done some glide-bombing with PBY's, but I didn't know they did a lot of work on skip-bombing, though I know the USAAF did a lot of work with skip and masthead attacks.As a result, the Navy turned to dive bombing and skip bombing.
Complicated stuff dropping a bomb through miles and miles of air...There are many other parameters to be considered, for example the gradient of air density and air temperature from the ground to the bombing level.
Skid on the air?This make the bombs skid on the air like a stone on a lake, with unpredictable results, sometime more than 10% of the bombiing level.
The bomb can be dropped unarmed, with the arming wire still attached,
Complicated stuff dropping a bomb through miles and miles of air...
Skid on the air?
I think you are thinking of modern bombs, not WWII 500 - 1,500 pounders. Here's a pic of a 1,000 pound under a Corsair:
Perhaps it was fitted with a propeller arming device later, but they routinely dropped them without those, too. I know tehre a place for one to be mounted on the tail ofg the bomb.
I'd bet that if the pilots always had their preference, they'd ALWAYS have them!