Aerial Bombing Question

[stona]

The bombing was supposed to have been done in formation that day too. Some units were so badly shot up on the way in that they did effectively regroup after bombing. The 306th BG is a case in point. Henry C Cordery, a co pilot in an aircraft of that Group later wrote.

"We came off the target and regrouped. I looked around us at the group and there wasn't much of us left. In my squadron we started with six ships; two three ship elements, and being in the lead ship I saw all five of them go down. Out of eighteen aircraft we had six left."

That is a forced regrouping to reform some sort of mutually protective formation and to cover for huge gaps left by the aircraft shot down, not a planned manoeuvre. On the bomb run each aircraft would have to fly straight and level, no adjustments could be performed without compromising the bombing accuracy. If the Group had not reformatted prior to the bomb run it would have to do so afterwards. Losing 2 out of three aircraft in a Group is bound to cause problems with the formation. I doubt that anyone trained for losses on that scale.

Lt.Col. Beirne Lay, who flew to Regensburg that day would later write of his mission (in 'I Saw Regensburg Destroyed' which was a bit optimistic)

"And then our weary, battered column, short 24 bombers, but still holding the close formation that had brought the remainder through by sheer air discipline and gunnery, turned into the target."

The 100th BG, with which the Colonel was flying as an observer, had managed to maintain it's formation or reform it, prior to the bomb run.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Zipper730]

So you would have the bombers coming in from all points of the compass trying to hit an aiming point and then as Milosh said, try to form up into a defensive box over enemy territory. Good God......

I didn't mean individual bombers coming in from every direction converging on one spot and then trying to form into a box. What I meant was

• Bombers would configure themselves in a series of 12-ship formations to avoid an excessively long precession: They would either all fly at the same range of altitudes at the start or operate at different altitude ranges
  
• Each procession would come at the target from different directions: Preferably to obscure the intended target
• If the bombers weren't at the same range of altitudes at the start: They would begin descending at predetermined points prior to or after making the turn to target (which ever would confuse the enemy more)
• They would break up into an amorphous formation to allow individual bombing
• Once clear of each other they'd start forming up and/or climb to the correct altitudes or continue as is.

Admittedly, wuzak pointed out that time over target would be minimized by just staying in formation and the 12-ship formations would probably be narrow enough to allow relatively narrow ring to plop all the bombs in. So the idea of breaking up and reforming would be avoided.

Fighter cover wasn't mentioned but would be added.

 

[stona]

The bombers flew to the target in formation on a strictly predetermined route. Apart from anything else it was the only chance they had of their rendez vous with the limited escort planned. In the event this was not successful, leaving the bombers more exposed than they should have been, If you want details of the raids they are readily available. All the bombers assigned a particular target approached from the the same direction.

Here are a couple of diagrams showing the two raids, the routes flown and a lot of other information, from Donald Caldwell's 'Day Fighters in Defence of the Reich - A War Diary 1942-45' which I highly recommend.

I can't rotate them!

The track out over the North Sea on 14th October, returning without any attempt to reach the target is the B-24s of the 2nd B.D. Not only did they fail to make formation, hence abandoning the mission, but they took one of the P-47 escort Groups with them!

Cheers

Steve

 

[Airframes]

Good stuff Steve.
I've rotated the maps for you.

 

[Milosh]

Zipp you just don't understand how hard it was to fly these a/c in formation even as an Element. Dimension X in the diagram is 50-60feet.

The 8th AF Bomb Groups had used various formation schemes with some degree of success beginning in 1942, but the Box Formation had eventually become a standard for all 8th AF group formations. The Box Formation was accepted at that time as the best arrangement of airplanes for maximum firepower, from all guns of all planes, while providing a bombing pattern with maximum effect.

The Combat Box Formation was made up of a number of basic airplane relationships. From the smallest to the largest, these formations were:

1. Element Formation: three planes
2. Squadron Formation: four Elements - twelve planes
3. Group Formation: three Squadrons – thirty-six planes
4. Wing Formation: three Groups – one hundred and eight planes
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

 

[stona]

I'm starting to think that he is willfully misunderstanding

Notice on the first raid the intensity of Luftwaffe attacks as the various bomber units approached the target. No wonder there was some reforming and adjustment of the formations following the bomb runs.
They were effectively harassed from Mainz to Regensburg, almost 200 miles as the crow flies.

Cheers

Steve

 

[KiwiBiggles]

I didn't mean individual bombers coming in from every direction converging on one spot

Digging back into a hazy memory of a long-ago reading of "The Dambusters" - not a particularly strong reference, I admit - I think that 617 squadron used to do this when dropping Tallboys and Grand Slams. The high-precision bomb-sights they used needed a long straight run in to stabilize, and so they would come in from dispersed compass points at carefully staggered intervals and altitudes, in an attempt to present a less-concentrated target for flak.

If this is correct, it must have been quite a spectacle, watching several heavy bombers converging on what would appear from the ground to be a single point at the same time, and then a rapid stream of bombs coming down. I would think that something like this would only be possible in an elite squadron like 617, with its much greater experience and training levels.

 

[fubar57]

I'm starting to think that he is willfully misunderstanding Steve

Yep, got that feeling from his first day on

 

[Zipper730]

Zipp you just don't understand how hard it was to fly these a/c in formation even as an Element.

I probably never could grasp it never having flown an aircraft. I have the following questions

• These aircraft did periodically make gradual turns while in these formations?
• Would it be difficult to make a gradual descent of say 5-degrees, followed by a level-off while in this formation flying level?
  
• Would the bomb-sight's gyro topple in such a descent?

Using this image I might be able to illustrate (I'd have to use a bunch of them in copies to illustrate the point) my position


BTW: Stona, I'm not trying to be deliberately ignorant...

 

[stona]

Yes, no and no.

The airmen of the USAAFs trained for this kind of flying and it took a long time and considerable skill. When the British started daylight bombing they could not fly such tight formations, they had never been trained for it, operating by night required different skills, so they flew a loose formation which they called a 'gaggle'. By this time the Jagdwaffe had almost vanished as a threat and escorts were very strong, so the need for US style defensive boxes no longer existed. British bombers were not sufficiently armed or armoured to survive in heavily contested enemy airspace by day in any case.

The Norden bomb sight was a tachometric sight which did require a straight and level run in to the target, even gentle manouevring would cause inaccurate bombing. There is an account somewhere of the procedure which American bombardiers followed in activating, programming and using the Norden sight, but I can't find it and don't trust my ability to recall the details accurately. I read different estimates for the length of the bomb run required, but the lowest I've seen is 40 seconds, which must have seemed an eternity to the crews.
The British Mk XIV was much superior in this respect, requiring just 10 seconds straight run to the target and unlike the Norden it could be used to bomb on the climb and glide. The Norden was better in certain other respects and both were excellent devices for the time, the best available to the Allies with the exception of the British SABS Mk II A, but less than 1000 of these were made.

Cheers

Steve

Edit: The time of the straight and level bomb run depended on how far from the target the bombardier engaged the 'stabilised bombing approach device' (SBAE). This might explain the different times in various accounts. Once the bombardier was confident that he had matched the reticle speed with the aircraft speed (so that the reticle would remain on the intended target and not creep away from it) he would engage the SBAE which then flew the aircraft to the correct release point, where the bombs were dropped automatically. If the reticle had drifted from the intended target the sight had no way of 'knowing' this and an error would result. For the final bomb run on the SBAE the immensely complicated Norden sight, perhaps the most complicated adding computator known to man at the time, acted as little more than a timer!
The Norden sight was no more accurate than others of the same era, but as MacFarland noted in 'America's Pursuit of Precision Bombing' there was something about the notion of precision and the technologies to achieve it that appealed to the American psyche in a way not applicable to Europeans. He wrote that for Americans 'precision' invoked:

"Visions of frontier marksmen always hitting their mark - the guilty and never the innocent. It raised images of a special American way of war. It satisfied a deep seated American need for the moral high ground in war while satisfying an American hunger for technological achievement."

There is certainly some truth in that, and the intention is admirable. Unfortunately in WW2 the intention was not realised in reality, and it often isn't today.

There is a lot of mythologising about the Norden sight, something other nations don't do about their equally or even more accurate sights. The USAAF acknowledged their own lack of precision, Spaatz in 1944 wrote:

"We are becoming increasingly aware of our inability to achieve accurate bombing on some of our top priority targets."

96% of all bombs dropped on Japan were dropped after 9th March 1945 and after Le May had effectively abandoned daylight precision bombing. This included two of the most indiscriminate weapons ever used, both dropped, paradoxically, with remarkable precision.

Given these factors, it is surprising that the myth of the Norden bomb sight, the 'Blue Ox', has survived to this day.

 

[Zipper730]

Steve,

1. Maneuvering & Faking out the Enemy: I'm not sure to what extent the USAAF would use dog-legs and other maneuvers to mislead the enemy interceptors into thinking the bombers were heading for one target, and not the other. I know the RAF did this all the time, however. I'm curious about how far-out or close-in did one expect and need to execute a dog-leg to mislead enemy fighter aircraft as to your target?

2. Norden Bombsight Capabilities & Questions

• Run to Target: If I recall the run-in time was around 30-seconds -- I have heard that number appear quite often (The Sperry required approximately a 60-second run-to target).
• Realigning the Gyro: If I recall that too 540 seconds or 8 minutes and 40 seconds if it toppled.
  
• Automated Release: I didn't know the release was simply timed and done automatically -- I was always under the impression the bombardier hit the release button, which pickled 'em off (though I am uncertain if that term was ever used in WWII). Were there both manual and automatic release modes?

3. Moral High-Ground: Well, I suppose there is a tendency for the US to try and maintain the appearance of the moral high-ground. The USAAF from 1942 didn't really care all that much about causing civilian deaths; they were simply worried about looking bad most of the times. Basically if somebody's got to do something really ugly, let the RAF do it! As time went on, things changed of course.

4. Stabilized Automatic Bombsight: In what ways were they superior or inferior to the Norden?

 

[pbehn]

3. Moral High-Ground: Well, I suppose there is a tendency for the US to try and maintain the appearance of the moral high-ground. The USAAF from 1942 didn't really care all that much about causing civilian deaths; they were simply worried about looking bad most of the times. Basically if somebody's got to do something really ugly, let the RAF do it! As time went on, things changed of course.

As far as I can see this is purely a post war mentality projected on to WW2 thinking. The only reason I can see for it is that the US believed that they could perform precision daylight bombing long after the RAF knew it was frequently (mostly) impossible. The USAAF only started operations in 1942, getting the USAAF operational in the UK was a huge civilian engineering project. In WW2 9000 miles of runways/taxiways were laid in UK and approximately 1 million associated buildings.
https://content.historicengland.org...concrete/nine-thousand-miles-of-concrete.pdf/

In 1942 the USAAF didnt really have a position on the subject just an ideal, they were just getting started. For US commanders and their staff weather conditions in Europe throughout the seasons were a surprise.

 

[stona]

The Norden bomb sight was connected to an automated bomb release system, just as the British MK XIV and SABS were. I think the confusion arises from the American method of 'pickling on the leader' when all but the lead 'bombardier' in a formation simply manually released their bombs when they saw the leaders drop. Even with this system the manual release button still activated a bomb distributor.
I have put 'bombardier' in inverted commas because, given a few bunches of bananas, you could probably train a chimpanzee to 'pickle on the leader' and the skills of the job were concentrated in just the lead bombardier alone.

Pbehn, that is not a post war mentality, it is a thinking that influenced American doctrine in the inter war years. It is quite different from the RAF, which paid public lip service to the idea of precision but always had a concept of area and moral bombing in its doctrine and it was an easy fall back to adopt. The British had been carrying out moral bombing in their imperial air policing, albeit on a much, much smaller scale, for years. The principal, that an attack on the morale of the enemy's civil population could be effective, was established. It was much harder for the Americans. The Americans did launch area raids, targeting, just like the British, the centres of conurbations but even the USSBS is in denial of this. It concedes in its Area Studies Division Report only that it considered in the report

"...raids by the United States Army Air Forces flown under non visual conditions against industrial targets in cities where the bomb fall distribution was similar to that of an area raid."

This is dishonest and wishful thinking. These were area raids, the Americans just would not call them that. The euphemism 'area type raids' appeared later.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Robert Porter]

I would not say the USAAF was at all in denial. The incendiary raids, especially in Japan, were by definition area raids and were designed precisely and knowingly to degrade civilian morale as well as attack the distributed manufacturing infrastructure. Certainly the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were area attacks.

 

[tyrodtom]

They surely used their best bombardiers as the lead bombardier.
But that was be no great secret to the Luftwaffe, fighters and AA concentrated on lead aircraft, when they could.

So there would be missions that the final lead bombardier position might have passed down through several aircraft.

 

[stona]

They surely used their best bombardiers as the lead bombardier.
But that was be no great secret to the Luftwaffe, fighters and AA concentrated on lead aircraft, when they could.

So there would be missions that the final lead bombardier position might have passed down through several aircraft.

I've read Luftwaffe accounts in which it is clear that the lead aircraft were targeted. Whether the Germans knew the American method I don't know.
I'm not sure that all the aircraft of such a Group even carried a bomb sight.
Cheers
Steve

 

[stona]

I would not say the USAAF was at all in denial. .

As far as the European war goes it certainly was. Even after the war it refused to actually use the phrases 'area attack' or 'area raid'. Only later did the phrase 'area type raid' start to appear in some Air Force documents. The quote above, from USSBS' Area Studies Division, even while allowing that the bomb fall was like an area raid, still emphasises that the attack was aimed at 'industrial areas within cities', which, frankly, is nonsense. The Americans simply aimed at the centre of the conurbation. Not a single H2X raid, was genuinely aimed at a specific military or industrial target, that would have been impossible and beyond the means of the technology. Whatever the official target in the planning, the reality is that these were just another type of area raid, and it is NOT coincidence that the bomb fall resembled exactly that.
The British, much more pragmatic and experienced in area bombing had a rather more sophisticated way of establishing the aiming point, but at least they were honest about it being designed to create maximum devastation and dislocation, not the destruction of any particular target(s).
The cover for area bombing, as in the Strategic Bombing Directives that followed the Normandy landings was 'important industrial areas'. This was simply a euphemism for area bombing and was Harris' get out of jail card when Strategic Directive No. 2 seemed to be forcing him to comply with the oil and transport plans. It also served as a useful escape clause for the Americans who simply couldn't hit their specific targets with non visual bombing techniques, but could hit an 'important industrial area' since any area of any city was bound to contain something that could be deemed important, anything from a telephone exchange to a cross road (though that might fall under the transport plan).

I don't know much about what went on in the Pacific, so I can't really comment. It seems that the raids you mention are often referred to as 'incendiary' raids, which is at least true.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Robert Porter]

I disagree, as of December 1943 the USAAF openly engaged in "city busting" or area attacks on Germany and other European targets. By the time US bombers were able to reach the Japanese home islands no attempt at precision bombing was even thought of.

 

[stona]

Reading above it seems like I'm having a go at the Americans which is not my intention. Neither the British, nor the Americans were honest about their bombing policies in public, but the Americans do seem to have had difficulty coming to terms with what they were doing within their own Air Forces. This may have been as much an unwillingness to admit that the results achieved did not match expectation or doctrine. They were hardly alone in this

Over Germany the US Air Forces adopted a looser set of rules for targeting than it did over areas of occupied Europe. The 8th Air Force's 'Bombardment Directive' of 27th June 1943, issued to implement Pointblank stated that

"Any target in Germany is cleared for attack at any time."

Unlike their Bomber Command colleagues, US air crews were not tied to one target but had an option, in certain circumstances to attack alternative targets. Both the 8th and 15th Air Forces adopted the same four basic rules to establish target priorities.

1.Primary. Visual attack on a war plant, rail facility or military target. Chosen by Air Force Headquarters in accordance with current bombing directives.

2. Secondary. Usually chosen by Air Force Headquarters in accordance with current bombing directives, with its location coordinated with the bombers' planned route and fighter protection.

a. Visual: an alternative target similar to the primary.

b. Nonvisual: Area attack on a city associated with either of the above.

3. Last-Resort Target. A tertiary target with the same qualifications as a secondary target.

4. Target of Opportunity. A target selected by the mission or individual bomber formation leaders, while in the air, when they are unable to attack any of the above targets. If weather or enemy action scatters a formation, all leaders and pilots are encouraged to seek targets of opportunity within specified limits. Forbidden over occupied Europe, but could be either visual or radar over greater Germany.

12th August 1943 saw the first area type raid by the 8th Air Force, when 106 bombers attacked Bonn as a target of opportunity.
After the adoption of H2S/H2X systematic area bombing commenced, the first such raid being on 27th September 1943. This was Eighth Air Force Mission No.104 which found the target city of Emden completely covered by clouds, but dropped 506 tons of bombs, on radar, through the cloud. This was the first ordered area raid. After this the Eighth Air Force's own targeting documents give the game away, despite later denial. For example, just one week later the targets for a raid on Frankfurt were listed as, primary, 'Frankfurt - city proper' and secondary, 'any industrial area in Germany'.
I leave you to decide how those targets can be equated with precision bombing.

Cheers

Steve

 

[pbehn]

Reading above it seems like I'm having a go at the Americans which is not my intention. Neither the British, nor the Americans were honest about their bombing policies in public, but the Americans do seem to have had difficulty coming to terms with what they were doing within their own Air Forces. This may have been as much an unwillingness to admit that the results achieved did not match expectation or doctrine. They were hardly alone in this

Over Germany the US Air Forces adopted a looser set of rules for targeting than it did over areas of occupied Europe. The 8th Air Force's 'Bombardment Directive' of 27th June 1943, issued to implement Pointblank stated that

"Any target in Germany is cleared for attack at any time."

Unlike their Bomber Command colleagues, US air crews were not tied to one target but had an option, in certain circumstances to attack alternative targets. Both the 8th and 15th Air Forces adopted the same four basic rules to establish target priorities.

1.Primary. Visual attack on a war plant, rail facility or military target. Chosen by Air Force Headquarters in accordance with current bombing directives.

2. Secondary. Usually chosen by Air Force Headquarters in accordance with current bombing directives, with its location coordinated with the bombers' planned route and fighter protection.

a. Visual: an alternative target similar to the primary.

b. Nonvisual: Area attack on a city associated with either of the above.

3. Last-Resort Target. A tertiary target with the same qualifications as a secondary target.

4. Target of Opportunity. A target selected by the mission or individual bomber formation leaders, while in the air, when they are unable to attack any of the above targets. If weather or enemy action scatters a formation, all leaders and pilots are encouraged to seek targets of opportunity within specified limits. Forbidden over occupied Europe, but could be either visual or radar over greater Germany.

12th August 1943 saw the first area type raid by the 8th Air Force, when 106 bombers attacked Bonn as a target of opportunity.
After the adoption of H2S/H2X systematic area bombing commenced, the first such raid being on 27th September 1943. This was Eighth Air Force Mission No.104 which found the target city of Emden completely covered by clouds, but dropped 506 tons of bombs, on radar, through the cloud. This was the first ordered area raid. After this the Eighth Air Force's own targeting documents give the game away, despite later denial. For example, just one week later the targets for a raid on Frankfurt were listed as, primary, 'Frankfurt - city proper' and secondary, 'any industrial area in Germany'.
I leave you to decide how those targets can be equated with precision bombing.

Cheers

Steve