Aerial Bombing Question

It makes perfect sense to target the lead aircraft in a formation as far as flak is concerned, you have longer too shoot at it.

Robert Porter said:

I disagree, as of December 1943 the USAAF openly engaged in "city busting" or area attacks on Germany and other European targets..

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Even earlier. It was Anderson who was promoting such attacks, he also made another significant change, an increase in the proportion of incendiaries carried by the 8th Air Force, another sure sign that precision was being abandoned.
However, at USSTAF headquarters Spaatz was waging a campaign of denial. He refused to get involved in British V-1 retaliation schemes or to openly acknowledge area bombing. Spaatz wrote to Lovett that

"there is no doubt in my mind that the RAF wants very much to have the US Air Forces tarred with the morale bombing aftermath, which we feel will be terrific."

He made it clear that he had no intention of allowing this to happen. Andersen became involved in the denial. On 21st July 1944, a day on which six separate Groups of 8th Air Force bombers attacked cities as targets of opportunity, he sent a new bombing policy to Dolittle and Twining pointing out Spaatz's intention to direct the bombers against precision targets and, almost incredibly, denying any intention to area bomb!
In October 1944 a refinement of the bombing rules produced the following.

"It has been determined that towns and cities large enough to produce an identifiable return on the H2X scope generally contain a large proportion of the military objectives listed above* These centers, therefore, may be attacked as secondary or last resort targets by through-the-overcast bombing technique"

* [railway lines, junctions, marshaling yards, railroad or road bridges or other communications networks, any industrial plant. Oil storage plants and military barracks or camps, troop concentrations, motor transport or AFV parks, ordnance or supply depots. Ammunition depots, airfields etc.]

That covered just about every town and city in Germany, making it a legitimate target for area attack, and yet still the pretence was made that the US Air Forces were attempting a precision campaign, and this was maintained after the war.

Cheers

Steve

A strange academic discussion being had by some commanders, Dresden was bombed in the final months of the war, but still some bombs were dropped on Prague Brux and Pilsen. Bombing with a 40% incendiary load using H2X means you are not bombing an actual target but an area. Putting a telescopic sight on a shot gun will not allow you to shoot an apple off a boys head.

Zipper730 said:

I got a couple of questions regarding aerial-bombing, particularly level-bombing with iron-bombs...

I. Measuring Average Error

There's CEP which if i recall is the radius where half the bombs land. There's something like average/median radial error which I think is the radius in which 100% of the bombs fall. I'm curious if there's any way to convert between the two?

I'm also curious about if the average error is measured on where each bomb lands relative to where it should be, where each aircraft's bomb-track/bomb-train lands versus where it was intended to, or where the whole bomber formation/stream lands it's bombs versus where it should.

II. Bomb-Train/Track

This has to do with the fact that the bombs do not appear to all be released at the same time but over the course of a couple of seconds. Since each bomb follows a ballistic path after being released, would I be correct to assume that if one bomb is released a second ahead of the next they would land however many feet per second the bomber flies?

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Interesting topic.

I would agree that there was both dissension and some degree of denial in both RAF and USAAF top brass. However I think the majority, to include Eisenhower, of the command staff openly understood that for any number of reasons precision bombing just was not possible to any great degree. Frankly Eisenhower and others agreed that the damage to morale and the necessity to tie up troops to some degree in fire fighting and AAA roles was a benefit. My guess would be that the dissenting brass were worried about public perception after the war more than anything else. And they were correct. There was a huge backlash when the extent of the civilian casualties was finally understood. But the backlash was mostly political not anti military. It was hard to be angry at the very folks that prosecuted the war to protect their respective homelands and stop the horrors Nazi Germany unleashed.

The atomic bombing drowned most of the rest out, to this day there are any number of writers pro and con as to the necessity of those attacks and if they did or did not shorten the war. Personally I believe they did shorten the war, it is too easy to apply a current mindset to the decision makers of yesteryear and second guess them. I believe it was a decision that was not taken at all lightly and only after a lot of what if scenarios were played out.

Yes, there was a backlash, exactly as Spaatz and other Americans feared. Part of the issue is that Americans based in Europe understood that the debate about the moral justification for British area bombing (and to a much more limited extent its effectiveness) had already begun, during the war. I don't think this was the case for the American Air Forces bombing in Europe. Back home the pretence of precision was maintained and most Americans, including in the civil and military leadership, didn't really know what was going on. This is why Spaatz was able to say what he did about avoiding his forces being 'tarred with the moral bombing aftermath'. He knew that it was the British who would carry the can for this, and that suited him. I don't blame him, it's a sensible and pragmatic position to take
Another important distinction is that while the US Air Forces did carry out area raids they never explicitly or intentionally targeted the morale of the civil population. The raids were always justified in terms of attacking military or industrial targets, even if in an imprecise way. Of course, to someone on the receiving end of an area raid this nicety made no difference, but it enabled the Americans to argue that, in Europe at least, they did not undertake 'morale' bombing. It was a very successful argument, today most people associate the attacks on German civil morale, in fact with German cities generally, with the RAF, not the USAAF. The argument has been backed for nearly 80 years by a soft propaganda campaign in which the great sacrifices made by US airmen on precision raids like Schweinfurt, Regensburg, Ploesti etc. are remembered (quite rightly) and become exemplars of US bombing, while the area attacks are quietly ignored.

I agree with your point about the atomic bombs, but they should not be considered in the context of the wider campaigns. They were quite exceptional. They definitely shortened the war and there is a good argument to be made that despite the terrible casualties inflicted on the Japanese more people on both sides might have died had either an invasion or an effort to starve the nation to death been undertaken instead.
The atom bomb became, in a way, the ultimate weapon for attacking an enemy's morale, but was used on a nation teetering on the brink of defeat and actively seeking a way to end the war. How well it might have worked a couple of years earlier is another question altogether.
We have to understand the factors affecting the decision makers at the time, hindsight was not available to them. I think the use of the atomic bombs was entirely justified, and I think, even with hindsight, the same decision would be made again.

Cheers

Steve

pbehn said:

Putting a telescopic sight on a shot gun will not allow you to shoot an apple off a boys head.

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It will if you don't mind shooting the head off with it; this is pretty much the definition of collateral damage.

I think that the allied air forces had found that a lot of pre-war hypotheses about the ease of destroying or even incapacitating targets like rail yards or factories had been far too optimistic, like the contemporary guesses about the effectiveness of heavy AA guns. When they found out that factories were much harder targets to destroy, even if the actually hit them, than had been thought, they concluded that targeting the factory workers would be the most practical way of disabling a factory.

swampyankee said:

It will if you don't mind shooting the head off with it; this is pretty much the definition of collateral damage.

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The British had come to the conclusion in in WW1, restated in the interwar years and then implemented in WW2 that what we now call 'collateral' damage was in fact useful damage, as long as it occurred in the right place, that is anywhere in the enemy's homeland. This was an easy conclusion to come to. If 98 out of every hundred bombs dropped missed the factory or plant at which they are aimed it was a consolation to think that killing the workers who work in those facilities or 'dehousing' them (in he parlance of the time), was equally useful and that those 98 bombs had not been wasted.

Neville Jones summed this up well in his 'The Beginnings of Strategic Air Power', writing about the 1917 plan devised by the Air Policy Committee to attack German morale.

"This was perhaps the earliest plan to embody the philosophy upon which Trenchard founded his strategic policy in the post war Air Force. In the post-war plans the aim of that policy (that is, the terrorization of the civilian population) was to be achieved by selecting targets that were located in densely populated industrial areas, so that all the bombs which failed to hit the aiming points (ostensibly industries supporting the enemy war effort) would strike at the morale of the civilian population by destroying their lives and homes and disrupting the services (transport, water, gas and so on) on which they depended."

There is little difference between the 1917 plans and those underlying the area bombing of WW2 by either the British or Americans. The British explicitly targeted enemy civilian morale, the Americans still 'ostensibly' targeted those 'industries supporting the enemy war effort', but the result was the same.

Cheers

Steve

WWII Mentality / Post-War Mentalities on Area Bombing

Public Relations on USAAS Bomber Usage: Mitchell Era
The general focus was on the use of bombers as defensive, against attacking ships. Essentially, the idea was that large bombers would be able to accurately hit ships at altitude beyond effective range of defensive guns and sink them effectively.

Official Plan for USAAS Bomber Usage: Mitchell Era
Mitchell had been far more forthcoming with the USAAS than the public, and had officially stated during his time in uniform that the plans would be for the intended Air Force to consist of around 50% fighter aircraft, 50% bombers, with 50% of the bomber force aimed for strategic ends, and 50% for tactical goals.

It would appear that Mitchell didn't have a definite view of fighters early on, and even saw dive-bombers as useful for military ends as he saw them used in WWI.

His attitude for targeting would include airfields, harbors/docks/shipyards, ammo dumps, railway marshaling yards. Back in the war, the Aviation Section of the Army Signal Corp did want to engage in retaliatory attacks on population centers, as did the RFC & RNAS, and later the RAF. They were told they were forbidden to engage in wanton and promiscuous attacks (presumably on civilians and population centers), though I'm not sure how open that definition was to interpretation.

He did appear to express an interest in precision attacks on land-based targets: They were to be undertaken by use of bombers with precision bombsights. Fighters were deemed essential for these types of raids.

It's possible that he said things face to face with certain people he trusted, but he didn't appear to mention in writing, anything about bombing civilians as a goal itself, except possibly as a revenge attack mounted under certain circumstances.

Official Plan for USAAS: Post Mitchell Era
Mitchell did say it was acceptable at the very least, under some circumstances, to bomb population centers as revenge for enemy attacks mounted under certain circumstances. At the most, he said it was acceptable to attack the entire population as a target unto itself.

He was now unburdened of his desire to express his true opinion, now out of uniform: These would likely have qualified as wanton and promiscuous attacks.

Official Plan for Early-USAAC Bomber Usage
The plans varied early on, from close-support, interdiction, to destroying specific targets of military nature; by the early 1930's they had committed to the idea of destroying the ability and willpower to wage war.

• Close Air Support generally fell into disfavor because it was evidently difficult to locate exposed troop positions, and it also forever tied it to the Army
• Interdiction was better as it didn't require strict (or even major) Army control
• Strategic Bombing was favored because it was largely independent from the Army so it would be most ideal to an independent Air Force

While they believed Strategic Bombing would genuinely win wars: They also seemed to favor it because it satisfied their goals

• An Independent Air Force
• A defense structure with departments for Land (Army), Sea (Navy), and Air (Air Force), with the Air Force getting the lions share of the budget.

They often glossed over the exact details of the morale aspect, because it was generally viewed as a butcher job on innocent and defenseless people. There were varying attitudes in the international community on the use of bombers for such purposes

• The 1899 Hague Convention: Forbade the use of bombardment including airships firing projectiles on undefended targets; while a bomber isn't the same as an airship, and bombs aren't projectiles; bombs do follow ballistic paths and are fundamentally similar. The spirit was there
• The 1922 Hague Convention Draft: Forbade any attacks on population centers to terrorize the population within. Needless to say, few nations signed on because they wanted to do it, and the UK saw it as part of their Air Control of colonies.
• There were proposals for an International Bomber force: Viewed (rightly so) as a threat to national sovereignty; as hypocrisy to others: It forbade nations to use poison gas on civilians, yet allowed itself to attack such offender with poison gas until surrender

Official Plan for Mid/Late USAAC Bomber Usage
Their plans had generally focused now on precision bombing, possibly for the following reasons

• It was the Great Depression and the idea that one can do the maximum amount of damage with the least amount of bombs probably resonated well with lots of people of different political stripes
• The mission role of maritime patrol and coastal defense was a good justification for the development of bombers, and accuracy was favored.
• Bombing population centers and killing civilians by the tens of thousands was viewed negatively
  
• Causing misery/terror to civil populations could be done anyway by fucking up the transportation system, knocking out power, and the inevitable stray bomb.

Official Plans for USAAF Bomber Usage Pre-WWII
The plans revolved around using heavy-bombers for carrying the war to Germany & Japan

For the Germans, the goal was that of denial with terror attacks on populations to be used as a last-resort; the goal though was to subdue the country; then land a cross-channel assault onto the continent. Close Air Support was to commence after that.
For the Japanese, the plan was to use attacks on airfields, and incendiary area attacks on cities because we viewed them as subhuman.

Actual Attitude on Use of Bombers in WWII: USAAF

Europe: Generally there was little moral issue about bombing population centers; the primary concern was looking bad from a historical standpoint. At least that was early on. As bomber forces built up; the head of the USAAF had actually thought it would be a good idea to start carrying out area-bombing raids rather than attacking specific targets. After the Schweinfurt Raids: We carried out an area-bombing raid on Munster, and the idea of day-bombing was questioned before long-ranged fighters started to come online.

I'm not sure how much the transport plan was favored the by the USAAF: If they liked it, it would appear the Oil Plan ranked higher on the list. The idea of removing the Luftwaffe from the skies seemed to also be well-favored as well.

After long-ranged fighters appeared on the scenes, the bombing raids seemed to include attacks on specific targets, attacks aimed at both population and specific targets, and naked attacks on population centers.

Pacific/Japan: We viewed the Japanese as subhuman. Our goals initially were to light all the paper cities of Japan on fire, after plastering their air-fields. We couldn't do it because of range issues, and the Japanese quickly made this worse.

It's likely that the USAAF bigwigs didn't like the idea of the B-17's and B-24's being used for hitting merchant ships at low altitudes, instead of playing roles in pivotal naval battles from 8,000 to 25,000 feet, and sinking merchant ships too.

I'm not sure how many industrial targets there were out in the Pacific, but the heavy bomber force was mostly used against military bases and strongholds.

By the time the B-29's came online: It seems that there were some that wanted to torch Japan as well as before, though others like General Hansel would prefer to hit industrial targets possibly on slight principle, but also possibly because it was a practical way to damage Japan's ability to fight. Mining operations also seemed to be aimed at denial and coercion.

The first incendiary raid was done in 1944, but wasn't done in massive scale until 1945: I'm not sure if there was really much concern about looking bad at home. Most people in the US seemed to be thrilled with the cool fireworks, and seemed quite happy to see the Japanese burn. Counter-arguments for the few that objected were

• There are no innocent civilians in Japan
• There are no civilians in Japan
• Accusations of being disloyal, a traitor, etc.

We then dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan and at that point a few people were stunned by that, but the previous top two arguments were employed. I'm not sure if it was understood the effects of birth defects from radiation exposure, but if that wasn't the case -- it was merely a more shocking city busting raid.

One huge explosion instead of hundreds or thousands of little ones
Loads of fires are produced in either case, but in this case it occurs in one flash rather than thousands of fires created over the course of a few minutes.
Damage is done way faster than a normal fire-bombing raid
All it takes is one plane to get through dropping one bomb to do what hundreds had previously done

The argument that it ended the war faster is probably true: The question is how much faster, and I figure it probably shortened things by a few weeks. General LeMay made an estimate of two to six weeks and I'd have estimated around four weeks as an in the middle estimate.

This estimate is different than the United States Straetgic Bombing Survey which still stated we would not have to invade and occupy.

stona said:

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.

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Okay, so to be clear on that last part: There is an automated release feature which releases on a timer and another system that involves hitting a manual release which activates the bomb-distributor, and that system then releases the bomb in specified interval sequence?

A nice bit of research on myth busting the Norden Bombsight. This was written by a Canadian student in 2009. Worth a read.

These documents may help. Section 6 of the BIF document covers the Norden Bombsight usage.

The other document is a classbook for bombardier trainees during WW2. By the way I found these documents and lots of others here: View Items

Zipper730 said:

Okay, so to be clear on that last part: There is an automated release feature which releases on a timer and another system that involves hitting a manual release which activates the bomb-distributor, and that system then releases the bomb in specified interval sequence?

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Essentially, yes.
The automatic system actually flies the aircraft to the release point where it triggers the bomb distributor. I wrote that for this final part of the bomb run, once the sight has been locked onto the aiming point, the sight acts as little more than a timer, but it was an infinitely more complicated instrument than that.
As soon as a bombardier hits a manual release button/switch it does indeed activate the bomb distributor.

The Norden sight was a superb bomb sight, the best in the world when it first became available and only surpassed (then only marginally) several years later. The problem was never the sight, it was the over estimation of its capabilities by some in the USAAF and the mythologising of it in the media as a result of propaganda around it. Challenging the myth in no way diminishes the qualities of the sight itself. If the USN had been prepared to allow it, Bomber Command would have been using it too. In the event the British Mk XIV was as good a sight, both the Norden and Mk XIV had slightly different strengths and weaknesses but I doubt either the British or the Americans would have wanted to swop in 1943

As an interesting aside, Bomber Command referred to the Mk XIV/T1* bomb sight as an 'area sight', despite the fact that it was as accurate as the Norden (it is very difficult to make direct comparisons when there are so many variables) whilst referring to the SABS sight as a 'precision sight'.
We should not ignore the German Lofte 7D sight either. Like the Norden and SABS this was a tachometric sight and like the Norden was connected to a system which effectively allowed the sight to fly the aircraft automatically to the target and release the bombs. the SABS did not do this (nor did the Mk XIV), as simpler system called the Bombing Direction Indicator displayed necessary course corrections to the pilot on later versions, earlier ones required the bomb aimer to call out corrections to the pilot as seen in many old war films. The British even considered using some captured Lofte sights, but this provoked a near mutiny at Farnborough where the boffins were developing the British sights!

Cheers

Steve

* The T1 was an American built Mk XIV. The Sperry Gyroscope was approached by the British to produce it, though eventually it was subcontracted to the A.C. Spark Plug Company, a division of General Motors. Sperry itself was at capacity producing equipment for the American forces, but Sperry engineers were desptached to Michigan to oversee production of the T1. Eventually 23,000 T1 sights were produced for the British in the US (many went into Canadian built aircraft), mass production starting around May 1942.
A.C Spark Plug in turn sub contracted to several other firms, some had previously produced items ranging from pin ball machines, typewriters, thermostats or cameras, but that's what a war time economy will do, properly organised, and the Americans certainly knew how to organise their economy to win a war..

Robert Porter said:

These documents may help. Section 6 of the BIF document covers the Norden Bombsight usage.

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That BIF is a great source of information to understand the US systems. There is a nice little bit explaining 'pattern bombing', the official phrase to describe 'pickling on the leader'.



'Intervalometer' is an American made up word for an automatic bomb distributor. I admire the way you guys butcher the language...sometimes

The problem with a word like 'intervalometer' is that it is jargon, and jargon does not usually explain itself. To someone with no knowledge of bombing systems it is gibberish. The phrase automatic bomb distributor on the other hand is self explanatory. The uninformed might not know exactly what it was or how it worked, but they would have a good idea what it did, automatically distribute bombs.

Cheers

Steve

We do like to invent words, my brother invented one as well. He came home one day covered in mud and my Mom asked him what happened. He said he fell down a hill because he could not get any "gription" which I assume was a contraction of grip and traction. I kind of like it!

People who invent things have to invent words or names for their inventions, then the French have to invent another word to prevent the Anglicisation of their language.

I'm not sure who developed the first automatic bomb distributor (or intervalometer if you prefer), it is probably one of those things that several air forces developed independently and more or less simultaneously as larger (more numerous) bomb loads became normal and automation became more accurate than a man with a watch, or counting in his head.

Is it necessary to invent a word for the device? Only if you want a one word definition, I suppose. It doesn't matter anyway, except that intervalometer is a horrible and inelegant word

Cheers

Steve

I think your objection to intervalometer is on logic grounds all meters are concerned with intervals of something. Didnt they need to spearate the fall of bombs for safety too, I think I read somewhere about bombs detonating when hitting each other under the aircraft.

pbehn said:

I think your objection to intervalometer is on logic grounds all meters are concerned with intervals of something. Didnt they need to spearate the fall of bombs for safety too, I think I read somewhere about bombs detonating when hitting each other under the aircraft.

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The separation of the bombs regulated the length of the pattern (assuming similar bombs) but could also be used to compensate for the different aerodynamics and trajectories of different ordnance, like incendiaries and, in the British case, something like the 500lb No 4 Cluster Projectile.
I suppose there was always a possibility of bombs exploding beneath the aircraft, even when dropped with fractions of a second delays. Some tail pistols were effectively armed as soon as the arming wire was withdrawn as the bomb fell from the aircraft, some did have arming vanes which would take a short distance to unscrew the pistol arming fork from the striker spindle (leaving the latter freely floating on the creep spring, resistance of which was overcome when the bomb hit something solid, an inertia block behind the striker would drive it into the detonator percussion cap, overcoming the resistance of the spring. This is difficult to explain without looking at the exploded view of the device I have in front of me )
The vanes on the commonly used No.27 nose pistol spun off to reveal the pressure plate within a few feet of the aircraft, I think it required 6-8 revolutions from memory, meaning any impact on the pressure plate could detonate the bomb.
I can't recall any first hand accounts of such a thing, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Cheers
Steve