Best Aircraft in Many Different Roles Part II

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I found the video!!
It was a program called "Secret History - The Dambusters Raid" And shown on the BBC. It also had interviews with some of the Survirving 617
Squadron Crew members.
The aircraft the Americans tried it with was an A26 invader, The bomb hit the wave bounced up, and smashed the whole tail unit off - the rest of the aircraft broke up when it hit the sea.

Interestingly enough, The German Plans drawn up on the bomb that didnt explode were complete 10 days after the dams raid!! They tried experiments with a very small bomb roughly three maybe four times the size of a football code named "Kurt" and instead of putting backspin on it like the british ones, they used a small rocket propulsion unit that broke off after the bomb hit the water for the first time.
The video showed an FW190 doing a test drop. - it was wildly inaccurate, the bomb sailed over the little boat and kept on going for some time!!

Its been over a year since i watched it, Glad my memory held true!
 
It depends on a few things CC,

1. the size of the ship being attacked,
2. the speed of the ship if is moving at all
3. the size of waves, swell etc.
4. the speed of the swell, waves etc.

As the trials with the fw190 showed, it was easy to misjudge these things.
The bomb could either fly over the top of the ship, or stop bouncing and sink short.
 
I agree It would be more difficult then just dropping when you think it is right, but I am sure they designed some kind of site that would let the pilot know when to release it.
 
they did have a specail sight for it, i have a picture of it in a book, there's no way one man could aim it, whislt flying his plane, in a cramped cockpit, it needed a man that was totally dedicated to the aiming of the weapon to aim it.........
 
Why? It was fairly large. If an aimer was necessary, The layout used on the P-38M could have been adopted if they wanted to keep the armament on the front, and have the sight in place of where the radar operator normally goes.
 

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