Wasn't the concept of bombing on the lead less about getting the best to do the jon and more about minimising the time the bombers spent over target? After all, with the Norden a long straight flight path to target was required, and if each crew bombed individually they were extremely vulnerable to flak or fighter attack, not to mention the extra time required to do it this way (only the early raids with relatively small formations bombed individually - can't imagine how long it woul dhave taken if they still did it with the 1000 bomber raids of 1944 onwards). The advantage of bombing in formation was that the defensive formations remained in their mutual defensive fire positions.
Wuzak - flying formation on lead, and bombing on lead certainly had an advantige of maintaining squadron formation integrity - but the whole objective was to destroy the targets. Period. When the Lead Crew methods were introduced, the Automatic Flight Control Equipment was also introduced and the Bomabdier essentially flew the airplane - taking the ability of the pilot to make evasive manuevers (inckluding deviating from the bomb run out of the pilot's hands.
Some factories may have been sprawling complexes larger than the size of an 8th AF "close" bomber formation. Others were not. Some that were spread out had large amounts of space between sectiosn - like oil refineries.
All True. Havind agreed that, there were two approaches. One was to designate a single Aiming Point in the center of that 'sprawling complex', the other was to separate and allocates discreet targets within the complex for one specific Bomb Group.
The latter references were used statistically to judge individual bomb Group bombing accuracy via post bombing recon/BDA. There is a feeling I get from many of the comments, particularly Neil's that 8th AF bombing was of the first type. Not so - If you look at a particular day's mission you will note the multitude of individual sites attacked on any one particular day - too many people have a notion that the 8th went after one general area rather than 20 different plants or marshalling yards or chemical/petro complex's.
In fact, there might be four general areas - each usuall (but not always) far apart - and each (say Leipzig area with Bernberg, Halle, Halberstadt, Lutzkendorf and Aschersleben - west, northwest and south west of Leipiz, for the 2nd BD on July 7, 1944) hit by One bomb wing comprised of two to four Bomb Groups. On that day, at a different time and a separate course, the other Bomb Divisions would be striking different target regions and targets within those regions.
The 1st, 2nd and 3rd Task Force was assembled over England and stayed together to a point west of Brunswick, where the 1st TF/2nd BD headed southeast, the 1st and 3rd continued toward Berlin then headed south-southeast before they reached Berlin and then headed for Magdeburg, Leipzig, Merseburg, etc, etc - timed to be in the area where the 2nd BD was also headed but 30 and 50 minutes later.
In each of those target areas were multiple single and separate targets which had singular aiming point within that specific plant/complex for one bomb group (out of 33 for that day)
Net - the lead crew tactics evolved because it started as 'every bomb crew bomb on the briefed target, pilots could take evasive action during the bomb run, formations scattered, targets were not found, etc - leading to dismal 'area bombing' equivancy - even when visibity was excellent. Pretty much describes Aug-Dec 1942.