Was the Norden bombsight really that crap?

[gruad]

View: https://youtu.be/U6D5rXbMBKo?is=9IJM-vSdsAuVZT0J

The Norden bomb sight originally was understood as a miracle weapon that could put a bomb into a pickle barrel.

There's been a lot of revisions of this idea since then. The above video deals with a lot of them. There clearly was over marketing of the bomb sight and very clever marketing. It was because Norden said that the bomb site was so secret that even the bomb aimers should not be able to take notes about it.

The Germans actually got the plan of the Norden bomb sight very early on and they decided that the extra effort wasn't worth it. The British, when they were eventually allowed to review the Norden bomb sight, said that it wasn't worth the while and pursued with their own idea of a bomb site, which was I believe the Mark 14.
.
The whole idea of accuracy when it was used by the Air Force became under question because what happened was that the bombardiers in a formation followed the lead bombardier and dropped their bombs at the same time as him.

The Sperry bomb site apparently was Superior but was removed from the desires of the Air Force and the Navy by clever marketing and the fact that Sperry had never done a bomb sight before.

However, in the Hiroshima attack, the Norden bomb sight was used, and it managed to achieve an accuracy of 150 m onto the bridge at the center of Hiroshima from 10,000 m, which is quite impressive.

The British Mark 14 was highly affected in the Tirpitz raid where individual bombers queued up to drop rather than dropping en masse.

It also was incredibly expensive knocking out at a price around about half the price of the Manhattan project, which of course all went to the Norden bomb sight company.

So what do people think the true story was: capitalism gone out of hand and not really contributing properly to the war effort, or a flawed product that actually fulfilled the need?

 

[wuzak]

The whole idea of accuracy when it was used by the Air Force became under question because what happened was that the bombardiers in a formation followed the lead bombardier and dropped their bombs at the same time as him.

At the start of the Eighth AF campaign in the ETO, bombers would all use the Norden and line up and aim individually.

It was soon realised that bombing individually would give the anti-aircraft crews time to adjust their aim and increase their accuracy.

To reduce losses, the Eighth AF moved to bombing in formation. The added benefit was that they didn't need as many Norden sights.

 

[GrauGeist]

capitalism gone out of hand and not really contributing properly to the war effort

This statement does nothing to the point trying to be made.

It was bureaucratic stonewalling, which occurred in virtually every single nation, allied or Axis.

The Norden remain in use, despite it's flaws, until the Vietnam War.

Until radar or laser guided sights were developed, optical bombsights of any nation had it's flaws and the only true way to deliver an absolute pin-point bomb strike, was by way of a Ju87, SBD or A-36.

 

[gruad]

View: https://youtu.be/49M-TmlMyQ0?is=rJqDcvh2FeyiLqrU

Here is a counterargument from a guy who I know is very good on WW2 Bombers. He seemed quite pissed with those who argue the virtues of the Sperry.

We did a bit of the maths of bomb aiming at school but looking at these bombsights you see the maths/physics and computing that goes into them.