Was the Norden bombsight really that crap? (4 Viewers)

[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.
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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.

 

[EwenS]

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

Not an accurate portrayal of the way Tirpitz was attacked. I posted this two years ago.

"The object was to achieve a concentration of bombing. Aircraft flew in waves of about 5 aircraft as near as possible to line abreast (as a loose "gaggle" not as a close formation as practiced by the USAAF) but with each aircraft on slightly converging courses, with waves separated by a few hundred yards and by altitude. The bomb aimer in each aircraft aimed his bomb individually. But the objective wasn't for each to try to hit the Tirpitz directly. The objective was to place all the bombs in a square around the Tirpitz (750 yards on each side was used during Paravane). So the bombs in each wave would be dropped virtually simultaneously, perhaps giving the impression of a command drop by the leader.

For Catechism, 32 aircraft dispatched (18 from 617 squadron, 13 from 9 squadron and one photo aircraft). Another 7 from 9 squadron were unable to take off due to icing and the high weight of the aircraft. 2 were late at the rendezvous point so didn't bomb.

So 29 Tallboys descended in the direction of Tirpitz in the space of 3 minutes."

E

Post in thread 'Battleship Tirpitz: Sinking of Nazi Germany's Largest Battleship'

Sep 22, 2024

This is the map of the Tallboy impact points for Catechism drawn up after the raid. Dropping altitude 14,000-16,000ft. Not entirely accurate as revealed in subsequent enquiries (only 2 confirmed and one possible hit compared to 4 shown) but it gives a good idea of the concentration achieved in those 3 minutes. Note the stray.

https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1895/35717/SGillK1438901v30054-0003.1.jpg

Damage reports

Loss of Battleship Tirpitz

www.kbismarck.com

• EwenS

 

[GregP]

The Norden bombsight was about as good a sight as you could bet with optical lens technology. The trick wasn't to get the bomb to hit the target as much as it was to account for windds aloft from 30,000 feet. Without knowing the winds, it's like shooting a rifle with a loose bore ... all over the place, depending on winds.

To get a decent circular error of probability, you'd have to drop from at least 4 directions in test at nearly the same time and same altitude and airspeed. I am assuming good calculation of the bomb's ballistics trajectory to start with.

Any optical bombsight would have similar limitations.

In my estimation, it was a decent bombsight from 20,000 feet, and less than wonderful from 30,000 feet.

I have a great video on my cell phone of a Noden installed ina B-17 looking down through the bombsight with a cell phone, and the optics are pretty decent. Almost any optical unit will give a similar picture. The thing that sets them apart from one another is whether or not the bomb's basic ballistics are well represented when using the bombs you have on your airplane on this mission with this bombsight. If so, then you have to account for the winds aloft. If not, then you'll miss by more distance than you would with a better bombsight. Either way, it is a good challenge to get closer than a few hundred yards to the aim point from any decent altitude.

So, lots of local bomb damage, but the target many times seemed undamaged. When the target is hardened, anything but a direct hit causes minimal damage, if any.

 

[Howard Gibson]

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

All sorts of weapon systems work really well on proving grounds. When you use them on people, they look for ways to countermeasure your weapon, one of which is that they kill you. Think about dive bombing. Diving vertically on a target is a great way to bomb accurately. Once the people you don't like realize what you are up to, it becomes a great way to commit suicide.

As Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke put it, your plan of battle does not survive contact with the enemy.

 

[GrauGeist]

The German's Lofte 7 bombsight was fairly accurate as long as the weather conditions remained favorable.

Like the Norden, differing wind currents could affect the accuracy, although the Germans did not typically bomb at altitudes that the USAAF and RAF did.

 

[yosimitesam]

The Norden bombsight was about as good a sight as you could bet with optical lens technology. The trick wasn't to get the bomb to hit the target as much as it was to account for windds aloft from 30,000 feet. Without knowing the winds, it's like shooting a rifle with a loose bore ... all over the place, depending on winds.

To get a decent circular error of probability, you'd have to drop from at least 4 directions in test at nearly the same time and same altitude and airspeed. I am assuming good calculation of the bomb's ballistics trajectory to start with.

Any optical bombsight would have similar limitations.

In my estimation, it was a decent bombsight from 20,000 feet, and less than wonderful from 30,000 feet.

I have a great video on my cell phone of a Noden installed ina B-17 looking down through the bombsight with a cell phone, and the optics are pretty decent. Almost any optical unit will give a similar picture. The thing that sets them apart from one another is whether or not the bomb's basic ballistics are well represented when using the bombs you have on your airplane on this mission with this bombsight. If so, then you have to account for the winds aloft. If not, then you'll miss by more distance than you would with a better bombsight. Either way, it is a good challenge to get closer than a few hundred yards to the aim point from any decent altitude.

So, lots of local bomb damage, but the target many times seemed undamaged. When the target is hardened, anything but a direct hit causes minimal damage, if any.

As a rule of thumb, the inaccuracy of dropped bombs doubles for every 5,000 ft of altitude. The pre-war Dalgren testing was done in stable desert weather at 10-12,000 feet and often showed an excellent CEP of less than 200 ft, in most cases. In 1943 the CEP for good visibility bombing was about 1,200 ft. for the first wave to drop. Thus, at 25,000 ft accuracy was decreased by at least a factor of 4. In fact, due to smoke, clouds, etc. the 8th stopped using CEP and started simply counting percentage of bombs that fell within 1,000 ft of the aim point. This averaged about 13.6% in 1943. (Most of you know this but the CEP is defined as the smallest circle with the aiming point in the center that contained 50% of the bombs.) One problem that NO bomb sight can correct for is "wind shear", which varies with altitude. The direction vector of wind varies in layers in the atmosphere. When the bombardier "killed the drift" with the Norden, he was only correcting for the wind at his altitude and not in the wind shear layers of air going down to the ground. This always added a certain randomness and dispersion to the bombs that could not be overcome until the invention of the terminally guided bombs (LGB's) in the late 1960's. (There's no scheme, no dodge, no strategy, no algorithm that can beat randomess. Period.) Here's an excerpt from the article "The Norden Bombsight and the U.S. Naval Proving Ground", Robert V. Gates on JSTOR.

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