People are funny things, the most scientific of people will make assumptions with no factual base to make them. If the people designing the Norden bomb sight considered what the worlds weather actually is at 25-30,000 ft everywhere in the world, not just the bombing ranges where US bombers were tried out, history may have been different. The world had known about high altitude air currents since Krakatoa exploded in1883 but not everyone was paying attention to what it meant.
What if America built De Havilland Mosquitoes instead of the B-17 Flying Fortress? (1 Viewer)
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SaparotRob
Unter Gemeine Geschwader Murmeltier XIII
Need another insightful.
I cant say it happens all the time, but some times I can look up and the clouds at low level go in one direction while those at high level go in another sometimes completely opposite direction, its hard to believe no one in UK took this into account, or thought it stopped at night for some "Harry Potter" type reason, but they did.
SaparotRob
Unter Gemeine Geschwader Murmeltier XIII
It wasn't?
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Donald Johnson
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Looks like Carl Rossby was paying attention to this:
The World War II-era Chicago school of meteorology that decoded weather forecasting.
special ed
1st Lieutenant
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The same situation with the P-38. Testing in Southern California was very different from operations in northern Europe. Pre Pearl Harbor thinking was the P-38 will protect continental US.
An interesting and informative link. It is no surprise to me that he was born in Sweden, not on the North American continent. From the link, things started to happen in academia in 1940, but it takes time for academic research to get embedded in common thought. I was only half joking about the Americans developing a British obsession with the weather in post #275 in Europe it has to be an obsession, one use that wasn't foreseen in 1940 military thinking was
meteorological measurement, possibly the most boring aspect of a military group but absolutely vital. The Mosquitos ability to go long distances or remain for a long time at altitudes up to 40,000ft made it ideal for reporting on the future weather over a target, not only vital to hitting the target but also getting the guys home again.
Away from aviation I have had some similar experiences, when I worked in China there was a disaster in UK that involved the deaths of 23 people of which 21 were Chinese picking cockles in Morecambe Bay. All of my Chinese colleagues were from central China, they had never seen the sea. It was very difficult to explain what a tide is and how it is dangerous on a sand flat. I live by the sea and from my earliest memories of being there I remember someone saying "careful you dont get cut off by the tide". By the same token as someone living by the North sea in Teesside where even the river is tidal many miles inland it was a surprise to work in Stavanger in Norway which is a tidal node, the sea just doesnt go up and down every six hours, so to me was like an inland pond.
2004 Morecambe Bay cockling disaster - Wikipedia
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Donald Johnson
Airman
It was American meteorologist James Stagg observing in Canada, Greenland, and Iceland who predicted the D-Day June 6 opening, the Germans did not think the weather would break and went to bed.
The Weather Forecast That Saved D-Day
Was James Stagg American through drinking Budweiser or eating Big Macs? James Stagg - Wikipedia He was as British as Connery playing James Bond.
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Donald Johnson
Airman
SHAEF
If you post a link you should at least read it yourself, your link specifically states he is British, how did you, as an historian and teacher ever think he wasn't?
The American meteorologists, relying on a differing forecasting method based on historic weather maps, instead believed that a wedge of high pressure would deflect the advancing storm front and provide clear, sunny skies over the English Channel.
Group Captain James Stagg
In the early hours of June 4, Stagg believed foul weather was only hours away. He sided with his fellow British colleagues and recommended a postponement. Knowing that the weather held the potential to be an even fiercer foe than the Nazis, a reluctant Eisenhower agreed in the early hours of June 4 to delay D-Day by 24 hours."
My bold
Airframes
Benevolens Magister
James Stagg was a Scot, not American, although he was the chief advisor on Met to gen. Eisenhower.
As an aside, and not really that relevant to this thread, as has been mentioned a few times in this, and other threads, the weather in Europe, and particularly the mainland UK, is totally different to the continental USA and, as Bacon said, "Britain does not have a climate, only weather".
This was aptly illustrated earlier this week in my area.
I live on the western edge of the Pennines, above the Cheshire plain, and earlier this week, in the space of less than an hour, the weather changed from heavy cloud and around 7C, to clear blue skies, sunny, around 15C, then light cloud, thickening, followed by rain and around 9C, followed by sleet, hail, light snow and then rain and total cloud cover !
The cloud remained, and temperatures dropped, being at 1C by midnight until dawn. Cloud base was probably at about 2,000 feet, and I'd estimate topping at over 6,000 to 8,000 feet, with visibility around 1 to 2 miles below the cloud base.
And that was a good average day for UK weather at this time of year !!!
As an aside, and not really that relevant to this thread, as has been mentioned a few times in this, and other threads, the weather in Europe, and particularly the mainland UK, is totally different to the continental USA and, as Bacon said, "Britain does not have a climate, only weather".
This was aptly illustrated earlier this week in my area.
I live on the western edge of the Pennines, above the Cheshire plain, and earlier this week, in the space of less than an hour, the weather changed from heavy cloud and around 7C, to clear blue skies, sunny, around 15C, then light cloud, thickening, followed by rain and around 9C, followed by sleet, hail, light snow and then rain and total cloud cover !
The cloud remained, and temperatures dropped, being at 1C by midnight until dawn. Cloud base was probably at about 2,000 feet, and I'd estimate topping at over 6,000 to 8,000 feet, with visibility around 1 to 2 miles below the cloud base.
And that was a good average day for UK weather at this time of year !!!
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Donald Johnson
Airman
One thing a teacher always encourages, even rewards, is for students to correct errors immediately.
If I`ve interpreted you correctly, I`m not very sure about your first point, there were debates in the British Parliament during the war itself on the whole topic of if it was morally tenable to bomb civilian areas, this is not a new area of debate which was only explored by modern novelists and anti-war activists. Some of those very much against the whole idea on a logical basis included Sir Henry Tizard, Churchills chief scientific advisor. (his main argument was more orientated towards the fact he believed such bombing didn't achieve the results that the resources put into it justified, in these discussions Tizard (with a level of irony off the charts) was opposed by Lindemann, who was a friend of Churchill - who was born in Baden-Baden, Germany- of all places...).
Some details of this are available to read about here:
When Does Personality Make a Difference? Lord Cherwell and the Area Bombing of Germany on JSTOR
"Frederick Lindemann", somewhat amusingly, was 'redesignated' as "Lord Cherwell" in 1941. Sucessfully obfuscating his birth history, (oops did I say that?)
That was fascinating - thanks for digging that up. Knowing more of the back story is a big help to understanding why decisions were made.
In light of that, I acknowledge that there was a debate about area bombing back then, but the pro-area bombing side still won the debate for several years. That debate would never happen today - there would be no question that bombing civilians would be immoral. Now we know that it didn't destroy morale (far from it) and didn't bring industrial production to a halt - and it might never have, no matter how it was conducted. About the only thing that area bombing accomplished was to force the German fighters into the skies, where they could be shot down, preventing them from being used to defend against the ground campaign. Now we can debate whether that was worth the civilian lives lost, whether there was another way of gutting the Luftwaffe, or whether those responsible for the strategy would be heroes or criminals today - but our judgement is suspect, since we're not being bombed, our way of life is not being threatened, and a generation of our young men and women is not being called up to be sent off to war.
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Donald Johnson
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Much of what you posted here has not been heretofore available to me, steeped on Caidin and Jablonski as I am. But I do maintain part of my argument is still valid, that which suggests that decisions made then on who and what to bomb yet reverberate as our procurement procedures which are heavily criticized. My objective is to make at least part of this process accessible to students and you don't do that by suggesting they search archives. They have to have motivation, and an unresolved argument that may apply to a current political reality just might do that.
The entire reason to study this or any other historical topic is to analyze human behavior and that of those we allow to control us. This morality play looms large in the current Israeli-Palestinian conflagration as civilian casualties are inevitable from Israeli air strikes. Does the bombing actually reduce the threat or is it merely a punishment for those who dare test Israeli authority? Can decision-making of this nature be traced directly to an authoritarian (British) tradition?
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
The bombing did cripple the German's ability to wage war. Many completed fighters never made it to the front (countless more were destroyed on the assembly line), fuel and rubber production was disrupted to the point that the Luftwaffe had to limit pilot training, further degrading their quality as well as crippling Luftwaffe CAP flights, transport of critical materials and so on.
Great effort and resources were put into rebuilding manufacturing plants along with infrastructure such as rail yards, bridges and so on - resources that were desperately needed elsewhere.
The night raids were demoralizing - the workforce (who was already suffering from food shortages) were kept up all night, then had to go to work the next day, sleep deprived, which affected the quality of workmanship - that is, if their workplace was still standing.
And this cycle went on and on and on - bleeding the German war effort. So the bombing did have an effect.
This day and age, we can launch a cruise missile from hundreds of miles away and have it strike it's target by lockingnonto an 18x18 vent opening, destroying the bunker without harming the surrounding buildings. This was technology only imagined 75+ years ago in Flash Gordon sci-fi comic books.
FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
Please refrain from this subject matter, especially now - the form rules prohibits political discussions.
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Donald Johnson
Airman
Okay, but I'm not making the argument, only pointing out how it relates.
FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
all good
GEE-H when used by the USAAF was called micro-h. I'm not sure if the sets were US manufactured. A pair of ground stations could control around 50-80 aircraft so I don't believe target marking was required, the aircraft could be individually guided or formation bomb. Although nominally quite accurate, less than 100 yards, I've read operational research showing it often average several kilometres CEP. Presumably due to incorrect training and errors in set up use of formation bombing. GEE-H evolved into SHORAN.
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