The Biggest Lie of WWII? The Myth of the Norden Bombsight
Enjoy this video? Leave us a tip at: / flightdojo
I think most of us, at some point, have had someone say to us “You know, we went to the moon with less computing power than your iPhone” or something to that effect. What you may not know, though, is that less than a century ago, a 2000-piece mechanical computer that lacked a single transistor or chip was the most closely guarded military secret of the Allied War Effort. Or, at least, the second most.
Before being overshadowed by the Manhattan Project, the U.S. Navy spent billions helping Carl Norden develop a mechanical computer with one job and one job only, to determine the point at which a level flying bomber would need to drop its bombs to achieve “pinpoint accuracy” on an intended target.
When it was completed, Mr. Norden famously claimed that the sight was so accurate that it was capable of putting a bomb inside a pickle barrel. And if it could, theN war would be revolutionized, or so the powers-at-be thought. The idea was simple: fly your bombers above the enemy’s air defenses, above the reach of their flak batteries, faster than their fighters could fly, and drop your bombs, with pinpoint accuracy, on crucial industrial sites, robbing the enemy of their ability to manufacture the equipment they need to wage a war in the first place.
The only problem was that everything about the Norden Bombsight turned out to be a myth. Not just the obviously mythical bits, like the fact that the crosshairs in the site itself were actually webs from a Black Widow, or that, instead, the reticle was made from the strands of hair of a young Midwestern girl, but everything, the accuracy, the secrecy, and even the fact that it was the only bombsight used in the war.
So how can this be? Until two weeks ago, I believed that the Norden Bombsight was an ingenious piece of equipment that more than any other singular device, changed the tides of WWII in favor of the allies. So why do we still believe in the Norden Bombsight?
Because, as it turns out, myths are useful, not just to the Army Air Corps, the Carl Norden Company, and Hollywood, but to us, the public. As it turns out, they can help us swallow hard truths about the war we’d prefer to avoid.
Sources:
csh.rit.edu/~lueking/citation...
www.airuniversity.af.edu/Port...
• PRINCIPLES OF OPERATIO...
dspace.library.uvic.ca/bitstr...
#aviationhistory
I remember a comment from a WWII historian: “when flying at such altitudes, with strong winds changing direction and speed with altitude, you were lucky if your bombs at least hit the ground”
LOL....now that in all reality was probably the truth of the matter. I would think you could use a vertically mounted telescope with cross hairs and look down it onto the target and then drop a load.....if it was off target you just adjust the aim point for the rest of the bombers and get nearer without spending huge amounts of money on a hypothetical bullshit money maker.
@@gangleweed In artillery that is known (in german) as "Gabeln" ("forking"). You shoot, when it is on the far side, then you make the next round definitely short, then you got the range to hit with the third shot. (instead of inching from one side towards the target. The issue is that the bombs need time to fall, at least 30 seconds, probably over a minute, so the first plane would have to fly more than a minute ahead for the hit to be seen, then the next bombers would have to adjust their drop point in relation to the position in the sky the first bomber was one minute ago. Tough, I'd say...
@@feedingravens Not really....the pathfinders highlighted the targets ahead of the bombers and one bomber could sight the target with a single drop being a minute ahead and whatever the bob hit the rest could adjust their sights to hit on or nearer the target with the adjustment........a 100 bomber raid would drop at least 1,000 bombs if they all carried only 10 bombs each.
@@gangleweed That was pretty much how the "master bomber" method developed by 617 sqdn worked - the master bomber dropped markers, evaluated their accuracy, and then relayed the corrections to the rest of the squadron. They later refined it to dive-bombing the markers onto the target (initially in a Lancaster!!!), and this proved better, so they changed first to a Mosquito for marking then finally to a Mustang. Sqdn Leader Willie Tait was awarded the Victoria Cross because after smoke markers (used in place of spot fires for daytime marking) proved invisible through the volume of flak, he performed aerobatics over the target and instructed the 617's bomb aimers to use him as the aiming point. As a result, their target on that occasion, the factory for assembling V2s, was destroyed by the wonderful creations of Barnes Wallis. Of course, 617 used the SABS, not the Norden.
@@phillee2814 Wow......I can't imagine hanging around a target with AA coming at you. I remember in the late 50's there were some adverts in the Exchange and Mart that advertised ex RAF bomb aimer computer sets for the parts to make things etc.......a model makers dream..
I grew up coming of age in the mid-seventies, and studied the "norden bombsite" extensively, in the late sixties, and early seventies, marveling at the incredible accuracy supposedly achieved. I served as a marine, two decades, working in avionics, communications, navigation, and long questioned how said bombsite could be "that accurate". I find it incredible I'm finding out my misgivings as a teen, were entirely warranted only as I turn sixty five.
No, it was that accurate.. How else would the British have used it successfully with earthquake bombs? (eg tirpitz, 4 hits and several very near misses out of 29 bombs from 22000ft...) The General purpose bombs were terribly unstable, we've all see the footage of them wobbling and flipping and drifting apart after release.. Don't blame a scope for being inaccurate when it's used with random trajectory bullets
This is an important part of rational thinking: noticing an incongruity and _not shrugging it off._
It was accurate... on paper. In the real world, there are a lot more variables. It was better than nothing, but before precision guided munitions, it was some of the best we could do. (the bombs weren't exactly stable, air isn't a uniform density, and there are various unknown cross winds on the way down.)
The Germans felt it was way too accurate... as did the Japanese... especially for the atomic bombs...
Such is the power of propaganda!
I visited the battleship Alabama a while back and the complexity of the mechanical computers and ranger finders was eye opening…WW2 technology was surprisingly more advanced than most of us realize. No fancy microchips or circuits, just crazy math using gears and dials could accurately send shells 20 miles to a target.
oh yeah, mechanical adding machines were amazing work. electronics replaced them because the electronics are smaller.
It's easy to not think that generations before us and even ancient people were just as intelligent as we are and could create their own incredible inventions with what they had at the time. The calculus and mathematics for all this was worked out by people who didn't even have pens and paper after all!
Interesting example. I did not realize that the American submarines of the time had rudimentary computers that calculated torpedo shots too. And I believe it was a jealously guarded secret during the war.
@@jdraven0890 All sides had that tech, it was called TDC, Torpedo Data Computer, or Target Data Computer...Just simple trigonometry through clever gears and mechanisms to figure out what angle to shoot the torp at.
@@arenalife ?
Dad was a Norden bombsight technician 7th Air Force, 11th bomb group, 98th Squadron, heavy. Gray Geese. Island hopping pacific. I have his toolkit, or what's left of it. He got in trouble for returning 5 at the end of the war instead of the 4 he was issued. He made one from parts, and they said it was impossible. He never spoke about them much.
My father was a B-24 tail gunner in the 450th Bomb Group based in Italy. He flew 35 bombing missions over Europe. He said at low level a B-24 could hit an individual target, like a train, with excellent accuracy, but at high altitude they were lucky to hit a target the size of a factory with any bombs at all. Since Dad was always looking at where the bombers just came from, he was in the perfect place to evaluate bombing effectiveness. He said one time his bomb group pulverized the target so thoroughly they received a Presidential Unit Citation for that mission. He also admitted that hitting the target from high altitude was pretty rare and due mostly to luck.
This needs more upvotes. It's a good explanation of how war crimes happen. Everyone assumes there is an evil leader, commanding an evil general, who orders evil soldiers to hit non-military targets. When in most cases it's just errors, bad intel, equipment limitations.
All due respect to your dad’s service, he was not a trained tactician and not trained in Bomb Damage Assessment. The fact that his B-24 was not shot down by a fighter from the 6 o’clock position means he did his job 35 times. That’s all that was required of him.
@@Frankie5Angels150 Agreed. On a few missions he was actually issued a camera and was instructed to take pictures while departing the just-bombed area. However, an intel type was always waiting for him and took the camera the moment he deplaned. He was never allowed to see his own photos because they were routinely classified. BTW--his plane was shot to shit on more than one mission (I think by flak though, not fighters) but they always managed to limp home. In one instance the plane was so shot up they bailed out over their home field and let the crippled Liberator go into the Mediterranean on autopilot. In another instance a flak burst removed all the Plexiglas from his tail turret and peppered him with dozens of small fragments. He got a purple heart but was not taken off the flying schedule. A B-24 crew was 10 guys who trained together stateside, ferried their own plane across the Atlantic, and then fought together for the duration. My father was the only one in his crew to complete 35 missions. His pilot was KIA during his initial in-theater check ride and his crew was farmed out as replacements. All the other guys were either KIA, POW, or wounded so badly they were medevac'd to the states.
@@Frankie5Angels150 what a pompous statement....do you think you need to be trained to use your fucking eyes? as for doing his job 35 times?? fuck off you are a wanker
@@fecklesstech929 he did his job and was lucky
When I was a senior in high school word came out that the air force had dumped thousands of Norden bomb sights into the army/navy surplus market. My high school physics teacher sent a friend of mine and I on a mission to acquire a sight. The objective was to acquire the internal gears and lenses for use in physics experiments. We spent a day visiting every army/navy store in Detroit and it's suburbs. We were unsuccessful as the word was out and the sights were sold the minute they had been put on the shelf. Despite the lack of success we had a great day skipping school to rumage through old military equipment.
joes army navy surplus
Leaked out
what year?
@@costycuzzin 1970
In the early seventies one of my father's electronic surplus magazines (Herbach & Rademan) featured surplus Norden bombsights. My recollection was they were about $200 but not guaranteed to be in working condition.
When I was a kid we had a friend who retired as LT Colonel in 1964. He flew B24 bombers in WWII, Spotter planes in Korea, and cargo planes in early Vietnam years. In the late 1980’s a local air museum contacted him looking for WWII memorabilia. He asked me and a friend to help him drag a wooden crate out of his attic which contained a complete Norden Bomb Sight. Along with other boxes full of flight gear and other items.
Yeah a friend of my dads asked me for a hand while building his engine dyno room. Guy was a genius and was addicted to gov auctions. Long story short the remote dyno controls he used were cable and pulley systems that connected to the Norden. I ran a foundry at the time. The magnesium castings associated with the sight system were incredible quality.
That’s nothing. I was 9 in 1969 and my Nieghbor asked me to help him roll something out of his garage. It was a complete B17. He had a huge garage
@@jimsteinway695 That's nothing. I was 7 in 1970 and my neighbour had a bomb in mid explosion in his shed. Over a period of 3 years, the shed slowly disintegrated as the bomb completed the explosion.
@@dougerrohmerThat _is_ impressive.
They are going for $4,ooo to $10,000 on eBay right now
I worked maintenance on Air Force analog computers back in the day. They were amazing machines, in their day, but their accuracy depended directly on the skill of the technician that “aligned” the electro-mechanical section. And I can tell you that many of my fellow Techs simply didn’t “get” analog computers, so their work was always less than the ideal. It’s also important to recognize that these were mechanical, so things like gear “slop” and precision in the bearings used to position shafts holding the gears was also a huge factor in accuracy. As for the winds, well, I’m also a former skydiver, and I can attest to the challenges of “hitting” a target from altitude. The layers of air over the earth often move in different directions. The only way skydivers can deal with that issue is to either drop a wind “indicator” streamer over the target and watch where it hits, or, to sit in the door and watch the changing aircraft drift during the climb to altitude. This job of getting the aircraft into the right position for a jump run was called “spotting”, and, in my experience, few were any good at it precisely because of the variables. Flying in to a target area with no opportunity to “observe” the differing wind directions would make hitting the target a very unpredictable exercise. Add to that the manufacturing and alignment variances in the bomb sight hardware and I find it very easy to believe the Norden’s accuracy was a result of propaganda. After all, how often do you really believe the government has ever been honest with you? Personally, I believe that’s why they invented the idea of classified information… so they could justify lying to everyone.
There is a justified reason for classification. I think the issue that you mention is a more a problem of unethical and immoral people manipulating and abusing their authority knowing they can hide behind the curtain of classification.
This shows that flak was a lot more useful than it appears. It forced bombers above the practical altitude of bombsights, and forced the bombers into evasive manoeuvres, further reducing their effectiveness.
Flak accounted for more Allied air losses than did Luftwaffe fighter planes.
I estimate the psychological value of Flak much higher than the actual damage it did. (-> "Flak happy" - PTSD effects).
Flak was a lot more useful than it appears? To whom? Definitely not by the bomber crews that were smeared on the inside of their aircraft before it plunged from the sky. Each little angry black cloud was filled with red hot flying bits of metal. The poofy white clouds that drip are spraying white phosphorous everywhere and when that hits something while it is burning, it is impossible to put out, from a war fighter's point of view. If it burns through the thin skin of the aircraft and hits the thin skin of a human, nothing will put it out. It will burn through metal and bone alike. The bombers started evading long before they were over the flak guns. They changed altitude several times as a group because it took several minutes for the rounds to get that high and the rounds are set to detonate at a set altitude, so when the planes change the flak gunners have to estimate that new range.
@@minirock000 This is why they are useful. this is what chris is saying.
@@minirock000 To whom? To those on the other end, those whose houses got hit because they weren't the intended target but accuracy was low, those who had to retreat to the air raid shelters, those who spent hour after four carrying ammunition to feed the voracious air defence beast while destroying barely a plane for thousands of rounds.
Precision bombsights could work well in ideal conditions. But ideal conditions weren’t nearly as common in Europe as in California. And it only works if you actually find the right city. Even at the end of the war, in daylight, bombers were attacking the wrong city. There was one notable mission in 1945 where the USAAF hit Prague instead of Nuremberg.
There was also the issue of dealing with high altitude winds from dropping a bomb at over 25,000 feet. And that didn't exactly improve even on the modern B-52 or B-1 with its radar-based bombing systems. It wasn't until the development of laser-guided bombs in the 1970's and GPS-guided bombs in the 1990's that bombs could finally hit within a 10 meter circle.
There must be a rather long list of mistaken bombings of cities. *The bombing of Nijmegen* in The Netherlands, February 1944, occurred when American bombers, returning from a failed mission and not having dropped their bombs, were looking for targets of opportunity. In the air, flying a B-17 or B-24, it only takes a few minutes to get from just over Germany to well over The Netherlands. 800 civilians were killed.
The DOD still tests weapons in New Mexico desert, under clear weather.
They're not much more accurate than the RAF - and they do it in the dark.
@@AudieHolland I wouldn’t be surprised.
I beleived the whole ball of wax up to this very moment. I was alive for most of WWII, and some of my earliest memories were post WWII in Manila where my dad was stationed. We went to accompany him there in 1946 through 1947 after my brother was born. He was an airdale. Chief metal smith, later renamed structural mechanic. He worked on fighter jets during my entire memory. WWII and after, it was Corsairs, and later Demons (he was Demon Doctor, and I still the patch he gave me). I think he also worked on the Phantoms after the Demons. Of course fighters didn't have said bomb site, so he was probably clueless as well, and me even moreso. You really opened my eyes! Note: I am clueless what he worked on before Corsairs though. I wish he was still here so I could ask him.
I had a 25 year older Cousin that was Bombardier/Pilot in WWII. He retired from the Air Force after 30 years. When I asked him about his experiences, when I was a 2nd Lieutenant, USMC, soon to be a Naval Aviator, Bud told me he and the Pilots used SWAG Method. SWAG he informed me stood for Sciencetific Wild Ass Guess Method. The Norton was just a guide they adjusted from by seeing where others bombs impacted. Flack limited their B-17's position.
SWAG method sounds funny as hell! 🤣 Never heard that one before.
got to love that SWAG method
Always thought there was a massive anomoly between the legend of the Norden and actual performance. I mean, if you had bombers capable of hitting something the size of a CAR, let alone a 'pickle barrel', then you could quite easily (assuming you didnt get shot down) destroy a marshalling yard/ball bearing factory/oil depot with just 1 bomber - single release, drop one bomb on each factory bay/oil tank etc., and watch the whole site evaporate. But no - they needed formations of up to 1000 bombers just to knock out ONE site..... and still missed regularly.
Yup.
exactly my thoughts. even the americans love to talk about the precission bombing in ww2, they still hat thousands of bombers over the target, blowing whole cities apart. I once read a book that described a fatal flaw of the attack procedure. Only the leading plane used "precision" bombing. the following planes just released in order. due to the fact that the airmen wanted to get rid of the bombs and away from target asap, the release of bombs was far too early. the result was sometimes, that the bombs hit far away from the target area.
How could the bombs hit 1 target when they were unstable? watch footage of bomb rads and see the bombs wobble and spread out as they are released.. How could they hit what they were aiming at?
And why develop ,modern laser guided smart munitions if with air superiority you were already that accurate?
@@dzzope Well I suppose if a plane is going along at 300 MPH + then the bombs are going along at that speed as well when they are dropped.
Bill Myers, our high school principal, was a bombardier during the war, flying what he considered suicide missions over German held Europe during WWII. He said the Norden bombsight was ineffective, and their casualties were greater than the casualties of the kamikaze pilots because the kamikazes didn't have enough planes or fuel to fly. He mentioned the bomber crews lost 60% of their men; they were in his words suicide missions. Flying in formation at one altitude he thought was one of their mistakes, as the flak guns could be trained on a formation flying at a certain altitude.
Don't suppose it helped that they were flying in broad daylight either.
@@Makeyourselfbig lol, no doubt that was a contributing factor! When they started daylight raids, the flak guns were probably still active. Bill said something about air layers causing the bombs to go off target, akin to how hot air balloon operators navigate using air currents, but with adverse effects on targetting.
Flying at one altitude all the way to the target was the last thing that bomber crews were supposed to do. When they encountered heavy flak fire, the bombers were supposed to begin changing altitude by at least 1,000 feet and change course by approximately 20 degrees every 30 seconds or so until they neared the final run to target- so that flak would have no chance to range in on bomber formations.
@@manilajohn0182 This. USAAF command pretty quickly realised the need for and developed tactics based on exactly how long German flak-laying calculations took, so they would change altitude and/or direction just before the point that guns could be laid accurately and thus waste as much of the gun crews' time as possible, AFAIK. But they rarely flew straight and level for any time at all except over captured or home territory.
@@chrisburn7178 That's pretty much my understanding, that they avoided same course and altitude flight over any known flak areas or during the final bomb run. I was surprised to see the OP mention that his teacher said that they flew at one altitude; that was a big no- no. Cheers...
My dad was trained on the bombsight in 1944 and at 30,000 feet he realized that tens of thousands of Japanese civilians were burning below his B-29. He began to drink alcoholically in 1945. He drank until his death in 1996.
Talking of navigator's errors, my late father told me this story about the Liverpool blitz. A German plane, damaged by the defensive ack-ack, turned for home but crashed on the moors above Llangollen. The heather was tinder dry, caught fire, and provided a blaze which could be seen for miles from the air. The next wave of incoming planes, thinking that this was an oil refinery or some other major target, promptly dumped their loads on it, adding to the conflagration and reported back. In consequence Liverpool had a couple of night's respite, and the German airforce wasted an awful lot of bombs...... The incident may have inspired the fake 'towns' which we created in open countryside, miles from the real targets, and which would be set on fire when a raid was signalled.
Do ya think maybe - just maybe - God had anything to do with the incident??
@@frederickwise5238 probably not - cause if he did, he was a bit of a dick for letting them drop bombs in the Liverpudlians the other nights
@@rfitzy612 Not good to risk mocking if it was God. Since you dont know I'd recommend be careful.
@@frederickwise5238why would a god even let the war happen? This god sounds like a total dick
This was not even close to being the only time things like this happened. Night Bombers were highly dependent on Path Finders and ... sometimes something bad would happen to the Path Finder ... Then ... there's Creep Back ... where each bombardier - anxious to get the hell out of there - drops their bombs a little bit sooner than that last ... At St. Lo, IN THE DAY TIME, the Americans blew the hell out of their own Infantry because of THAT. This was WWII - not Desert Storm - and look at the Friendly Fire incidents we had THERE. _"Anything that can go wrong ..."_ .
My friend's grandpa was a Sperry engineer working on their bombsight under tight security. He later enlisted in the air corps and asked to be a bombsight mechanic. They denied his request because his grandfather was Italian 🤦♂️He was short so became a ball turret gunner instead. He had great stories.
@@hatdrummer By "we" I assume you mean the "Allies"?
@@hatdrummer You, "Did you notice this video never mentions that we won the war...". Which implies that the other countries made no contribution. You may as well say that dropping nukes on Japan won the war.
@@hatdrummer So you took two events and declared that won the war? It's how the war ended. You said, "we won the war", either you have to admit that you mean the U.S won the war by itself or it won with the contribution of other countries.
@@dannygjk Now we know who was the advisor on 99% of American war movies :p
@@dannygjklol, it’s funny that, likely when things went quiet, Hatdrummer, deleted all his comments. I give America credit for that. You didn’t contribute at all.
Some years ago I was lucky enough to talk to a former 8th Air Force bombardier (bomb aimer) who was on a trip in the UK. On the subject of the Norden Bombsight his comment was, & I quote (cos I've never forgotten it) "it was a piece of shit. The only way you could hit anything with it was to remove it from the ship & physically use it to hit the target manually". He had several other observations about not only the sight but other aspects of "precision bombing".
Much more a case of device working excellently in optimal conditions. Problem is that in combat service there practically never are optimal circumstances to use them so their actual efficiency if reduced.
@@vksasdgaming9472 But their "military grade"!
In 1944, 509th Composite Group bombardiers routinely put 10,000lb dummy bombs in a 300' diameter target from B29s at 30,000ft. This was after a headrest was added to the bombsight to ensure a consistent eye point above the telescope. Admittedly, flight conditions above the Salton Sea in California were ideal, and there was no antiaircraft fire or defending interceptors flying against them.
That's the funniest and most badass quote I may have ever heard!
But was it better than anything else at the time? We can't compare it to a modern JDAM.
My wife had an aunt who grew up in Germany. She escaped from East Germany after the war. A story she told about her childhood during the war was about all the people in her small town running to the country side during a bombing. She was absolutely convinced that the bombers saw them running away, and deliberately targeted them. By the time I heard the story, I'd already done enough reading to know that post-war damage assessments found that many raids missed their targets by miles. The idea that they could see, let alone target, some people running into the woods (or that they'd want to), was ridiculous. I tried to explain that, once, but learned not to go near that subject again.
Yep. It's hard for people to accept that they got slaughtered by accident - but - it does happen all the time. .
To be somewhat fair to them, I did hear tales of fighter pilots deliberately targeting people on the ground with their mashine gun
Excpet the u.s directly targeted civilians instead of infrastructure. So yea, I would agree with the aunt......if it wasn't for the fact that the u.s airforce is the worst airforce of any first world country, so the only accidently hit anything.
@@user-io6pj8bz8h You mean the British? The US for all their credit, stayed away from focusing on vengeance unlike the RAF. Which focuses on realizing Harris's lust for revenge rather than weakening Germany even more
@@user-io6pj8bz8h Yeah, sure, uh huh. I bet you still believe Dresden wasn't a proper military target eh?
Gernany acquired one very early and concluded that is was at least as inaccurate as their own aiming tool. It was kept on a shelf somewhere as a souvenir.
No.
They had to have acquired many of them from downed aircraft, not all of which were totally destroyed , as photos in this very video show.
@@SeanCSHConsultinglmao what is your deal
It makes me wonder . . . about the F-22 and F-35. If what this video is saying is true about the Norden company's propaganda and hype, what could this mean for Lockheed Martin? How good are they really, compared to the J-20?
The germans mostly used almost the same bomb sight
My dad was a trained WW2 bombardier flying a B-17 for 24 missions from D-Day to 12/24/1944. I asked him if he had used a Norden bomb-sight. He said he had. I asked: “Could you really put one of your bombs in a pickle-barrel?” He replied: “Hardly, we were lucky if we got a bomb within 5 miles of the target!” Further: “When the weather was great we seemed pretty accurate, on bad weather days our bombing was less accurate; to say the least.” My dad, a family doctor , was a fan of truthfulness. He’s in Heaven now. He wouldn’t ever talk about the War until the last four years of his life. I look forward to being with my mom and dad in Heaven in the near future. Thanks for your presentation!
"hes in heaven now"... sure ok.
@@ct1762 Yes, he died about 2.5 years ago at age 93. He missed my mom so bad. They were both children of the Great Depression. He lived 4 years after her going to Heaven, they are both Catholic, as I am. One day, in the near future, I’m going to be reunited with them. My son, who thinks for now, that being an atheist is cool, told me: “You know that’s a fairy tale?” I reply: “Not for us.” He maintains that when you die you just become a pile of dust. What a sad way to live. Thanks for asking! May God richly bless you!
@@alcoholfree6381 don't let the devils minions bother you. You know where your going. And it seems they know where they're going. Is it wrong I find humor in that? Have a good one.
The average circular error in 1943 was 1,200 feet - not 26,000 fee - , meaning that only 16 percent of the bombs fell within 1,000 feet of the aiming point. So, again, it was bad enough without the absurd exaggerations.
@@alcoholfree6381 Well, it makes no real difference so you should believe what you like. However, you should think about all the harm believing fairy-stories has done, pogroms, prejudice, hatred, bigotry, small-mindedness, and be glad your son has broke the chain of infection.
My grandfather was a bombardier on "the Big Time Operator" B29. I was 6 yrs old when he passed. He had heart problems and passed at 56. My uncle has all of his flight records. The Norden sight was heavily guarded on Tinian. It had to be checked in and out after every mission, with special armed personnel escourting the sight to and from plane.
That's awsome
My dad was a rear gunner on “ Dynamite Dottie” on Tinian. He’s still here at 96yo!
@@jimschutz then he's a certified baddass! Should write down his story for historical interest
@@leemichael2154 Thanks for your reply! He actually was called a "Waist Gunner" on the B-29 and controlled two of the gun turrets remotely from a plex-glass bubble between them. He was on two missions over Japan and the third mission ended after the plane lost power as one engine froze and locked on take-off causing the drag of the right wing to pull the plane into a cart-wheel at the end of the runway. The co-pilot was killed and my dad fought his way out of the burning wreck. I'm lucky to be able to be typing this because he was able to "muscle" open the rear door to get out of the burning and bent fuselage. He has never mentioned any anti-aircraft action during the first two missions I think because it was late in the war and the Japanese airforce was next to nothing defending their homeland at the end. They had P-51 Mustang escorts on his missions and I think that they took care of any Japanese planes during his missions. Just a lot of practice runs shooting at drones and water targets to calibrate the aim is what he's mentioned.
If Japan had the slightest inkling of what would come their way from Tinian they would of thrown in the towel right then and there. Thank God for that generation.
My Grandmother worked as a lens grinder for Bell & Howell and produced lens used on the Norden Bombsite. She gave me a set of lenses all etched and signed by those working together in that department.
I recall visiting an Army-Navy surplus store in Bangor, Maine, in the 1970s. On display on a high shelf (but not for sale) was a Norden bombsight. I asked, but the owner wouldn’t say how he obtained it. The Norden’s lasting contribution to history might be knowledge of the existence of the jet stream. B-29s attacking Japan at high altitude found that their ground speed was far above what it should have been and beyond what the sight could compensate. The first to report the problem were not believed, but enough reports finally convinced the doubters.
The B-29 pilots in late 1944 did not discover the jet stream, though they were the first westerners to observe it. The jet stream was discovered by Japanese meteorologist Ooishi Wasaburo in the 1920s, but he only published his findings in an Esperanto journal, being a great believer in the auxiliary language, so nobody outside a small part of the Japanese meteorological community knew about it until WWII. Then, the Japanese Army 9th Technical Laboratory at Noborito used the jetstream to launch their 9,800 'Fusan Bakudan' fire bombs against coastal North America from November 1944 to April 1945. It was the allied discovery of the origin of the 'Fu-Go' bombs from mainland Japan launch sites which led to the popular knowledge and exploitation of the phenomenon.
@@masahige2344 You are correct. I believe it would be better to say that the Norden bombsight made the U.S. Army Air Forces aware of the jet stream. It did come as a surprise at the time.
@@donbalduf572 Indeed, and I remember a local newspaper in about 1946 (in the pacific northwest) mentioning both sources of awareness of the phenomenon in describing its potential future significance to aviation.
Here in Chicago about in 1968 or 1969 a surplus store had one and wanted plenty for it - a couple of hundred dollars. It had all kinds of hoses and cords hanging off of it.
I have the top end of a Navy Norden. My dad bought it in the 1970s from the Herbach-Rademann surplus sales catalog. Growing up during the war, he believed the mythos of the Norden and the chance to own one for only $300 was something he couldn't pass up.
2nd most guarded…. What about Ultra! It did more to shorten the war than either the Norden or Manhattan project…. Proximity fuses deserve their credit as does the cavity magnetron. Great history of the bomb site and respectful treatment and comments about the sacrifices of the crews + impact of the campaigns on the war and civilians caught up in the area bombing.
That woman was a genius the likes of which only come along every few generations.
The distinction might lie in 'known but kept from the enemy' (Norton bombsight) and 'so carefully guarded that the very existence was never discussed' (Ultra and the a-bomb). I am not sure where proximity fuses fit in that.
@@Inkling777 Initially they weren't allowed to be used where a dud might fall on enemy controlled land.
Nah. Hitler was actually a British agent.
@@dontimberman5493 which woman?
The thesis for my capstone project for my B.A. in History in 2019 was that the early promise of the Norden bombsight locked ths U.S. into the myth of precision for the duration of the war. While you correctly mentione that the U.S. abandoned precision bombing during the war, continued press releases did not abandon the myth. Overall, an outstanding presentation.
We now know even Little Boy missed its aim point by a considerable margin, however, it didn't make.much difference.
@@jimgraham6722 on the "American Empire" channel, he points out that the A bombs were not precision instruments, they burst in the air to harm as many civilians as possible. Hitting a hard target, e.g. airbase, would be pointless as they would all be in bunkers. Its good that all this information is finally coming out
@@europhile2658 You mean't, as many of the enemy as possible, like the A bomb was only built to kill civilians lol.
That may be true specifically with regard to bombing, but arguably the even more closely guarded development of proximity fuses tells a different story with regard to military ideology broadly. Or, rather, it's an indication that precision was understood well by the military to be the result of an active process rather than a passive one, and that bombing with unguided munitions was primarily a passive process, excepting dive bombing.
The myth of precision bombing is not the only piece of Allied propaganda that is carried forward by the inertia of perverted history.
Even if ya thought the Norden bombsight was everything it supposed to be, the enigma machine was definitely THE singular device that changed the tide of WW2
You mean the electronic computer at Bletchley Park with a team of hundreds of codebreakers who deciphered bits and pieces of Enigma messages? No, I don't think so. War is a matter of supply. The obscene gravy train of material and equipment that Roosevelt sent to save Communism is what prevented a German victory. In the end, even after the Cold War, we're still faced with a threat from Red China. Thanks.
Do you mean the 'Bombe' and the Colossus? If the Enigma code had not been broken, the allies would have been in trouble for a lot longer. Early efforts to decipher enigma code was acutally acheived pre war but as the coding became more advanced, a machine known as Tunny was being used. Bletchley Park managed to develop the 'Bombe' machine and the Colossus to break the code yet we cannot overlook the fact that an error by a german operative was incredibly significant in the breakthrough.
Compare this with the gyroscopic bombsight used by 617 Squadron, RAF, when dropping the 12,000lb Tallboy and 22,000lb Grand Slam bombs designed by Dr Barnes Wallis. These were not designed to hit targets directly, but to land 50 yards from the perimeter of the target building. The angled fins had them spinning like rifle bullets by the time they broke the sound barrier - well before they hit the ground - and their speed / mass dug deeply enough into the ground that they made a huge crater, undermining the foundations of the target building, which collapsed into the hole. Barnes Wallis pointed out that the more concrete armour was put onto the roof of the building, the more violent would be the collapse. There is ample evidence to show that the crews of 617 Squadron could and did achieve that '50 yards from the perimeter' accuracy, dropping the bomb three miles away from the target. In order for the gyroscopic target to do its stuff, though, they had to fly straight and level for ten miles on the final approach to the target, with NO evasive action allowed, which made them horribly vulnerable to attack from enemy fighters - but they did it. As a measure of their accuracy under *combat* conditions, look at this photo of the Bielefeld railway viaduct in Germany. It had been under attack from conventional bombers for months - see the mass of craters surrounding it - and all of them failed. 617 Squadron made ONE attack, in daylight, and hit it with two bombs, a Tallboy and a Grand Slam. Result? Target destroyed. commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schildescher_Viadukt_at_Bielefeld_destroyed_1945.jpg
Bielefeld? Ain't no such city ... (See Bielefeld Conspiracy on Wikipedia. :) )
@@josepherhardt164 That is a joke, or are you a German with no sense of humour?
Neato
@@josepherhardt164 - who said it was a city, *THICKO* - it was a *VIADUCT!*
@@josepherhardt164the entire war was a hoax, not just Bielefeld.
My neighbor was a 96 mission Army Air Corps survivor - (We didn't know his war record until he past away in the early 1990s - his obituary was a full column in newspaper - very interesting life). He never talked about the war other to tell little tidbits about snakes in north Africa, or getting drunk before Germany missions. Said the Norden was POS.
Not Army Air Corps, Army Air Forces. In June of 1941, a full 6 months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, it's name was changed from the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) to the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF). it's a common misconception that it was called the Air Corps during WW2, it wasn't, it spent the entirety of the US's involvement in the war called the Army Air Forces.
@@dukecraig2402 I believe it was still colloquially called the air corps amongst those who served in it.
@@dukecraig2402, It's an easy one to mess up.
"... or getting drunk before Germany missions..." (Maybe that was the problem.)
@@hatdrummer was there anything that was factually incorrect? I hear a lot of people complaining about how there’s this insidious plot to “re-write history” to make America look bad, but I never hear anyone come up with any proof that the these things didn’t happen, because there’s usually a lot of evidence that shows that it did. When people talk about attempts to re-write history, what they’re really saying is that they don’t like people talking about things that make America look bad. I understand how a lot of times people bring these ugly truths up without the proper context, and use it to push a very flawed political agenda, but when you claim someone is trying to re-write history your not saying their argument is flawed; you’re calling them a liar. If you think they’re lying, then prove it. If you don’t like the conclusions they make based on facts, that’s something completely different. The US has a lot to be proud of. It also has a lot to be ashamed of. If we only talk about the good, and ignore the bad, we will come up with just as flawed a narrative as we would if we only brought up the bad. And no one is going to sue the United States for WW2. For one thing, no one could make us pay, and for another, we already did pay with the Marshall Plan.
I feel like Claud Raines in Casablanca; "I'm shocked, SHOCKED to find out that governments and corporations lie!"
The navy did not abandon high altitude level bombing due to poor accuracy, they abandoned it due to the fact that ships at sea are moving targets and can maneuver causing the bombs to miss. Low altitude dive bombing gives the target ship much less time to maneuver out of the path of the bomb but high altitude level bombing was used against stationary targets such as port facilities.
To add to this, the USAAF finally figured out how to sink Axis ships via skip bombing. Low-level bombing where the bombs were actually released and skipped across the water like a stone thrown across a pond where they'd bounce into the target ships.
Not true either, its due to anti aircraft fire also. Level flight head on is not difficult for even a ww2 era targeting system, but also naval aircraft carried by carriers are single engine carrying few bombs. Also, both were dropped in favour of torpedo bombing, and then later high altitude bombing resumed as resources were expendable and AAA was too intense. High altitude bombing is low risk low reward. Dive bombers don't actually do much damage, kamikaze excepted. Torpedoes and large penetrator bombs were the tool against armoured ships.
Accuracy: the ability to hit your target. Doesn’t matter why you can’t hit it.
Watch the documentary about the sinking of the Tirpitz by the RAF using bombers. They used the famous Tallboys to get the job done. Still, they only scored two hits out of 29 and they were only flying at a maximum of 16,000ft.
That's still about reducing your CEP though; dive-bombing vs high-altitude level bombing is a whole world apart in accuracy. Any idiot could have told you in the 1930s that Billy Mitchell was a fraudster and an egotist with his own agenda and that his ideas were bollocks.
This reminds me how US torpedoes were defective for a large part of the war and despite hundreds of commanders and torp operators saying it very vocally the dude in charge of torpedoes refused to believe it even when shown a demo. The problem was in the magnetic firing assembly, crews switched torps to dumbfire and had better results...which was taken by some as a sign there was no problem. Literally hundreds of thousands tons of enemy shipping was saved due to 1 or 2 people's mass incompetence.
The Resident, Jao Xiden feels attacked by this comment. #POTATUS
Good comment - in point of fact, there were actually two issues: 1) The magnetic triggering device didn't work well (partially because scientists didn't understand that magnetic fields generated by ships are different depending on where on earth the ship is), and 2) The firing pins didn't work well. In one book I read, the author said that some of the new firing pins that actually worked were manufactured from Japanese propellers recovered at Pearl Harbor. You'd want to fact-check that before repeating it, but it's an interesting claim.
The Navy Bureau of Ordinance had an arrogant stick up its ass. The problems were eventually solved, but not before very powerful people had to become involved to motivate the politically connected DC insiders in charge of the bureau into acknowledging the problems and implementing a solution. Unfortunately, many American lives were lost due to this disassociation.
@@myblacklab7 >Good comment - in point of fact, there were actually two issues: More. They had issues with depth keeping due to the position of the depth sensing ports (in the Mk14 these were moved to the aft of the torpedo for some reason. Later fixed by moving them to the side hull). They had Gyro problems (everyone had these to some extent though). Air dropped torpedoes had a similar list of issues, atop being dropped from a plane at 250mph and 200ft. Actually went a little over the top fixing the air dropped ones, US ending the war with hands down the best air dropped torpedo.
@@Nikarus2370 The Mk 14 somehow evolved into the best air-dropped torpedo of World War II? Talk about an ugly duckling story!
I think the biggest Allied secret of WW2 aside the Manhatten Project was the codebreaking at Bletchley Park. Principally the development of Collosus, but the breaking of Enigma was also fundamental.
Collosus would be my bet.. So secret that they destroyed it and set back computers by 20 -30 years, just so no-one would find out about it never mind find out how it worked...
not to mention tube alloys
The code breaking station in Hawaii that broke the Japanese codes and wanted Nimitz about the operation at Midway was vital as well.
The following issues also cause the errors and "errors" preventing accuracy of any bomb sight: 1) The US bombs had a 6mil error (this means 95+% would hit within 6 feet of the center of the target at 1,000 feet of altitude. Or, 150 feet at 25,000 feet (avg. height of a B-17 formation)). 2) Most adults probably have seen different levels of clouds, each level moving in different directions (like one east and the other northeast), I've seen during tornado watch weather, through gaps in the two lower layers 3 directions of movement with the top layer moving almost 135 degrees from the lowest layer!! And the surface wind was a 4th direction!!! So you're bomb sight has been set to your altitude's wind direction and speed, what about the wind at the target itself and perhaps 5,000 to 10,000 feet above it? Add this in with what this video talks about and -- -- -- --
exactly. people don't understand how the wind changes with altitude, and without ways to account for that they couldn't be accurate. They tried dropping smoke and other methods, but without the computer doing the compensations it's going to be very difficult.
Why do you think that cities were bombed in WW2? Because bombing was so inaccurate that they needed a target as large as a city just to be sure of actually hit something with any certainty at all.
@@SoloRenegade What gets me is that the US bombed in Groups, if there was more than one Group, each Group separated from the other Groups and did a Line Astern Attack By Group (Group 123 bombs first and a distance behind it was Group 234 which bombed as a Group, and a distance behind it was Group 345.). So why didn't the first Group use a short code worded message to indicate the lead bombardier's did estimate, so that the next Group's lead bombardier could gauge where the bombs did land to make adjustments??? This still wouldn't prevent the bomb dispersal due to the 6 mil's of accuracy tolerance, assuming that the fin assembly didn't have a small bend in one of it's fins, but it would still be better than 100's if not 1,000/s of yards off target!!! (as for helping with that 6 mil, redesign the fins so that the bomb has a little spin on it so instead of continuing to drift off target in one direction it would be like a lop-sided (American) football being thrown, and kinda wobble around a center point. You loose a bit of damage effect from the explosion of a spinning bomb, but surely it would do more damage than a bomb exploding over a 100 feet (~91m) away!
@@timengineman2nd714 100 ft -- 32.8m ish
@@fwqkaw Sorry, did that late at night and used the 100 yard equivalent metric... Opps!
The myth is still being pushed in the latest WWII series, "Masters of the Air."
Well, kinda. They show the crews treating the Norton as super important, which is historically accurate. They also show the bombs hitting Regensburg, which was accurate for that raid. So far they haven't explicitly lied about it, they just haven't gone out of their way to say it was ineffective
@TheBennett388 they did say the only reason they could even attempt daylight bombing was because of it so they are playing into the myth.
@@CSM_Grayyeah based on this video we can tell that’s 100% something they would’ve been told and believed. I think they’re not upholding the myth but rather show the reality which is that the myth was believed by airmen as was drilled into them.
@prussianblue7040 that's true and it is accurate to depict them saying that but if they don't address it being mainly propaganda then today's public will further perpetuate the myth.
@@CSM_GrayThat is what they believed at the time.
Great piece. I like how clearly the script conveyed the information you used to base your conclusions on.
Brit here, and although I'd heard of the Norden from WW2, had no idea it was so surrounded by myth = very intersting video indeed! It's not something that features in anything much regarding the RAF night bombing campaign in Germany, which was the UK's main war effort for a large part of WW2. From fairly early on in the war the RAF knew (Note: they 'knew' - whether or not they accepted this as truth is another matter entirely!) that they were lucky to hit the right county, let alone town, let alone factory, so went with the German system of highly trained pathfinders dropping markers, and everyone else then piling on.
My grandparents called this markers „Christmas trees“ when looking above while running to the bomb shelter.
Fellow Brit here. Agreed. The USAAF flew in formations of massed boxes, a mile long, half a mile wide, and all dropping their bombs at the same moment by watching the lead ship. Often through nine-tenths cloud. And the lead ship has got the wrong target. How accurate will that be?
@@ron9320 I'm glad that we can examine the past from a distance, almost as if we're reading about the wars of ancient Greece or Rome.
In addition to the pathfinder method the RAF also developed H2S ground scanning radar as well as systems such as Oboe which enabled bombing by radar tracking and radio transponder technology. Even though the USAAF also used these methods when weather stopped visual bombing it is alleged they did not prioritise the systems leading to the RAF being better at their use. My favourite phrase for this was that by 1944 the USAAF were precision bombing areas while the RAF were area bombing precisely
@@ballagh[somewhere before 19:18] -- about area bombing -- It sounds like Arthur Harris wasn't wrong after all. If the USAAF abandoned precision bombing, then what I heard in a documentary some 15-20 years ago was actually inaccurate, that the British under Arthur Harris had the wrong idea and the Americans got it right. No, precision bombing didn't actually work. The precision bombing claims about the Americans were revisionist. They weren't true. It may have been true that Arthur Harris was a mass murderer, but the British were doing the best with what they had under him.
My uncle flew a B25 in WWII. He was the best pilot on his wing. He told me that he could not begin to trim out his bomber well enough to give the Norden bombsight a chance to shine. He also said that it was mostly a PR device to manipulate public opinion. He said that weather conditions were too dynamic for real-time metrics.
During the bomb run the bombardier had controlled the plane not the pilot. The pilot was standing by until the bombs were dropped. Sorry Your dad couldn’t do anything during the bomb run that’s why he couldn’t trim anything.
@@bigstyx your comment has me scratching my head a bit, would you mind explaining it a bit more in detail?
@@dannyg1153 On the final moments of the bomb run, the Bombardier, the man who is in the nose looking through the bomb sight, was able to take control of the aircraft in order to make his own adjustments. The Pilots would then take control after the bombs had dropped.
@@dannyg1153 ---- the Norden had an early version of an auto pilot built into the actual unit and as Big Styx explained the bombardier actually turned on that auto pilot and made adjustments to elevation, speed, pitch, yaw, etc... to be as accurate as possible with no human error in flight control. That was one of the biggest problems of being in a bomber. Once that bombing run was set on course the plane was locked in for a long number of minutes and that gave anti aircraft artillery easy target practice on a plane that could not speed up or down or change elevation to evade they were sitting ducks until the bombs were released and then if they survived they could get the Hell out of there
@@13_13k *y'awl
Interesting to line up this assessment of the Norden sight with the British SABS: SABS was used by 617 Squadron (the Dambusters) to target their Tallboy and Grand Slam "earthquake" bombs with pinpoint accuracy. I would be interested to see you address how effective SABS was in that scenario.
One advantage of those heavy bombs is that they are not affected by crosswinds as much as the lighter bombs. So the accuracy was helped by the weight and size of the bombs themselves. Also, they were dropped at lower altitudes. And they were specialized missions too.
Not comparable. Morden bombsight used as USAAF standard. Pathfinder and sabs was elite only
I think the issue is that those were used to drop one single specific munition rather than a load of 30 or 40 bombs, and they also required something like straight level flight, with no evasive maneuvers, for 5-10 Mi before the target. In a mass bombing raid this would have just been mass suicide. Nonetheless though very impressive, and the RAF did some incredible things during the war
Great video! I think the most important passage is at 17:45 The bombing campaign was more about drawing out the Luftwaffe and destroying it to make the invasion of France possible than about the damage the bombing did. The Allies needed Titian air dominance in D-Day to make it work, and the resources the Luftwaffe lost to the Eighth Air Force made that happen.
I grew up knowing the Norden bombsight was considered valuable enough to destroy it if at all possible. But I also grew up knowing it was not as good as claimed, nor as critical overall than other things like Lend Lease and mass production.
Nor as helpful and effective as an enraged Russian army.
With american food and equipment
@@tboniusmaximus3047 Don't forget fuel!
… or the cavity magnetron, proximity fuse, atom bomb…
@@nmccw3245 None of which really made that much of an impact. Same systems (to an extent) could be recreated without them, and nuclear bomb was an absolute failure until proper means of delivery were created (as it was too expensive, and any real resistance would force sending dozens of stupidly expensive devices on an almost ensured failure, along with all aircrews).
My father was a WWII bombardier in the 8th. Two other issues affecting bombing accuracy were: 1) Bombing on the lead, where all planes dropped their bombs when they saw the Lead aircraft drop its; Bombing by Mickey (Radar). In a modification of the Lead approach, here the lead bombardier used radar to identify the target. From my father's combat diary "Bombed on Mickey. Missed damned target 8 miles one way, 5 miles the other." There's a similar entry for bombing off the Lead. Both were intended to improve bombing results.
Radar would see a terrain feature - not the target - and they bomber would know what the offset of the target was from the terrain feature - but - some of those terrain features looked a lot alike and - they didn't KNOW exactly how far off they were from the terrain feature they were using for radar guidance. Basically - in complete over cast - the were bombing by Dead Reckoning - using Navigation to try and bomb the target. Radar helped them GUESS better - but that was about it. This was WWII - not Desert Storm. .
My Dad was a B-17 navigator, 381st BG Ridgewell UK. He flew lead after 4 missions, and a crash course in GEE navigation. His remarks were pretty much the same estimating about a 20% rate of hitting the intended target.
And now they just click on the target with a mouse. Very well presented and researched video FD, well done. My grandfathers (one of whom was a Lancaster Bomber radio man and the other an Army officer in WW2) would've loved this, or maybe they wouldn't as they didn't talk about the war much.
I remember these in an electronic breakers shop, immensely complex and full of intricate parts .
Canadian FIL was stationed at Kunming with the RCAF when a US bomber landed and the crew deployed around it with tommyguns supposedly to protect the secrecy of the new bombsight from the prying eyes of ALLIES. The captain got a jeep ride to tower whereupon he was told he had landed at the wrong airdrome and was 360 miles off his course destination. He was so embarrassed he hastened back to his aircraft and proceeded to take off without tower permission or guidance. The laughter was loud and long when one wag loudly suggested; "why bother keeping a bombsight secret when they won't be able to navigate to within 300 miles of the target area anyway?" LOL
The decryption work at Bletchley Park was far more vital to the war effort and much higher in the hierarchy of secret information than the Norden bombsight, followed closely by the Bombes and Colossus computers designed there to mechanise decoding of Enigma and the Lorenz attachment. After all, the Germans and Japanese only had to down one bomber fitted with the Norden device to know a) of its existence and b) its working principles. In his book "Most Secret War aka The Wizard War, R.V. Jones states that the secrecy of new devices in bombers was measured in weeks or months if luck was on your side.
H2S was found on a downed bomber within weeks of its first mission. But even then the German's lacked the ability (initially) to reverse engineer the cavity magnetron and actually get it into production. By the time they could the war was already lost.
Thank you. You are so on point with that.
I agree 100%
@@dogsnads5634 What was H2S?
@@theoldbigmoose ground mapping radar. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H2S_%28radar%29
My dad was an instructor during WWII, training navigators and bombardiers. And yes, the bombardiers were made to take an oath not to reveal the Norden secrets and to destroy it before bailout if their plane was shot down. He was also instructed to tell anyone who asked that the reason he was stateside as an instructor, not overseas flying missions, was due to his intricate knowledge of the internal workings of the Norden. In actual fact it was because he was adopted and couldn't produce an original birth certificate. His aptitudes were too high for them to turn him away, but without the birth certificate they wouldn't let him go overseas. He was almost 50 before he was finally able to get a passport. FYI His opinion was that the Norden was as much of a propaganda weapon as anything else.
My father was also an training sergeant stationed at McDill Field in Tampa Florida, (see above). While he wouldn't agree with your father's opinion of the Norden, he wasn't allowed to go overseas either but not because of adoption. He joined the Army Air Corps specifically to become a pilot. They never officially told my father why they wouldn't let him go but for all of his life, he blamed his high security clearance from his work at Eastman Kodak in Rochester N. Y. He attained it shortly before the war for working in the A & O, or apparatus and optical division of Kodak on government projects. He figured that they might have feared that he would have been captured and forced to give up information on his work. He was a technician and it was his job to assemble prototypes of items of military importance from their design blueprints. Not exactly a high level job but one that came with exacting internal knowledge of the inner workings of said items and their testing procedures and their blueprints. Kodak rehired my father the war. He retired in 1974 then he, my mother and I moved back to Florida about 50 miles from where he was stationed during the war. He was taken aback at how much the area had changed in 29 years. Anyway, every two years, for the next 10 years, my mother and I had to leave the house for two hours while government agents, (maybe NSA?), came in and debriefed him on what was and wasn't still classified. I didn't care, she took me to the liquor store. I was the family drunk back then from 1973 to 1985. His 10 years of conversations ran from 1974 to 1984. And no, he didn't know who shot Kennedy or about the alien bases on the moon. :) He did, however, get to know Werner Von Braun from their work at Kodak together after Operation Paperclip brought him over to work on rockets though.
My dad was an Navigator/ Bombardier instructor as well. 1st Lt USAA... I believe at the base at Big Spring, Texas is where he taught. He tested off the charts in math is why they sent towards this profession. I have many yearbooks of the classes he taught as well as his yearbook during training in storage.
I have no doubt of what you say about his birth certificate because that's how our government works. Just stupid. It just strikes me as strange that when the government calls for all hands on deck for a world war, that they would hold anyone back for a birth certificate. I'm sure that your father wasn't the first or last. Who the hell needs a passport to go to war anyway? Hitler was doing this when he required all Germans to prove that they were of all Arian bloodlines. People who couldn't lost any rights. At least your father got to keep his, thank God.
@@jeffmccrea9347 Yup. The Kodak job he had was definitely the reason. That was a very interesting story. Thanks for sharing it! I'm curious as to what your dads opinion of Von Braun was, if he had one at all.
My father was in the army air corps during WW II although he never saw action over seas. He lost friends and saw devastation on some of the survivors. He was impressed with Von Braun's intelligence but worked with him only because he had to. Needless to say, they WERE NOT the best of friends.
The ineffectiveness of the Norden Bomb sight showed when the USAAF attacked Norwegian Heavy Water production facility at Vemork in November 1943. They dropped 711 bombs and only about 100 got near the target. It didn't flatten the plant nor put it out of permanent action. There were no German air attacks either.
It’s interesting that the French started that heavy water facility and the Germans tried to take it over?
The myth about carrots being good for eyesight comes from WW2. The Germans couldn’t understand how British fighters were able to react with such deadly precision at night. In order to protect the facts about RADAR, a myth about carrots was circulated (“What’s up Doc”). A far more accurate system was developed by the Germans and consisted of intersecting radio waves. You’d fly along one until you intersected the second and released the bombs. This worked great until the f-in British moved the intersect point to over Dublin (the time the British bombed Ireland via the Luftwaffe). It’s worth noting the Eire was natural up until this point, when the Germans became persona non grata.
The Germans used several systems of bomber guidance beams. Basically instrument landing in reverse. In 1936 the BBC began television broadcasting a few hours a day. It was shut down when the war began. The british jammed one type of German navigation beam by using the TV transmitter to repeat the signal but delayed a few milliseconds.
No.
Thanks. Another US AAC myth was that the P-47 couldn't escort all the way to Germany. The real problem was that the AAC believed in unescorted bombing, even against the evidence. But to avoid admitting their mistake, they made the P-47 the scapegoat and swapped them for P-51's. Even though drop tanks enabled escort to most of Germany. Drop tanks were intended for P-47's early in their design, but the unescorted bombing advocates forbid their use because it challenged their unescorted strategy. Again a lot of US airman lives were lost needlessly.
The P-47 was more vital to WWII than the P-51 was. It was just to expensive and too to long to build when compared to the P-51 when it came out. But by then the Allies had mostly established air superiority so the P-47 was regulated to ground attacks which it was superior to than the fragile P-51.
You mean US AAF- re-designated in June of 1941. Just sayin...
Thanks for the video man! I've heart about the Norden bombsight, but never got into details. For me, the most informative part was the one about the origins of the myth and how and why it persevered for so long.
Hardthrasher (excellent channel if you’re into WWII history with a very British sense of humor) derisively calls it the Norden “bombshite” lol
The radar proximity fuse was probably more important.
You came out and said what I’ve long suspected, and you’ve also got me started on a long term research project to hunt down source material to confirm. I’ve worked on a lot of warbirds and was able to talk with a lot of veterans, restorers, history buffs, and like the Wright Flyer, the Norden Bombsight and precision daylight bombing are subjects that just were not questioned or critically discussed. Thanks for bringing this up, and thanks for motivating me to learn more about it; I’m excited to discover more on the engineering aspects and also on Sperry’s contender. You turned me on to the Greg’s Airplanes & Automobile channel - thanks for that, I’ve been binging his work for some time and also commented I was there based on a FlightDojo recommendation. He has a neat carrot of including his non-copyrighted source material and bibliography to his Patreon supporters; might you have something similar?
I'm still new to the KZhead game but that is definitely in the works! Feeling a bit small for a Patreon at this point.
@@flightdojo One of the reasons that in WW2 cities were bombed was because bombing was so inaccurate that they needed a target as big as a city just to be sure of actually hitting something with any certainty.
@@flightdojo would love to see you compare the results of general purpose bombing vs precision bombings.. they all used the same sights BUT general purpose bombs ARE NOT ACCURATE Precision munitions with well trained crew didn't seem to have any issues hitting targets as small as (heh sounds weird) a battleship, Rocket launch pads, viaducts, train tunnels etc.. Now, not saying they are near modern devices but 612 squadron had DIRECT hit rate of ~15 - 20% How would that be possible if the sight was such trash?
@@autodidact537 Only with general purpose bombs..
@@flightdojo Russia has made a new bomb sight for dumb bombs that works. The SVP-24 is an enhanced navigation system that acts as a computerized bomb sight manufactured by Russian company Gefest & T that is claimed to provide similar accuracy to guided munitions. It uses the Continually Computed Release Point technology. It proved to be highly effective in the Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War and is being rolled out to all bombers.[1][2]
Excellent video!! Truly an in-depth documentary!
It was less secrative than the proximity fuse. They didn't even let those be used over land where the enemy might recover them.
They did use then during the battle of the bulge, to great effect.
This reminds me of a story(urban myth)my grandfather told me many years ago, he worked in a manufacturing company in Coventry UK including during WWII anyway the rumour/joke/myth was that Hitler had given strict instructions that Smiths instruments couldn't be bombed because of their impact on the German war effort by providing equipment to the allies!
Another bullshit tale......it was also said that during the Boer war of 1900 it was a crime to kill British officers because they inadvertently aided the Boers by their stupid leadership qualities.
No doubt the same instructions were given re Lucas electrics....the reason the English drink warm beer! All hail Lucas, Prince of Darkness!
Reminds me of Lucas Electrical, the Prince of Darkness.
Funnily enough this is almost verbatim the reason Allied commanders let Hitler go ahead with his vengeance weapons
@@dsdy1205 I think it was said that Hitler was their greatest ally with his interference in the military affairs that he was so inept at. The main reason the Germans failed, (short of resources), was that they banked on living off the lands they conquered or over ran, but they didn't realise those countries had a pact to support one another in time of conflict.
This is one of the best videos I’ve seen in a long time! Well done sir!
i live in belgium, my grandfather loooved planes and would collect books and models and such, i asked him a lot of questions about the war (he was a kid of 11 - 16 yrs old), he lived next to a train repair yard so he saw alot of bombing, the house he lived in got bombed killed his parents and he was trapped in the basement (he went blind in one eye because he lived in darkness for about a week, probably some shockwave damage too, he said he never was wounded but not all wounds are visible you know, he got very religious because of this and he would also collect holy water from pilgramage sites to try and heal his eye...), AND HE HATED THE RAF, and i get it, the allies sure did liberate us and i'm thankful for that, but i never saw the war, when your parents are killed by someone its hard not to hate them... the trainyard is still there, he rebuild his parents house and moved in with his wife (she was the neighbours daughter) they still sound the air raid alarm once a year in remembrance of all the people lost in bombings in that area, i used to feel so sad for him on those days...
Fantastic video. Well done!
Something to note about bombing accuracy: weather played a crucial role. The Norden required a several-minutes long unobstructed view of the aiming point. Many a bomb run was spoiled as clouds drifted in and concealed the aiming point during the run in to the target. This meant either an inaccurate drop, or the formation bombed 'holes in the clouds' hitting whatever happened to be underneath, rather than the specific target that had been allotted. Then there were the many instances in which missions were cancelled entirely due to unfavorable weather. This is what pushed the USAAF to develop blind bombing techniques using H2X radar.
@Retired Bore Thank you.
@Retired Bore One problem with H2S was that after awhile German night fighters could home in on the radar frequency. It became a beacon for the defenders. In the airwar in WW2 each side developed counter measures very quickly.
Excellent work as usual, you've earned a new subscriber.
As this video mentions the RAF used the "Stabilized Automatic Bomb Sight" (SABS) which was produced in very small quantities but essential for the Tallboy (12,000 lbs) and Grandslam (22,000 lbs) bombs that were very expensive and had to be dropped close to their targets usually in daylight. Consequently the SABS was only ever used by elite RAF squadrens such as 617 Dambusters. However with that caviate the Wikipddia articlw on the SABS states that on operations "General accuracy improved dramatically as the crews gained proficiency with the system. Between June and August 1944, 617 recorded an average accuracy of 170 yd (160 m) from 16,000 ft (4,900 m), a typical bombing altitude, down to 130 yd (120 m) at 10,000 ft (3,000 m). Between February and March 1945 this had further improved to 125 yd (114 m), while Air Marshal Harris puts it at only 80 yd (73 m) from 20,000 feet (6,100 m)." Wikipedia goes on to say in the same paragraph "Two other precision-bombing squadrons formed up during this period, but used the Mk. XIV [bomb sight]. These squadrons were able to achieve 195 yd (178 m), an excellent result that offered performance roughly equal to the early SABS attempts, and far outperforming the average result by the more famous Norden."
Real world too: 617 hit the Tirpitz at least twice with tallboys. Quite the thing from 20,000 feet.
But why did accuracy improve so much with usage? Doesn't that suggest either an issue with the sight or, more likely, training? I mean what about a bomb sight requires dropping a weapon to train? Can't you just practice over friendly land?
Wow. How are you not at 1M subs yet. Fantastic content!
"12 O'Clock High" with Robert Lansing must have added to the Norden myth. How many times did I watch the bombardier look through the bombsight and hit a factory on the ground. It was still a good show.
Hollywood has always been, and still is, part of the propaganda machine.
The closest guarded secret of WW2 I can think of is the cracking of the Enigma and the technology to crack it, which was kept secret until the 1970s.
Hear! Hear!
Enigma was not kept secret - it was known about in the late 1960's when some books were published. What was kept a secret until the 1990's was Colossus. In about 1993 or 1994 the US was preparing to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the development of the world's 'first' computer - EINIAC! Then the bottom fell out of their world! Because It was revealed that the best kept secret of World War - Churchill's '... Goose that laid the golden egg and never cackled ... ,' was the breaking of the Lorenz Code as used by Hitler and the German High Command to communicate with the Generals like Rommel. Britain had designed, built, and operated the world's very first electronic computer - Colossus several months before EINIAC, and only in 1993 was the secret revealed. Britain built 6 and the US military never knew!
@@Volcano-Man You are contradicting yourself. If the cracking of Enigma was known about in the 1960s, that's at least 15 years that it was kept top secret (from 1945 to at least 1960). And the presenter is talking about secrecy before and during the conflict itself. And in any case, it was in the 70s, in 1974 to be precise, that the work of the Bletchley Park codebreakers was finally revealed, by F.W. Winterbotham in his book "The Ultra Secret".
@@jonnybottle No am not contradicting myself. 'Beyond Top Secret,' was published in the early 1970's. The book caused controversy at the time,as many felt that the secret they had protected was bring betrayed. The book you refer to was published later! You see I actually happen to have lived with two people involved with Enigma - my parents, and Lorenz - my father. Sadly both have left us, but he told me a lot about Colossus and Lorenz and both told me things about Enigma!
Tabun
It might be mentioned already, but bombing accuracy in WWII was wonderfully summarized in the Phrase: "The RAF precision bombed area targets by night while the USAAF area bombed precision targets by day....."
Around 1900 battleships began to have issues with accuracy when they expanded the range. That is when a differential analyzer was designed by many different sources. Calculating where to aim when dealing with crosswind, changing range and distance was a problem common to battleships and bomber aircraft.
I vote for the VT fuse being much more important. And most still don’t know what the deadly fuse was.
You miss one of the key issues with the Norden (and every other optical) Bombsight: it could be foiled by the use of smoke screens. If you can obscure the target...and more crucially the aiming point...then you can foil the sight. The Nazis would light smoke pots up-wind of a target and obscure the target area...which caused whole formations to circle and then fly the pattern from the IP to the drop point over and over again. That meant repeat flights through Flak...with the Flak getting more accurate once the gunners knew the height, speed, and course of the bomber formations. The second time through a bombing course was far more deadly than the first. And while German fighters might have been neutralized, Flak was always a danger.
I don’t disagree, but the video is about the myths of the bombsight. I don’t think people have the perception that a sight can see through smoke screens. also smoke screens were not exactly common in ww2 air battles…
For all its flaws it was the best bombsight we had?
@@danharold3087 For all of its flaws, it was one of the worst bombsights used in WW2. We certainly had better options but marketing always wins over quality. Maybe you didn't watch the video. There is overwhelming evidence that the Norden was marketed as the best, and proved to be the worst. Britain was lucky to not be allowed to use it.
@@drengr2759 I said "For all its flaws it was the best bombsight we had?" Saved me watching the rest of the video. :)
@@drengr2759 Still better than Japanese, Russian and probably Italian bomb sights as well. If you are having to get your actual true airspeed from another target at a similar altitude as your actual target you are already a point behind.
Great vid! First signs of life of a military industrial complex or first signs it was taking control?
Very good content. It’s a great day when I get to learn something I didn’t know about yet
I just came across your video (6/22/2022). I had a friend, Bob Burns, who just passed away 5/2022 at 101 years old. He was a machinist who calibrated the Norden bomb sight during his time in England with the AAF. He had a Norden bomb sight that was given to him by a widow of a former AAF friend. I actually have photos of him and the Norden bomb sight together at his shop. He ended up donating it to a very small, rural Airplane Museum in Massey, MD., USA. If someone was interested in seeing one. Nice job on your video, as I never asked Bob about the accuracy of the sight. Thank you very much!
The problem wasn’t the sight it was the weather conditions, the sight was developed outside of Phoenix Arizona which has clears skies with the occasional wind in these conditions the bomb sight worked fine but you add clouds and wind it doesn’t but it was still able to control the plane for the bombardier versus the pilot.
My father was a 1st Lt in the Army Air Corps. He volunteered at the beginning of WW2 with some friends and went in as a Private and tested high in mathematics. The US Army Air Corps sent him to navigation/ Bombardier school which later he became an instructor. He taught new upcoming bombardiers how to use of Norden Bomb sight. Many of the students as I remember him telling me were taught in (Big Spring Tx I believe)Texas. He told me many stories of students making mistakes during practice and nearly bombing private homes near the practice ranges. I have lots of documentation / original documents of the training and instruction. I suppose I will give to a major military museum at some point. I have many signed class yearbooks of Bombardier school graduates who wrote personal messages to my father. I Googled many of these officers and the information online is available where and when many were shot down, captured or killed. Unfortunatly, it seemed the survival rate of these B17/25 crews were not too good. My dad always said he was fortunate he was assigned as an instructor and stayed in the STATES During WW2.
Very cool!
My father also volunteered, in summer of 1941, and likewise wound up stationed in CONUS for the duration. He made MSgt and Line Chief when the current Line Chief disappeared. . .to be Crew Chief for the Enola Gay.
My first job in the USAF was the updated version. Radar Guided Bombing. Ballistic winds were gathered for every 1000 feet, but those could change, local altitude setting, we could get AC altitude from the angle, even plugged in the ECC (Earth Curvature Correction), and would get pretty good results up to about 45, 000 feet. After that? eh.
This is a report of excellent quality, presentation couldn't be better! Great job!
Great video, very refreshing to have this myth thoroughly broken down and debunked
Yes, I agree. Sadly I wonder how many other things today have been hyped up to suit .a government's narrative.
This blows me away. When did this come out?
Makes you wonder, we know stuff like this went on back then, and are being told about it....who only knows what sort of "stories" ( aka lies) being told to us this very day.
There's an abandoned Army Airforce training base near where I live, that was used for training B-17 crews during WW2. One of the only buildings remaining onsite is a reinforced concrete building with bank-vault type doors along two sides. This building was used to store the highly secret Norden Bomb Sights between training missions. The bombardiers, under armed escort, would pick up their bombsight, take it to the plane, and upon returning from the training mission, reverse the procedure.
Wyoming?
By
@@SHKEVE Pyote (Rattlesnake) Bomber Base, in West Texas.
@@thomashowlett8295 Tried to visit the museum last year .... it was closed and could never get an answer when attempting to call. Any way to get a "tour" of what's left. I saw the walls of one of the hangers was still standing. My father was assigned there at the end of the war.
@@robertfrutchey406 When I visited Rattlesnake Bomber Base in 2002, the museum was still in the town of Pyote, and was very impressive. I didn't know that they'd moved it to the town of Monahans until you mentioned it being closed. I was able to explore the base site by going in the back way, thru some oil field roads, no "no trespassing" signs on that side (at that time). They had only recently torn down the last hangar (the concrete walls of which you can still see from the hwy). They used that hangar for scenes in the 1985 movie "Fandango" starring Kevin Costner. There was some interesting artwork on the inside walls of that hangar, which I originally thought were from the WW2 time period, but now believe were painted for that movie. Not much else on site except the concrete foundations of the support buildings, and of course the runways themselves.
Just dropping in to say that it looks like this channel has taken the next step up, and I'm really excited for whatever you have next! Subscribed. (I had avoided it so far because while the engine videos have been good, they beg the comparison with Greg's content, which... yeah)
I explained the carrots improve your eyesight WW2 myth to my best friend today. Just a rumor started by the British to cover up that their night fighters were using radar.
Due to flak, you had to change course and altitude in a short time period. The bombsight needed to fly a straight and level course before releasing bombs. There was also the ' creep back' when over the target when bombs were released too soon to get away from the flak.
Another myth was escort fighters did not have the range to cover the longest attacks on Germany. It was not the Magic P-51 that "Solved" this Problem, it was allowing fighters to use drop tanks. Bomber Generals had staked their careers on the " fact" bombers could defend themselves without escorts. They could not retract from this position. So only a magical long range fighter could be discovered to solve the problem their own position created. I knew a flight engineer on B-24's who said some missions carried a very light bomb load because bomb bay fuel tanks were needed for the extremely long range missions. It was politically more important the missions be flown than they be effective. Again Generals using the lives of Captains and their crews to create a foundation for the general's future in an independent service. Many of our losses in Vietnam were from rules which required targets be flown over WW2 style, even if cloud cover made bombing impossible. Rigid approach patterns in both cases made positioning anti aircraft weapons much easier for the enemy.
Of course the bombing raids over Hanoi, in 1972, are a CLASSIC example of poor planning by USAF Generals. Planes entered the target area at the SAME altitude, in the SAME direction, formation after formation. The gunners on the ground ONLY had to "home in" on the first formation and then HOLD those settings for all those that followed.
Totally agree with the fallacy that only the P-51 could escort the bombers to and from their targets in Germany. Please read Malcolm Gladwells book titled The Bomber Mafia. This books lays bare the truth regarding the failure of the concept of unescorted long range bombing with out fighter escort. Those in the Bomber Mafia were willing to sacrifice the lives of airman to prove their theory that long range bombers would be able conduct long-range raids over Germany, unescorted, and deliver accurate results on selected “choke”points on German industry. The Mafia were “true believers” and no matter how catastrophic losses were amongst aircrews and aircraft, they persisted that no escort was needed. P-47’s with drop tanks could have easily been converted to escort the B 17’s and B24”s into Germany and back. By 1943 the Eight Air-force was pretty much shot out of the sky, and then and only then did the Bomber Mafia realize the Eight would cease to exist if they did not allow the bombers to be escorted. Gladwell’s book lays out the real truth about this disaster. The greater point Gladwell’s books is that you must allow “dissenters” to exist in any program or organization, because “true believers”, left alone with no one to question or criticize their concepts will almost almost always lead disaster.
Of course the B-52's involved in those raids used an on-board radar to acquire and attack targets. That eliminated the problems of smoke or clouds obscuring the target areas.
@@badguy1481 Reminds me of the Duke of Wellington's remark about the Napoleonic French Army "They came on in the same old way and we rebuffed them in the same old way".
@@jamesbriers696 except he never defeated Bonaparte alone.
The use of spider web as reticle material was told to me years ago when a German neighbour, who repaired cameras, said they used them when he worked for Zeiss.
You're right Boris....my dad was in the Canadian Army and one of his Jobs was to repair binoculars, rangefinders and any optical equipment which required graduated markings. He used to tell me about collecting spider webs to be used as crosshairs although I don't know if they had to be black widow webs. I always thought it was rather amusing.
@@heresjohnny888 Lol doubt his name is Boris Johnson. That’s the name of the UK’s PM.
I'm gonna be honest, I thought anybody who had read any recent books on strategic bombing would know the Norton bombsight was nowhere near as good as people made it out to be, because, duh. Otherwise we would have /actually/ won the war from the air very quickly as advertised, instead of having to resort to 1000 bomber raids to destroy single industrial targets.
True enough. The fact that the Allies resortrd to sending huge formstions of bombers dropping *huge* amounts of ordinance on targets kind of tells you the accuracy was quite poor. It's an incredibly inefficient use of resources, made palatable only by being necessary.
But I like carpet bombing.
That shoud be "...instead of having to resort to 1000 bomber raids destroying cities and sporadically also hitting an empty industrial warehouse district..."
@ericvosselmans5657 well that just comes back down to exactly what my point was. US bombers where aiming for specific targets, but the accuracy of the Norton bombsight in actual combat conditions was such that to sufficiently damage that target you had to damn near level everything in a pretty big radius around that target.
Duh.....🙄
I was watching the new 'Masters of the Air'. When they were saying that they flew, during the day, because they had the Norden and were so accurate. I almost fell off my chair. You would think that, in 2024, they would know better.
Well the program was historically correct as everyone at the time considered it to be true.
@@RippySharp But, as it is not true, why not just leave that out?
And the Norden bomb sight was trialled by the Luftwaffe and rejected as too inaccurate in the late 1930’s. They got a trial version from Norden from Norden’s Swiss agents. The entire “secrecy” thing was bunk and propaganda.
they stole it anyway
I had heard a similar story, only I think the one I heard was it was captured off a downed bomber. Also, while they mentioned they put it on one of their own bombers, it never gave any more detail, such as whether it was copied and manufactured by them or not. I did get the overall impression they thought more of their own sights.
I've never been exposed to the myth of the Norden bombsight, only heard some brief mention of it being quite ok for its time (especially in the 30s). Hitting something (or even with half a kilometer of it) with a dumb bomb from 30000 feet is pretty hard, and it's not made easier by being shot at by fighters, tracked by search lights in cloudy or windy conditions is pretty hard. If you wanted to hit a ground target with high accuracy during WW2, you would use a dive bombers (such as the Ju-87 or the SBD Dauntless) or a rocket-equipped fighter bombers (F190F or P47). A large flight of American daytime bombers were more suitable for putting bombs in an approximate area. They could do damage to targets the size of a railway station or factory complex, simply by dropping so many bombs in the general area, that some were bound to hit something of value.
See also Mosquito bombers being used for low-level bombing, pathfinder marking and skip-bombing. Throwing your bomb up a tunnel mouth is pretty precise too!
Wow super informative, excellent channel!!
Excellent video and info, and I REALLLY appreciate you having listed sources. Are there any books or other publications you also referenced? If so, info please (name, pub., date, ISBN, etc.).
Meanwhile on the dams raids 617sqn RAF had a triangular piece of wood with 2 nails in it to line up on the dams towers and flew at 50ft.
The thing with the Norden bombsite is the same with all others. Daylight bombing required formation flying. The bombardier in the lead plane lined up on the target best he could and released his bombs. All the bombardiers in the other planes also had Norden bombsites but they could not also be used in formation bombing. They kept their eyes on the lead plane or another plane ahead and assigned to them to watch. When the plane ahead of them dropped it's bombs they counted off a predetermined number of seconds, say one or two seconds, and dropped their bombs. It the lead plane was off or their count was inaccurate, how could it be, their bombs missed. They were aiming bombs at targets four to five miles below them and at speed ahead of where they dropped their bombs. The lead bomber was often trying to sight the target through clouds and smoke intentionally made to obscure the target. I the plane skewed a bit in flight the forward momentum sent the bomb off tat an angle to one side of the target. In testing in the United States in areas where there was little to no cloud cover, the target was a mark on the desert floor and the cross winds were well known the Norden bombsite worked remarkably well for the technology of it's time.
This was a really well done video
The limitations of the Norden have been known for decades among engineers and historians(who actually cared to research). An article in IEEE Spectrum from "89 heavily alludes to the basic limits that it possesed and compares it unfavourably to the Sperry bombsight. Its just that it takes a long time for this stuff to move from the 'specialist' club to the general public.
Back in the sixties.. My friends mother had the desk at the front door of Josten's main facility in Owatonna, Mn. I wandered in there one day and saw her at that desk. Behind her on the wall was an (I think) an 20' by 10' of all the components of the Norden bombsite... I still wonder, to this day, whatever happened to that panel..
Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell goes into the myth of American precision bombing in quite a bit of detail.
My first exposure to the Norden sight was from re-runs of “Hogan’s Heroes” in the 70’s. My first exposure to those actual levels of bombing accuracy was the first gulf war in 1990. Everyone was amazed.
Yes but on the episode Hogan wasn't talking about the "Norden bombsite" he was referring the to the "Norton Vacumn cleaner"
@@scottstewart9154 😝👍🏻
@@scottstewart9154 Yeah. They get Hogan in there and he starts drawing a picture of it ... Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! I found it kzhead.info/sun/hpisl9aRgGRmbIE/bejne.html .
Wow that is so not even a little interesting... we really don't care that you watched Hogan's Heroes and your veiled attempt at getting attention mentioning the gulf war has nothing to do with this video
1:38 What changed the tide of WW2 in the European theater was 2 things; 1) German shortages of fuel and everything else, and 2) the Soviet Union simply would not give up and as Germany got weaker the Soviets were able to destroy 75% of the German forces. TIK History takes very deep dives into myths from WW2.