USAAF philopshy of the heavies being able to defend themselfs

[drgondog]

There goes the thought of precision bombing , it was area bombing with a fancy name like pre enjoyed automobile instead of used car

Not really. Some guys are better than others for specific tasks. The lead crew concept was adopted because some navigators didn't get lost and some bombardiers got very good results. When you consider that factory and assembly and refining complex's were about the size of several squadrons in close formation, then bombing on your best crew made sense - if the objective was as precise as a Catalytic cracker within a refinery as your prime AP, then the lead crew was tasked to use that as their aiming point.

Pretty impossible at night with hundreds of a/c weaving into a target essentially on their own but doable in tight formation with good visibility and a navigator bomardier who could get you to the target, find the aiming point and control That B-17/B-24 all the way to that target.

[pbfoot]

Not really. Some guys are better than others for specific tasks. The lead crew concept was adopted because some navigators didn't get lost and some bombardiers got very good results. When you consider that factory and assembly and refining complex's were about the size of several squadrons in close formation, then bombing on your best crew made sense - if the objective was as precise as a Catalytic cracker within a refinery as your prime AP, then the lead crew was tasked to use that as their aiming point.

Pretty impossible at night with hundreds of a/c weaving into a target essentially on their own but doable in tight formation with good visibility and a navigator bomardier who could get you to the target, find the aiming point and control That B-17/B-24 all the way to that target.

call it whatever you want but its like IMHO of putting lipstick on a pig it area bombing in everything but name

[Siegfried]

Tis could be done with smaller aircraft such as the Mosquito but if you want a large payload you need a large aircraft and it becomes impractical. Unarmed recce aircraft worked on the same principle

Large aircraft can be made fast: those purchasing aircraft simply failed to specify such aircraft: the Mosquito was a private venture and more or less or fluke.

[buffnut453]

Why was the Mossie a fluke? Because it entered service at all or because it performed as well as it did? Just wondering....

[tomo pauk]

What is a 'fluke'?

[Edgar Brooks]

Large aircraft can be made fast: .

Not if you weigh them down with defensive armament and crew.

the Mosquito was a private venture and more or less or fluke

That old myth, again; the Mosquito was not a private venture, though de Havilland had to fight tooth-and-nail to get it accepted. Sir Wilfrid Freeman, Air Council Member for Research & Development, backed it, and the Air Ministry issued Specification B.1/40 specifically for it.
And a fluke? Now come on, the Mosquito was de Havilland's 98th design, most of the preceding being made predominately of wood, they'd won the England-Australia race with a wooden monocoque-fuselaged twin-engined aircraft, and had built probably the most elegant pre-war 4-engined airliner, also monocoque-fuselaged, and built from wood.

[wuzak]

Not really. Some guys are better than others for specific tasks. The lead crew concept was adopted because some navigators didn't get lost and some bombardiers got very good results. When you consider that factory and assembly and refining complex's were about the size of several squadrons in close formation, then bombing on your best crew made sense - if the objective was as precise as a Catalytic cracker within a refinery as your prime AP, then the lead crew was tasked to use that as their aiming point.

Pretty impossible at night with hundreds of a/c weaving into a target essentially on their own but doable in tight formation with good visibility and a navigator bomardier who could get you to the target, find the aiming point and control That B-17/B-24 all the way to that target.

Wasn't the concept of bombing on the lead less about getting the best to do the jon and more about minimising the time the bombers spent over target? After all, with the Norden a long straight flight path to target was required, and if each crew bombed individually they were extremely vulnerable to flak or fighter attack, not to mention the extra time required to do it this way (only the early raids with relatively small formations bombed individually - can't imagine how long it woul dhave taken if they still did it with the 1000 bomber raids of 1944 onwards). The advantage of bombing in formation was that the defensive formations remained in their mutual defensive fire positions.

Some factories may have been sprawling complexes larger than the size of an 8th AF "close" bomber formation. Others were not. Some that were spread out had large amounts of space between sectiosn - like oil refineries.

[Glider]

What is a 'fluke'?

A lucky break, something totally unexpected, against all the odds

[drgondog]

Wasn't the concept of bombing on the lead less about getting the best to do the jon and more about minimising the time the bombers spent over target? After all, with the Norden a long straight flight path to target was required, and if each crew bombed individually they were extremely vulnerable to flak or fighter attack, not to mention the extra time required to do it this way (only the early raids with relatively small formations bombed individually - can't imagine how long it woul dhave taken if they still did it with the 1000 bomber raids of 1944 onwards). The advantage of bombing in formation was that the defensive formations remained in their mutual defensive fire positions.

Wuzak - flying formation on lead, and bombing on lead certainly had an advantige of maintaining squadron formation integrity - but the whole objective was to destroy the targets. Period. When the Lead Crew methods were introduced, the Automatic Flight Control Equipment was also introduced and the Bomabdier essentially flew the airplane - taking the ability of the pilot to make evasive manuevers (inckluding deviating from the bomb run out of the pilot's hands.

Some factories may have been sprawling complexes larger than the size of an 8th AF "close" bomber formation. Others were not. Some that were spread out had large amounts of space between sectiosn - like oil refineries.

All True. Havind agreed that, there were two approaches. One was to designate a single Aiming Point in the center of that 'sprawling complex', the other was to separate and allocates discreet targets within the complex for one specific Bomb Group.

The latter references were used statistically to judge individual bomb Group bombing accuracy via post bombing recon/BDA. There is a feeling I get from many of the comments, particularly Neil's that 8th AF bombing was of the first type. Not so - If you look at a particular day's mission you will note the multitude of individual sites attacked on any one particular day - too many people have a notion that the 8th went after one general area rather than 20 different plants or marshalling yards or chemical/petro complex's.

In fact, there might be four general areas - each usuall (but not always) far apart - and each (say Leipzig area with Bernberg, Halle, Halberstadt, Lutzkendorf and Aschersleben - west, northwest and south west of Leipiz, for the 2nd BD on July 7, 1944) hit by One bomb wing comprised of two to four Bomb Groups. On that day, at a different time and a separate course, the other Bomb Divisions would be striking different target regions and targets within those regions.

The 1st, 2nd and 3rd Task Force was assembled over England and stayed together to a point west of Brunswick, where the 1st TF/2nd BD headed southeast, the 1st and 3rd continued toward Berlin then headed south-southeast before they reached Berlin and then headed for Magdeburg, Leipzig, Merseburg, etc, etc - timed to be in the area where the 2nd BD was also headed but 30 and 50 minutes later.

In each of those target areas were multiple single and separate targets which had singular aiming point within that specific plant/complex for one bomb group (out of 33 for that day)

Net - the lead crew tactics evolved because it started as 'every bomb crew bomb on the briefed target, pilots could take evasive action during the bomb run, formations scattered, targets were not found, etc - leading to dismal 'area bombing' equivancy - even when visibity was excellent. Pretty much describes Aug-Dec 1942.

[pbfoot]

I understand the principle but can't see how it works . Thats a noble thought to try and hope your lead Nav , or Bombadier find and hit the target but I just don't buy it , at least every bomber in BC attempted to hit target

[jimh]

We've been using the Norden at our "bomber camp". The servo system that controls the flight controls during the bomb run is not installed so we have made the PDI or Pilot Direction Indicator operational on the panel. As the bombardier sights in on the target from the IP we maintain a specific airspeed and altitude while the bombardier gives us heading corrections via the PDI. We are using 3,000ft as a hard deck and the bombsight is calibrated at 150mph. When the indices cross within the bombsight it trips the releases on the bomb racks and out they go. While this system works we manually release the bombs. Has the bombsigt been accurate...not really but we get close enough to our 150ft target ring to do damage if we were on an actual mission. What does all this mean? The bombsight got you close, having 100 bombers behind you laid waste to alot of landscape below it. I believe they went to a lead toggalier to reduce crew and redundancy. Why have 100 extra men on a mission that could be accomplished by 1 + a few backups in case of any anomolies.

jim

[drgondog]

I understand the principle but can't see how it works . Thats a noble thought to try and hope your lead Nav , or Bombadier find and hit the target but I just don't buy it , at least every bomber in BC attempted to hit target

It is simple. Those individuals that repeatedly demonstrate superior competencies are selected to lead others in their assigned tasks.

The RAF picked master Bombers, etc to lead the rest of the RAF to the proper city - but there was nothing past marking the rough center of mass for the ciry they were attacking, based on the visibility provided by descending flare clusters to illuminate the city - and even then there wasn't a mass of formation flying Lancasters to at least achieve a collective footprint of bombs around a small tough target. Nor was the RAF flying in a long straight line over any night target they chose to hit - trying to eliminate being an easy target to find and shoot down by NJG fighters (or searchlight illuminated flak)

Using night bombing by RAF versus daylight, computer aided/optically acquired targeting is a silly comparison - until you take visibility out of the equation.

Every USAAF pilot, navigator and bombadier Tried to hit the target early in their campaign - but pre-lead crew the results were closer to RAF area bombing than subsequent results achieved by lead crew/combat box tight formations under AFCE.

If you believe the RAF achieved better results by daylight bombing against Oil and Chemical Refining targets (as I do) than area bombing the same targets at night, the comparison should work better?

[pbfoot]

I'm not saying night was better then day alls I'm stating no matter what you call it or who is doing it , its all area bombing its just the USAAF dressed it up a bit by calling it precision bombing .

[drgondog]

I'm not saying night was better then day alls I'm stating no matter what you call it or who is doing it , its all area bombing its just the USAAF dressed it up a bit by calling it precision bombing .

We agree to disagree. Not one airpower - Axix or Allied went to night bombing to get better bombing results. If you look at RAF's major triumphs for accuracy (Tirpitz, Jail Break, etc) all were daylight efforts. Night bombing was a priority because of daylight losses - not bombing accuracy. Ditto Germany over well defended target areas.

Speer was far more concerned about the impact of daylight strategic bombing and said so in his biography. Calling daylight precison bombing area bombing is valid for targets like Dresden, and just about any target under 8/10 to 10/10 cover is Ok, but bombing at, and hitting, targets like bridges, submarine pens, ball bearing/aircraft assy plants, refining plant critical equipment may have an 'area spread' for the hits but the target itself was hit - similar to say, Tirpitz. There were a LOT of misses attacking the Tirpitz but the RAF couldn't hope to do it at night.

[buffnut453]

Drdondog,

I think you and pbfoot are talking past each other. This isn't an argument about whether daylight or night bombing was more or less precise. It's a question of the definition of the term "precision bombing". If only the lead aircraft in a formation has a Norden bombsight, and all other members toggle with the lead, then while there may be some attempt at "precision aiming" by one aircraft, the net result was still "area bombing" because of formation spread, aerodynamic dispersion of the bombs (on top of other errors such as mis-identification of the target by the lead etc).

Just trying to clarify the discussion.

Cheers,
B-N