The Inspector wrote:
JDK,
I was just using that metric as a focal point because I figured someone would eventually ask, and it also points out that even with intense training, group bombing, and the vaunted NORDEN bombsight accuracy wasn't what you would expect.
Better to say that with altitude bombing, the absolute
best anyone could achieve was accuracy of a large city block; hence the RAF's 'Cookie' bombs were known a blockbusters to propagandists as they were meant to level a city block. (Bearing in mind city blocks are a new-world concept, unknown in wartime Europe excepting Valetta, of course.)
All this as Cubs asked:
Cubs wrote:
I wonder what the original target was? Doesn't sound like a general purpose bomb to me.
Anchored ship? Google didn't turn up much.
The target would be the level of 'the city / docks / river' (as the aiming point); no-one was using cookies, a high-altitude use blast bomb, for pinpoint targets. This also assumes the scant details we have are correctly pointing at a cookie.
I make no claims to being an expert on Bomber Command or the USAAF's bombers, but the starting point (which I don't have) would be to see what raids were made against that city. That would also give the objective.
Unfortunately, while there's some truth in the Inspector's comments, I suggest they're too general to be of use and are also carrying myth and inaccuracy. As this is the Warbird Information Exchange, here's a few comments:
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it's very difficult to see specific aiming points or indexing items like buildings in the middle of a dark night when the sky is full of unseen fighters and buckets of flak
Which is why they were using ground mapping radar (H2S) and bombing on target flares, RAF Bomber Command systems handed off to the USAAF in Europe enabling USAAF bombing through cloud with the former as H2X.
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The standard British bombsight wasn't the best and was very fiddly to make operate correctly, so a fair amount of night bombing was on the 'that looks right enough, bombs gone'.
Most bombsights (including US ones) used at that altitude delivered similar results - the training and quality of the crew (not their valour) having as much to do with accuracy. Pickle barrels were always safe from 15,000 - 30,000 ft. Generally the RAF Bomber Command bombed on a visual item, such as a river bend or identifiably point, or on earlier fires - the latter causing the problem of 'creepback'. The RAF's bombsights, if you want to be accurate were easier to set up and use but were less theoretically accurate than the complex but effective Norden - which was not as effective, as you've said, as was claimed in propaganda at the time anyway.
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since the RAF flew single sorties and not tight formations,
Again, not quite. Bomber Command flew a 'bomber stream' aiming to concentrate the effort over the target in a limited period and a limited area. Concentrating the stream developed an almost fish-like 'safety in numbers' from preditation, and to a degree, worked. The difference in size and time and accuracy on target between the 8th AF's box formations and Bomber Command's bomber stream doctrine was not as polar as people might think.
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The Germans figured out how to minimize damage by erecting two sided concrete structures in a gridlike setup miles from a city and lighting big, smokey fires,
The British developed the 'Q Site', a dummy airfield or city for the Germans to bomb in 1940-41 - there may even have been W.W.I antecedents. How effective they really were
overall is difficult to quantify, much being wartime self-congratulatory 'we're cleverer than them' back patting. Certainly many were bombed on both sides, but others never bombed at all.
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It wasn't until much later that outfits like the famous 617 Sqn using Mosquitos became 'pathfinders'
617 Squadron 'The Dambusters' were not a Pathfinder unit, not acted as pathfinders, but were used on specialised raids as a precision or expert unit. They flew Avro Lancasters, not Mosquitoes (although on a handful of raids a Mosquito was used by the CO).
The Pathfinders became a Bomber Command group of a number of squadrons, responsible for marking targets accurately, and as a raid progressed, updating the information to keep a raid focussed, rather than getting dispersed.
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and used specific to the day, colors of flares to outline targets just ahead of the bomber streams and 'on target' accuracy went up, the pathfinders were instrumental in pin pointing the launch rails and control buildings for V-1 buzz bombs
Pathfinder TI ('target indicator') coloured markers didn't outline a target but were used as specific relative aiming points, rather like the Vietnam FAC Willy Pete rockets were used; hit the colour / smoke, or hit a point relative to (1,000 yards west of.. etc.)
The late-war Bomber Command had what was arguably the most complex and sophisticated system to attack the targets that has ever been developed, if measured on the number of people and types of equipment involved. Accuracy was sacrificed on a
doctrine basis, not that they couldn't hit a precision target, but that they were not asked to - the merits or otherwise of that is another debate.
The watershed in the Bomber Command from a completely ineffective and massively inefficient random bombing campaign that
does match some of the Inspector's statements above, was the 1941 Butt report that blew away the self-deluding reports and confirmed that the claims of target damage were as bad as the critics had stated. However, after that, there was a process of continuous improvement to the extent that by 1944 Bomber Command could, and did, obliterate targets the size of a small city, as well as ports, marshalling yards etc. with a range of bombs much greater in capacity and potential effects than used by the USAAF.
None of the above is to slight the efforts of the US bombers in Europe; it was a remarkable effective and costly effort that shouldn't be underestimated. But while the story of the 8th AF is probably well known to most WIX members, while as discussed above the equally important achievements of Bomber Command are often misunderstood and misreported. They all deserve accurate understanding, IMHO.
Butt Report:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butt_ReportPathfinders:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathfinder_%28RAF%29Bomber Command history:
http://www.rafbombercommand.com/http://www.raf.mod.uk/bombercommand/background.htmlRegards,
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