Timeline for How did pilots know when to release bombs on airplanes during World War2?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
28 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 30, 2018 at 19:27 | answer | added | Luiz | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jun 6, 2018 at 13:18 | answer | added | gopal raj | timeline score: -2 | |
| Jun 6, 2018 at 10:30 | comment | added | Aron | Calculate???? You can't calculate something when you have no idea what is happening!!! Aerodynamics was more trial and error, so nobody understood supersonic fluid dynamics. The bombs themselves don't fall straight!!! | |
| Jun 5, 2018 at 20:12 | comment | added | Polygnome | @Flater You still don't get my point I see. First of all, the accuracy of the gun sights was miserable, they could hit a circle with 300m radius with 10% of the bombs. That is why carpet bombing was employed, because otherwise you couldn't hit anything. And that is on top of the incredibly bad navigation which on more then one occasion failed to bring them to the right city. The whole process was so completely riddled with imprecision that the precision of the sights wasn't all that important anymore. My point is that every step of the process was not comparable to modern bombing. | |
| S Jun 5, 2018 at 16:28 | history | suggested | msanford | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Marking a question as a question is redundant.
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| Jun 5, 2018 at 15:38 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Jun 5, 2018 at 16:28 | |||||
| Jun 5, 2018 at 11:31 | comment | added | Pete Kirkham | > I recall hearing something about bomber pilots using a modified watch to deploy bombs. Possibly you are thinking of the use of a specialised stop-watch for estimating ground speed, such as the Elgin A8, (repair manual), or of the modified (sprung mounted) chronometers for navigation such as this. | |
| Jun 5, 2018 at 11:18 | comment | added | Flater |
@Polygnome: Finding the right city is unrelated to how precisely you can hit the bridge you're targeting. If you can't find the right person, it doesn't matter whether your gun sights are accurate. It does matter when we're discussing the weapon and not how to read a map.
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| Jun 5, 2018 at 9:40 | comment | added | Polygnome | @Flater Agreed, but you miss my point. The whole chain of the bombing runs was extremely imprecise. before you can think about bombing a bridge for example, you first have to hit the right city. In your words: Before you can shoot a person in the head, you first have to find the right person. If you can't find the right person, it doesn't matter whether your gun sights are accurate. But then, even with those sights, only less then 10% of the bombs came down inside 300m of the intended target. Good luck bombing a bridge with that precision, unless you simply carpet bomb it (which they did). | |
| Jun 5, 2018 at 9:20 | comment | added | Flater | @Polygnome: Precision is a measure of the weapon/tool. It does not account for user error. If I try to shoot you in the head, but I pull the trigger when the gun was pointed at my foot, and I ended up shooting myself in the (same) foot; that shows that the weapon had good precision, but its wielder did not. Precision is measured under the assumption that the user is doing what he intends to do (i.e. aiming at what he wants to aim at). | |
| Jun 5, 2018 at 1:33 | comment | added | Mazura | ASAFP. Especially if you're planing a direct hit on the ocean instead of a bunch of civilians. | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 20:55 | comment | added | bukwyrm | @DenisdeBernardy : In the US war on Southeast Asia they dropped double or triple the tonnage of WW2 ... so the aiming was seemingly not that good then, either. The Iraq war in the 90s saw "90%" hit rate claims that were later reshuffled to ... 20? The 'dumb' bombs were just carpeting, like of old, and the 'smart' ones were quite dull as well. | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 19:57 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackHistory/status/1003727438659153921 | ||
| Jun 4, 2018 at 19:26 | comment | added | Ray | @Polygnome That wouldn't have anything to do with the bomb sight, though. Even if the navigator fails to get them to the right city, the bombardier might still spot a factory in that city and land the bombs directly on top of it. | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 18:29 | answer | added | Schwern | timeline score: 9 | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 16:45 | answer | added | user27618 | timeline score: 6 | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 16:00 | answer | added | RedGrittyBrick | timeline score: 5 | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 15:14 | answer | added | BlokeDownThePub | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 15:02 | comment | added | Adwaenyth | The idea of carpet bombing was if they couldn't hit what they wanted to hit realiably so they just hit everything in the general vicinity... | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 14:22 | comment | added | Polygnome | They were so precise they bombed the wrong city on more then one occasion. Just saying. | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 12:22 | comment | added | Jontia | The film The Dambusters has a few scenes where they're redesigning the bomb sights, because the existing equipment is no good for aiming when flying at the very low level required to use the bouncing bombs. | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 9:34 | answer | added | Hobbes | timeline score: 5 | |
| Jun 3, 2018 at 22:56 | answer | added | tj1000 | timeline score: 29 | |
| Jun 3, 2018 at 19:29 | comment | added | Denis de Bernardy | Keep in mind that during WW2 bombing had nothing to do with the surgical type of bombing we have today. I can't recall the exact numbers off the top of my head, but the amount of bombs dropped during WW2 was positively mind-boggling. Back then you'd basically carpet bomb as a matter of course, and drop tons of bombs to destroy a target that would get destroyed by a single bomb today. | |
| Jun 3, 2018 at 19:27 | answer | added | o.m. | timeline score: 18 | |
| Jun 3, 2018 at 19:26 | answer | added | John Dallman | timeline score: 66 | |
| Jun 3, 2018 at 18:49 | comment | added | sempaiscuba | The standard bomb-sight deployed by the RAF from 1942 was the Mark XIV bomb sight. The US version was called the Sperry T-1. | |
| Jun 3, 2018 at 18:39 | history | asked | John Rawls | CC BY-SA 4.0 |