Bomb Sights

[Jim Oxley]

Just wondering which was the most advanced/sophiscated bombsight used during WWII.

I guess everyone knows about the Norden (did the US medium bombers also use it? And the B-29's?) But what did the RAF and the Luftwaffe use? Did they have sights that allowed the bombardier to control the the final leg?

And what about the bombsight fitted to the Arado Ar234? How advanced was it?

[George Hopp]

As far as I have been able to find, by war's end, the bombsights of all combatants gave about the same overall accuracy. Incidently, according to comments I read recently, the Sperry bombsight was actually slightly better than the Norden, but the Norden had received all the advanced publicity on its fantastic accuracy, so it is generally thought of as THE bombsight used by the USAAF.

To the best of my knowledge, the US Norden/Sperry and the Lofte 7K installed in the Arado 234 bombers in the last months of the war, were the only bombsights that permitted limited direct control of the a/c during the final phase of a bomb run.

[Jim Oxley]

Thanks George.

[shooshoobaby]

As a point of interest - in 1938 an employee of Norden , Herman Lang , turned over a complete set of blueprints for the bombsight to the Luftwaffe. At that time the LW thought it would never need them and they were filed away.
Mike

[ArtieBob]

IMHO, the accuracy of ballistic trajectory bombing from horizontal flight in WW II was limited not by the stabilization, computational ability of the sight, or flight path control; but the variables of bomb casing aerodynamics, wind shear, air density,and other meteorological variables. I believe, based upon data I have seen on on bomb velocities and the absence of sonic boom reportings, that the terminal velocities of WW II free fall bombs was well under Mach 1. My guess is the time from release to impact could be up to a minute, depending on the release altitude. The bomb release point was based upon a visual reference based solution to the drift problem, computed on the run in at the bomber's drop altitude. I am pretty certain this took no account of the variance in wind velocity and direction at other altitudes. Even if these parameters were included in the release point computation, since there was no ability to make any corrections after release, if anything changed that would increase error at the target point. When you look at it this way, the higher the drop altitude, the longer the flight time and greater effect of trajectory variables. This is independent of the quality of optics, computational ability and skill of the operator (i.e., bombardier). Perhaps this was another reason that the B-29s ultimately dropped their altitude over target late in the war (after all that trouble to provide pressurized crew compartments).

Best regards,

Artie Bob