Subject: How did the Brits do it?
From: "Keith Willshaw"
Date: 3/10/04 6:44 AM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:


"ArtKramr" wrote in message
...
I think back to the war and the RAF heavies on their night missions.
Missions
flown in the winter usually were in atrocioius weather where there was no
view
of the gound and the sky above was overcast. There was no way to shoot at
star
fix or take a dirft reading from the ground. Working dead reckoning from
England deep into Germany and any change in wind dorection or velocity
that
went undetected made dead reckoning navigation a hit and miss
proposition.
Often it was not just miss, it was gross miss. Knowing all this how could
the
RAF ever hope to pull off these winter night missions successfully? What
was
the logic that made them keep flying under these hopeless navigation
conditions? Anyone know?


This is a complex subject and a matter of some controversy
but unusually these days is on topic so I'll give it a go.

The RAF began the war in 1939 with a plan that envisaged
daylight precision bombing of military targets only. Unfortunately
catastrophic losses on early raids, 50% and higher, proved this
to be impossible. It was quite impossible politically and from
a morale point of view to simply stop bombing the Germans
This was especially true after the Blitz.

An attempt was made to use the techniques you describe
to bomb at night and the results as you would expect were
very mixed. In 1940 raids were mainly aimed at the invasion
barges in French and Belgian Ports and these being relatively
easy to locate at night results were acceptable.

However as targets deep in Germany were attacked it was evident
that the expected results were not being delivered.

An official report commissioned by the war office from the
economist David Miles Bensusan-Butt revealed that bombing
was shockingly inaccurate. Churchill recognised the importance
of the report - "this is a very serious paper and seems to
require urgent attention" and temporarily suspended bombing while
a solution was sought. This was to consist of four parts

1) The adoption of better navigational aids
2) Better crew training
3) Larger better equipped 4 engined bombers
4) A switch of tactics

Essentially the RAF decided that if they couldnt hit precision targets
then they would switch to targetting things they couldnt miss,
this was area bombing. The idea being that if you couldnt
hit the arms factory in the city you'd settle for flattening the
entire metropolis.

As the war progressed navigational aids like Gee and Oboe along
with Radar aids like H2S and the use of Pathfinders did improve
accuracy a great deal so that by 1944 the RAF were able to
atatck and obliterate targets varying from troop concentrations
in Normandy to entire cities.

Keith


Of course Gee Box and Oboe came very late in the war. I flew a number of Gee
missions as the war drew to a close. But how anyone can do long range dead
reckoning when wind drift and velocity cannot be reliably determined, with no
view of the stars or gound, makes things a bit hopeless. But I would say that
90% or more of those missions were flown without any electronic or radar aids
at all. . Every time I think of those guys up there I am in awe of their
incredible courage and determination under near impossible conditions. BTW, did
they even carry driftmeters?




Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer