"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message ...
"ArtKramr" wrote in message
...
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
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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.
Not really Art
Bomber command flew its first mission using Gee in late 1941.
On March 3 1942 the first major raid that utilised gee equipped
aircraft dropping flares for the main force was made against the
Renault works at Billancourt in France. 223 of 235 aircraft
found their target). Losses were very light (one Wellington was lost)
, and damage was evaluated as 'heavy'
I don't really think they put that factory out of action. As you say
they needed to physically illuminate the target.
By mid summer 1942 almost all BC aircraft had Gee. H2S began
arriving in service in 1943.
Knowing where one actually is and bombing accurately are related
issues but strictly speaking quite different.
GEE put a bomber in the general place it wanted to bomb and most of
the bombs might just do a bit of damage to something in the same town.