Steven P. McNicoll wrote:
Robert Sveinson wrote:
The only one of those that is totally incorrect is Americans landing
in Rabaul during WW2.
Also incorrect.
B17's being used during the day in Europe as they were precision
bombers not carpet bombers as the RAF were ?


No, that's not totally incorrect. When the weather was good B-17s delivered
their bombs very accurately for that period.


But when it came to the crunch?

Don't forget that the initial Dresden raid was supposed to have been
flown by the Americans but they cried off because of bad weather, so the
RAF stepped into the gap and played the lead role. American "precision"
bombing in that same campaign also saw the Americans bomb Prague by
mistake, although I don't know how accurately they did that. It
certainly upset the Russians, who were in residence by that time!

Essentially the Norden bomb sight worked only in clear skies - not an
everyday thing in continental Europe, unlike California where it was
developed.

Also, to quote:

"The trouble was, precision was another Norden myth. From 20,000 feet,
2/3 of American bombs fell 1/5 of a mile or more from their targets --
even with the best of bombsights.

Meanwhile, the bombsight itself had been reclassified from secret to
merely confidential two years before Lang's infamy. In 1942 it was
downgraded to restricted, the lowest classification.

By then we were switching to the English tactic of saturation bombing. A
bomber armada flew over a city. The lead plane signaled the drop and
they pulverized everything below -- hoping to catch occasional military
targets in the general carnage."

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1004.htm
--
Moving things in still pictures!