Boeing Niner Zero Niner AwwwYEAH!

My Dad's brother was one of those "swatted out of the sky". "His" plane was
a B-17G, "Quarterback", but for some reason he was flying "Plain Mister
Yank" IIRC, when he went down.

I was born well after WW II, so I never knew him, but we had some uniforms,
his medals, and a few pictures.

And the pictures used to fascinate me: they had an octagonal "cut-out" of
the nose of the aircraft. This was to prevent our enemies from examining
purloined pictures to get the details of the Norden bombsite, which was one
of the keys to our bombing successes.

Flash forward to around 1975...

I was working as a disk jockey. We frequently received electronics surplus
catalogues at the station, and I was flipping through one while the records
were playing.

One of the hot items being offered was Norden bombsites, for only $29.95.
Interesting, but I really didn't have any use for one.

A couple of hours later I grabbed the copy for a newscast off the teletype,
sat down, and started reading. At the end of the copy there were always a
few very short stories to enable us to properly time our newscasts. I was
running a little short so I started reading these filler stories.

And one of these filler stories turned out to be interesting: it seems that
one of the men who was part of a plot to steal the Norden bombsight during
the War had just been released from prison.

I thought there was a certain irony that this guy had spent more than 30
years in prison for trying to steal something I could now buy for less than
$30!




wrote in message
...
On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 12:56:09 -0700, "gatt"
wrote:

So close I could see the glint off
the plexiglass turret and the black traction tape and red gas caps on her
olive wings. 60 years ago, I'd be thankful I wasn't German. Today I am
simply thankful.

I'm thankful I didn't have to fly one in combat. B-17's are beautiful
airplanes but during WWII, they were big slow targets. The Germans
swatted them out of the sky in huge numbers. Several missions
resulted in 60 airplanes being shot down out of about 300 that made
the mission. During another mission in which more bombers sortied,
over 80 were knocked down.

That era is gone forever. All those guys could count the number of
people lost and calculate their chances for staying alive till their
tour was over, they weren't good. Yet most went anyway. Some didn't,
a lot of men cracked up psychologically and a number of bombers were
flown to neutral countries to be interned rather than complete the
mission or bail out over enemy territory. Can't say I blame them, the
psychological stress of having to sit their and be shot at without the
ability to maneuver to escape the fire must have been enormous.

Overall, some 12,000 heavy bombers from both Britain and the US were
shot down during the war. Mull that number over for a second, it
represents an incredible effort and loss of life.

Corky Scott

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 08:40:18 -0500, "Bill Denton"
wrote:


And the pictures used to fascinate me: they had an octagonal "cut-out" of
the nose of the aircraft. This was to prevent our enemies from examining
purloined pictures to get the details of the Norden bombsite, which was one
of the keys to our bombing successes.

Flash forward to around 1975...

I was working as a disk jockey. We frequently received electronics surplus
catalogues at the station, and I was flipping through one while the records
were playing.

One of the hot items being offered was Norden bombsites, for only $29.95.
Interesting, but I really didn't have any use for one.

A couple of hours later I grabbed the copy for a newscast off the teletype,
sat down, and started reading. At the end of the copy there were always a
few very short stories to enable us to properly time our newscasts. I was
running a little short so I started reading these filler stories.

And one of these filler stories turned out to be interesting: it seems that
one of the men who was part of a plot to steal the Norden bombsight during
the War had just been released from prison.

I thought there was a certain irony that this guy had spent more than 30
years in prison for trying to steal something I could now buy for less than
$30!

Like most legends, the accuracy of the Norden bombsight has been
hugely overblown.

The Norden was developed prior to WWII and it was fiendishly difficult
to manufacture due to the high number of close tolerance fittings,
bearings and shafts that went into it. Plus, it was extremely
intolerant of dust and shocks which are endemic in a combat zone of
course, not to mention the constant upkeep it required while in the
combat zone, which was limited in that there were only so many expert
technicians and a lot of sights. In addition, the training for the
use of the sight occured in the desert southwest where flying weather
was nearly perfect. The bombing runs were conducted at altitudes
normally lower than 10,000 feet. So the target was visible to the
crews for a long time during the approach, the altitude at which they
bombed was very low compared to the height they would bomb from in
actual combat, and nothing disturbed the bomb run.

In actual combat, the heavy bomber crews found things VERY different.
They bombed from *at least* 22,000 feet (many times they were higher
than that), they almost never actually saw the primary target due to
wretched northern European weather and with the Norden you actually
had to SEE the target in order to hit it, they were opposed by vicious
fighter attacks which disrupted the formations not to mention shooting
down numerous bombers, the flak barrages were often deadly accurate
and unavoidable, and the bombs themselves were not aerodynamically
very stable and often wafted away from their intended target.

In addition there was the major problem with daylight bombing over
Europe: If every bomber bombed individually as per training, that
meant each bomber had to approach the target singly, which was
obviously not going to happen as it would string the bombers out for
hundreds of miles and leave them all vulnerable to fighters and flack.
So the bombers bombed from formation. But while in formation, the
bombardiers could not all do their own bomb runs because once the bomb
run was initiated, the bombardier flew the airplane through a linkup
with the auto pilot and the bombsight. You can't have each bombardier
flying his own bombrun while in tight formation or there would have
been many midair collisions. So only the lead bombardier flew the
bomb run. Every other bomber in the formation dropped when they saw
the lead bomber's bombs go, or upon radio signal. The accuracy of the
drop depended on the skill of the lead bombardier (if he was still
alive at that point, the Germans pointedly attacked the lead aircraft
in all formations), and how tight the formation was at the time of the
group drop.

In the meantime the Germans were making smoke upwind of the city, and
the first bomb strikes often caused enough smoke to obscure the actual
target so that the follow on squadrons had to somewhat blindly toggle
into the smoke.

Even when the bombers actually accurately hit the intended target, it
turned out that machine tools of they day were extremely resistant to
blast damage. The Germans also turned out to be extremely good at
repairing damage and renuing production. They also got very good at
dispersing the factories and moving them underground.

The result of all this, and more, was that the heavy bombing campaign
was far less effective at doing what the Army Air Force leaders
postulated they could do at the outset of the war.

The bottom line is that accurate strategic bombing, whether it be
daylight or night, visually or radar guided, did not occur except in a
few very isolated cases, during WWII.

That did not stop the AAF not only from claiming that they exclusively
targeted factories and war related industries only, not city centers,
even though that was patently false. They also claimed that strategic
bombing effectively shortened the war. This despite the fact that
Germany's wartime military production ramped up throughout the war and
actually peaked in late 1944 at the absolute height of daylight and
nightime bombing.

The leaders of the Air Force believed in the fallacy of strategic
bombing throughout the 50's and 60's and a case I think could be made
that they continue to overbelieve in the effectiveness of bombing even
today.

Corky Scott

PS, the Germans had no need for something as complicated as the Norden
bombsight because they did not bomb from great heights nor did they
posses a heavy bomber. Their bombers were for the most part, medium
battlefield support aircraft and dive bombers.

In article pm56d059pv74ax.com, wrote:

Like most legends, the accuracy of the Norden bombsight has been
hugely overblown.

But it was an exquisite piece of machine work. The gyroscopes were
things of beauty, that could run for half an hour after the power
was disconnected.

That did not stop the AAF not only from claiming that they exclusively
targeted factories and war related industries only, not city centers,
even though that was patently false. They also claimed that strategic
bombing effectively shortened the war. This despite the fact that
Germany's wartime military production ramped up throughout the war and
actually peaked in late 1944 at the absolute height of daylight and
nightime bombing.

They did what they could to target factories, but the technology to
do this accurately just wasn't there. American bombing was certainly
"precision bombing" compared to the British, nighttime bombing that
aimed for easily located targets like large cities.

The leaders of the Air Force believed in the fallacy of strategic
bombing throughout the 50's and 60's and a case I think could be made
that they continue to overbelieve in the effectiveness of bombing even
today.

When the man who jumped naked into a cactus patch was asked why he would
do such a thing, he answered, "it seemed like a good idea at the time."
It wasn't until after WWII, when the bomb damage could be accurately
assessed, that the shortcomings of bombing became apparent. In the
fifties, strategic bombing meant nuking whole cities, and the horror of
that just might have kept the Cold War cold, so it may have been quite
successful indeed. By the sixties, "smart bombs" were coming into
existence, and nowadays armies can hit individual buildings from the other
side of the world, so it's not anywhere near the same as it was in
the forties.

On 19 Jun 2004 00:08:13 GMT, (No Such User) wrote:

They did what they could to target factories, but the technology to
do this accurately just wasn't there. American bombing was certainly
"precision bombing" compared to the British, nighttime bombing that
aimed for easily located targets like large cities.

There's a lot of irony he The British, by the end of the war, could
actually target precision targets with greater accuracy at night than
the US bombers could while bombing during daylight from high altitude,
but they did not, except for a very few missions, do so.

Arthur Harris insisted right up to the end of the war that his bombers
bomb city centers as the most effective method of bringing the war to
the Germans and shorten it, if not cause them to surrender.

He was mistaken. For instance, when Hamburg was bombed in late 1943,
Bomber Command managed to create the worlds first "firestorm" with
it's bombing tactics. The blaze wiped out the center of Hamburg and
killed many thousands of people. Gale force winds feeding the raging
fire were so powerful they literally ripped babies from mothers arms
and wafted them into the blaze.

But did the damage halt Hamburg from producing war materials? Maybe
for a week or two. A lot of people lost their jobs and their homes
because what got destroyed was center city businesses and residences,
but they were for the most part not producing war materials. The
survivors now turned to the factories which were barely touched, and
worked there instead. For the remainder of the war, Hamburg continued
to contribute mightily to the war machine.

Harris thought the decimation of Hamburg was a great victory. He'd
show visitors stereo pictures of gutted German cities, implying that
the roofless buildings indicated how effective his force of bombers
was. He called this type of bombing "dehousing" the German workers
and thought that they'd have to leave the cities to survive. Most of
the people who lost their homes did not die, they survived and turned
to the factories for work and shelter regardless Harris's conjecture.

The British bomber pilots and crew suffered enormously for their
effort. Too bad the concept was so flawed.

Corky Scott

In article , wrote:

Arthur Harris insisted right up to the end of the war that his bombers
bomb city centers as the most effective method of bringing the war to
the Germans and shorten it, if not cause them to surrender.

The really sad part was he had the example of the London Blitz right in
front of him. Bombing London did nothing to shake civilian resolve, and
probably had the opposite result.

for a week or two. A lot of people lost their jobs and their homes
because what got destroyed was center city businesses and residences,

The British called this 'Baedeker Bombing,' i.e., targeting city centers
where all the tourist attractions were located.

but they were for the most part not producing war materials. The
survivors now turned to the factories which were barely touched, and

I talked to survivors of the war in Berlin who told me the homeless would
pick the longest subway route (between Spandau and Gruenau) and ride all
night for a few pennies.

The British bomber pilots and crew suffered enormously for their
effort. Too bad the concept was so flawed.

The blame for those deaths should include the blunder of sending out the
bombers with no fighter protection. Had the allies invested a little
more in creating long-range fighters, this would have been quite different.

"No Such User" wrote in message
...
In article ,
wrote:

Arthur Harris insisted right up to the end of the war that his bombers
bomb city centers as the most effective method of bringing the war to
the Germans and shorten it, if not cause them to surrender.

The really sad part was he had the example of the London Blitz right in
front of him. Bombing London did nothing to shake civilian resolve, and
probably had the opposite result.

for a week or two. A lot of people lost their jobs and their homes
because what got destroyed was center city businesses and residences,

The British called this 'Baedeker Bombing,' i.e., targeting city centers
where all the tourist attractions were located.

This was the German tactic:
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionar...edeker%20Blitz
http://modena.intergate.ca/business/boport/cbctv/

Quote:
By 1941 cities throughout Europe had been bombed by the Luftwaffe,

and helpless refugees had been machine-gunned from the air. These missions

were flown with the sole objective of terrorising the civilian population,
and

breaking any will to resist. In 1940-42 the Luftwaffe devastated London,

Coventry, Southampton, Bristol, Plymouth, Sheffield, Liverpool,Cardiff,

Glasgow and many other British cities. From April 1942 its raids on Britain

were specifically redirected against cities distinguished by three stars in
the

Baedeker guidebook as being "of outstanding historic or artistic interest."



The "three stars" thing is a quote from Nazi propagandist Baron Gustav

Braun von Sturm who said: "We shall go out and bomb every building in

Britain marked with three stars in the Baedeker Guide."



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1892714.stm



Paul

wrote in message
...
On 19 Jun 2004 00:08:13 GMT, (No Such User) wrote:
Arthur Harris insisted right up to the end of the war that his bombers
bomb city centers as the most effective method of bringing the war to
the Germans and shorten it, if not cause them to surrender.

He was mistaken. For instance, when Hamburg was bombed in late 1943,
Bomber Command managed to create the worlds first "firestorm" with
it's bombing tactics. The blaze wiped out the center of Hamburg and
killed many thousands of people. Gale force winds feeding the raging
fire were so powerful they literally ripped babies from mothers arms
and wafted them into the blaze.

But did the damage halt Hamburg from producing war materials? Maybe
for a week or two.

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Strategic_bombing

Read the bit under "Effectiveness". While the bombing was wildly
inaccurate (this was known at the time, that's why tactics were
switched to area bombing) it was relentless, with the British bombing
at night, the Americans in the day. German survivors said it had a
huge affect on them...the couldn't work effectively and were constantly
tired and weary. There was a huge diversion of resources.

Production may have increased, but the bombing ensured that the "new"
German weapons of mass destruction didn't come on-line or were
severely limited. One of the aircraft under development allegedly went to
South America (or the plans did) after the war only to be copied (allegedly)
by the Soviets. This became the Mig 15.

The relentless bombing was all part of the "total war" that was being
unleashed upon Germany.

http://makeashorterlink.com/?F30934F98

This makes interesting reading if anyone has the time to read it!

Inhuman? Yes. Ineffective? No.

Paul

Paul Sengupta wrote:

Read the bit under "Effectiveness". While the bombing was wildly
inaccurate (this was known at the time, that's why tactics were
switched to area bombing) ....

And, as Bert Harris pointed out (with tongue firmly in cheek), the Americans also
opted for area bombing just as soon as they had a big enough bomb.

George Patterson
None of us is as dumb as all of us.

"Paul Sengupta" wrote in message

Read the bit under "Effectiveness". While the bombing was wildly
inaccurate (this was known at the time, that's why tactics were
switched to area bombing) it was relentless, with the British bombing
at night, the Americans in the day.

It's also relevant to point out that the allies DID aim for and strike
specific targets such as sub pens, shipyards and heavy water plants that
would have, in fact, impaired the german war machine more than bombing an
oilfield, railyard or even a ball bearing factory. U-boats didn't get built
overnight, and the strikes on the heavy water facilities would be more
historically noteworthy, perhaps, had they not happened, allowing that
technology to develop.

The 96th sent half its group out looking for the battleship Scharnhorst, but
couldn't find it through the overcast so IIRC they bombed Gdynia, Poland
instead.

-c

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 16:28:07 +0100, "Paul Sengupta"
wrote:

Inhuman? Yes. Ineffective? No.

If it was effective, why did Germany manage to produce the greatest
amount of war related materials late in the war when the Allied
bombing was at it's greatest effectiveness? Shouldn't things have
been the other way around?

Corky Scott