From: "Paul J. Adam"

I wrote:

And it wasn't done by area bombing either. Area bombing was ineffective,
and
this was known well before the end of the war.


Mr. Adams:

Which, I presume, is why Curtis LeMay used it with such enthusiasm.

Not in Europe.

"I am a pilot, LeMay said, "but I am the only person in this room who is also a
trained navigator and trained bombardier. When I was a group commander in the
First Division, I flew a mission as lead pilot, a lead navigator and a lead
bombardier...."

One by one the colonels or lieutenant colonels who had flown right seat spoke.
Yes, my group assembled on time Yes, we made the wing rendezvous as briefed,
but the other groups weren't there. Yes, we flew good formation during the
whole mission. Yes, we were at the fighter rendezvous but the fighters
weren't. At the I.P., we tucked in tight, but the bombardier missed the
target.

After all the command pilots talked, LeMay said, "Do any of you lead navigators
or lead bombardiers want to add anything?"

Of course we didn't. We were all first and second lieutenants. Not one of the
command pilots had described a mission anything like the way it was really
flown. Even so, who wanted to contradict our own brass?

Silence. Uncomfortable silence.

"Lieutenant Shore, Group Navigator of the 390th. Who was the bombardier with
you in the nose on the mission of July 18th [1943]?" Marshall Shore pointed to
a bombardier.

LeMay turned to the bombardier. "Do you have anything to add?"

"No, sir."

"Were your bubbles level during the bomb run?"

When Colonel LeMay asked that question, I must have gasped. I knew exactly
what he had in mimd. Maybe because of the sound I made, Colonel LeMay looked
directly at me. He slowly winked. Something was wrong with the side of his
face, and it was a grotesque wink, but that is what it was.

I felt my heart speed up. I could hardly breathe. I looked around at the other
navigators and bombardiers. How many of them knew what LeMay's question meant?
What he was really asking was who was flying the plane. If the bubbles in the
bombsight were level, the Norden was flying. If the bubbles were off, a pilot
had overpowered the controls -- and was probably doing evasive action.

When I looked back at Colonel LeMay, he was still looking at me. I winked back
at him, and nodded. That funny smile again. He looked back at the bombardier.
"Did your equipment work all right?"

"No malfunctions, sir."

One by one LeMay addressed all the lead bombardiers and asked them several
irrelevant questions.-- and the one about the bubbles.

Then he turned to the navigators, me first.
"Lieutenant, give me your story."

"Sorry, sir, I wasn't leading any of those missions."

"What group are you in?"

"The 100th, sir."

Colonel LeMay turned to colonel Harding. "Why is he here, Chuck, if he isn't a
lead bombardier?"

"He was the lead on Trondheim and Warnemunde. Before he replaced the lead
navigator, he was on a wing."

Colonel LeMay looked back at me.
"Trondheim, good show."

"Thank you, sir."

He turned back to Lieutenant Marshall Shore of the 390th.

"Lieutenant, when you were on the run from the I.P. to the target, what was the
maximum deflection on your compass heading?"

"About twenty-five degrees, sir."

By now every lead navigator in the room knew what was going on. If the Norden
was in charge, the corrections wouldn't have been more than five or six
degrees. Only a pilot could jerk a plane around like that.

At the end of the debriefing Colonel LeMay knew what every bombardier and
navigator in the room knew, and I doubt if any of the pilots knew he knew.
I realized I was in the presence of a very bright man, and a very skilled
leader."

---"A Wing and a Prayer" pp. 75-78 by Harry Crosby.

Daylight precision bombing hurt the Germans very badly, much worse than area
bombing did. They began to redeploy their day fighters for home defense at a
time when the USAAF was striking only in visual conditions, and with only a
few dozen bombers. They had their night fighter pilots attacking the B-17's
and B-24's at a time when hundreds, not dozens, of British bombers were being
dispatched nightly.

Walt