"Jukka O. Kauppinen" wrote in message ...
Any truth to this? What part if any of the Norden sight did the
Germans utilize?

As already mentioned, they did indeed have Norden plans.

But Germany already had perfectly good bombsights capable of as good
bomb delivery as a Norden. Nothing so spectacular in that one.

For example the Stuvi sights used in Ju-87s and Ju-88s were highly
advanced, computerized sights for their day. They show that building a
advanced and accurate sight was not something that just the British or
Americans were capable of.

I believe many if not most of the Ju88s supplied to Finland were
supplied with the Lofte 7 wind correcting computing bombsight.

Most of the myth of the Norden is based around propaganda. The public
of the day like to think that the Americans had a secret weapon while
it also improved troop moral and perhaps conveyed the impression that
cities were not being flatend by high altitude bombing collateral
damage. Maintaining moral around superior weapons is pretty important
and once this myth was started no one was going to stop it.

Really the Norden was not that advanced. It wasn't supplied to the
British not becuase it was too secret but simply because it was in
short supply up untill 1943. It had many deficiencies: it couldn't be
used in a slide bombing attack like the later British sights and
deficiencies in the wide angle optics and speed of tracking made it
useless at low altitudes.

Using ordinary bomb sights reasonably good accuracy could be achieved
at up to 5000 feet.

Sights like the Norden which compensated for wind drift seemed to give
good results from up to 10000 feet.

Various degrees of 'automation' could be introduced.

1 Gyro stabalising the aim point to help the bombadier during run up
while the aircraft was being jostelled and manoevered.

2 Continiously computing the aim point on the basis of aircraft
manoevers and speed changes. (Essentaily the what the Stuvi did I
suspect)

3 Providing a target tracking system that attempted to track the
target on the basis of airspeed and altitude above ground. By then
providing servo motors adjusted by the bombadier or pilot to adjust
for the drift from the target the wind drift rate could be calculated
by integration on a ball integrator and the correction applied to the
continously computed aim point.

4 Corrective manoevers would then be applied either by the bombadier
by signaling with a paddle to the pilot or direct via the autopilot.
(I think Art Kramer mentions that the manual method was mostly used)




jok