MacCleod,
A really good book that discusses the bomber war is "Tail End Charlies" and it discusses both the U.S. and British campaigns, with more emphasis on the RAF/Lancaster missions.
A couple of things:
By the end of the war, most Lanc missions carried incendiaries and the cookie. The cookie was used to set off a massive explosion that presumably the incendiaries would complement by setting fires. Lancs dropped individually, and typically did not drop (at least during the night missions) from such high altitudes as did the U.S. But, they did drop their whole load simultaneously. Since the entire effort was focussed on Harris's goals of destroying entire cities, these tactics were effective, as accuracy wasn't desired, or necessary.
For the U.S., the USAAF was convinced that a systematic approach to destroying industrial/economic targets would cause the German war machine to grind to a halt. They thought that "precision" bombing was necessary to destroy individual factories, refineries, marshalling yards, etc. and the crews themselves believed they were not carpet bombing cities, but trying to hit individual targets. The Norden was basically a computer that, when fed the correct data, could put bombs on target effectively. In training in the States before they shipped out to England, crews trained on hitting point-type targets with the Norden, and were largely successful, although they were dropping from lower altitude, without flak, formation induced turbulence, etc. Early missions along the coast of France attempted to duplicate these types of bombing missions, targeting things like individual sub pens. Some crews were successful, but all in all these missions were largely ineffective. Mounting losses from fighters demanded tighter and bigger formations for protection, and as the raids moved further east into Germany, Flak concentrations became brutal. Eventually, an individual formation would all drop off the lead bomber in the formation, sometimes while not even carrying bombadiers. They would actually just carry enlisted "picklers" who would hit the switch based off the lead. Obviously if the lead bomber was off, the whole drop was off. A successful mission was deemed to have at least 30% of the total drop within a large radius of the aim point. Needless to say, many targets were struck repeatedly due to poor effects on target. There were a few examples of U.S. bombers attacking tactical targets, most notably during Operation Cobra, where U.S. bombers were sent on missions to hit German troop concentrations to facilitate an Allied breakout from Normandy. These attacks did considerable damage, but also killed a large number of Allied troops as a result of poor coordination. After Cobra, these type of attacks were frowned upon by both ground and air commanders.
It wasn't until the Vietnam War that "strategic" bombers were capable of decisively affecting point or tactical targets.
So, short answer to your question is no, there was no appreciable use of strategic bombers attacking point/tactical targets during WWII. The typical use of strat bombers in AH is largely unrealistic.
