Originally posted by John Hynds
Just thought of this. I know the American bomber bombsight in real life didn't wok correctly under something like 6000 feet. Maybe change the calibration procedure to where it can't be calibrated until the bomber is higher than 5 or 6 thousand.
Your wrong ... the Norden bombsight used airspeed and altitude to calculate bomb trajectory. It's a pure mathimatical equation so it could calc the trajectory no matter what alt.
On the other hand ... the Norden basically sucked. It's calculations did not have enough correct input to properly put eggs on the target.
"Using this device, bombardiers could, in theory, drop their bombs within a 100-foot (ca 30m) circle from an altitude of well over 20,000 feet (ca. 7km). In combat, this accuracy was never achieved — because the Norden had been tested under "artificial conditions" at the US proving grounds, for example in the absence of anti-aircraft fire or adverse weather. An additional factor was that the shape and even the paint of the bomb mantle greatly changed the aerodynamic properties of the weapon; and, at that time, nobody knew how to calculate the trajectory of bombs that reached supersonic speeds during their fall.
Under perfect conditions only 50 percent of American bombs fell within a quarter of a mile of the target, and American flyers estimated that as many as 90 percent of bombs could miss their targets."
