For what felt like an interminably long period, the bombsight was connected to the flight controls.
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He claimed the Norden Bombsight could drop a bomb into a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet above.
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And during a bomb run the actual flying of the airplane was done through the bombsight by the bombardier.
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Near vats of homemade wine, there was an old Norden bombsight, a pivotal technology used by bombers during World War II for aiming.
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One of the more notorious examples is the case of the Norden Bombsight, a story masterfully told in Malcolm Gladwell's famous 2011 TED talk.
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Like the American Norden bombsight it was a tachometric sight.
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The Norden bombsight was designed by Carl Norden, a Dutch engineer educated in Switzerland who emigrated to the U.S. in 1904. In 1920, he started work on the Norden bombsight for the United States Navy. The first bombsight was produced in 1927. It was essentially an analog computer, and bombardiers were trained in great secrecy on how to use it.
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The Norden bombsight at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. This example is only the bombsight itself; it does not include the associated autopilot that would normally connect to it on the bottom. Norden bombsight on display at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, with the stabilizer assembly attached. Enola Gay bombardier Thomas Ferebee with the Norden bombsight on Tinian after the dropping of Little Boy The Norden Mk. XV, known as the Norden M series in U.S. Army service, is a bombsight that was used by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) and the United States Navy during World War II, and the United States Air Force in the Korean and the Vietnam Wars.
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The Norden Bombsight and Sperry Bombsight were both used onboard Army and Navy bombers during the war. Both bombsights used gyroscopes, telescopes and analog computers to calculate the release point for bombers to drop their payloads accurately onto ground targets. The A-5 had the ability to be integrated with these bombsights. Once the bombardier found the target and adjusted the bombsight, the autopilot would be engaged to fly the aircraft straight and level to the target, where the bombsight would automatically calculate the release point of the bombs.
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Norden M-1 is the canonical tachometric bombsight. The bombsight proper is at the top of the image, mounted on top of the autopilot system at the bottom. The bombsight is slightly rotated to the right; in action the autopilot would turn the aircraft to reduce this angle back to zero. Bomb aimer's window and bomb sight in the nose of an Avro Shackleton.
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For many years it was incorrectly claimed that her hair was used to make the crosshairs in the Norden bombsight. However, as the crosshairs on the bombsight are etched into glass and not made from hair this is not possible.
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An early bombsight, 1910s 1923 Norden MK XI Bombsight Prototype A bombsight is a device used by military aircraft to drop bombs accurately. Bombsights, a feature of combat aircraft since World War I, were first found on purpose- designed bomber aircraft and then moved to fighter-bombers and modern tactical aircraft as those aircraft took up the brunt of the bombing role. A bombsight has to estimate the path the bomb will take after release from the aircraft. The two primary forces during its fall are gravity and air drag, which make the path of the bomb through the air roughly parabolic.
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The Stabilized Automatic Bomb Sight was rather complex looking. The bombsight proper is the clock-like device in the centre, much of the framework around it is the stabilizer system that keeps it pointed at the ground while the aircraft moves. The Stabilized Automatic Bomb Sight, or SABS, was a Royal Air Force bombsight used in small numbers during World War II. The system worked along similar tachometric principles as the more famous Norden bombsight, but was somewhat simpler, lacking the Norden's autopilot feature. Development had begun before the War as the Automatic Bomb Sight, but early bomber operations proved that systems without stabilization of the bombsight crosshairs were extremely difficult to use under operational conditions.
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Assuming the sight was set correctly, when the target was in the cross hairs of the sword shape, the bomb aimer would be able to accurately release the bombs. ;T1 bombsight :A Mark XIV bombsight modified for mass production and produced in the USA. Some of the pneumatic gyro drives on the Mk XIV sight were replaced with electronic gyros and other minor modifications were made. ;Stabilizing Automatic Bomb Sight :Also known as "SABS", this was an advanced bombsight mainly used by 617 Squadron for precision raids.
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In 1913, he left Sperry to form his own company. In 1920, he began work on the Norden bombsight for the United States Navy. A prototype was available by 1923 and the first bombsight, containing an analog computer, was produced in 1927. Bombardiers were trained in great secrecy on how to use it.
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The Norden bombsight was originally designed with the idea of automatically directing a PDI and thereby simplifying the bombardier's task.
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By connecting the outputs of the S-1 bombsight to the A-5 autopilot, Sperry produced a system similar to the M-4/SBAE, but it reacted far more quickly. The combination of the S-1 and A-5 so impressed the Army that on 17 June 1941 they authorized the construction of a 186.000 m² factory and noted that "in the future all production models of bombardment airplanes be equipped with the A-5 Automatic Pilot and have provisions permitting the installation of either the M-Series [Norden] Bombsight or the S-1 Bombsight".
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Ritter also met with Herman W. Lang, a spy who operated under the code name: PAUL. Herman Lang worked as a machinist, draftsman, and assembly inspector for the Carl L. Norden Company where he had been contracted to manufacture an advanced, topsecret military bomber part, the Norden bombsight. He provided Ritter a large drawing of the Norden bombsight which Ritter stored inside of a hollow cane umbrella and that he took back to Germany by ship. The Germans proceeded to build a model from the drawings, and later brought Lang to Germany to work on and finish an improved version of the bombsight.
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He then modified the bombsight to create the first drawing machine of 1960. A second was constructed in 1963 and a third in 1967.
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Smoke generators could also be mounted on the inner hardpoints. A "Jozza" bombsight was located on the right in the cockpit, behind a glazed window.
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With Louis Strange, he developed a simple but effective new bombsight. It was adopted by the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service.
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One such military component was the top secret Norden bombsight, used for dropping bombs accurately from airplanes in World War II.Ludington Daily News, April 16, 1994; p. 1 by Paul Peterson (Managing Editor) During the Second World War, Star Watch Case turned its know-how to the manufacture of components for military navigational aides and even the super secret Norden bombsight, to say nothing of thousands of cases for military compasses.
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It was believed they were more effective, particularly if the new Mark XIV bombsight was available. A similar conclusion was made about the buoyant bomb which could not be used properly without the Mark XIV bombsight. The need for intensive training, a lack of aircraft, priority being given to the Navy, and production limitations for low-level bomb sights; all these factors influenced the policy on torpedo usage.
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They espoused the doctrine in testimony to the Howell Commission on Federal Aviation in 1934, where it was used as an argument supporting the creation of an independent air force. Once adopted as doctrine, industrial web theory had a host of effects. To obtain the required accuracy to hit pinpoint targets, bombing had to be done by daylight. An improved bombsight was required: the Norden bombsight Mark XV, appearing in 1931.
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As mission range extended to thousands of miles, bombers started incorporating inertial guidance and star trackers to allow accurate navigation when far from land. These systems quickly improved in accuracy, and eventually became accurate enough to handle the bomb dropping without the need for a separate bombsight. This was the case for the 1,500 foot accuracy demanded of the B-70 Valkyrie, which lacked any sort of conventional bombsight.
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A page from the Bombardier's Information File (BIF) that describes the components and controls of the Norden Bombsight. The separation of the stabilizer and sight head is evident.
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The Norden bombsight, tested in 1933, held the promise of much greater accuracy in high altitude bombing, and helped the ACTS theorists conclude that pinpoint bombing was possible.
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This eliminates the need for roll stabilization because the bombsight is no longer needed to adjust the flight path during the initial approach, instead, the sight has to be stabilized in pitch because the pilot will be pulling up right about the time to drop. Additionally, because the wind tends to be slower at low altitudes, and attack aircraft generally travel faster, the relative effect of the wind is significantly less. Moreover, the pilot can easily adjust for any cross-wind visually without help from the bombsight. For this reason, a low- level bombsight simply doesn't need the same sort of windage correction complexity and can ignore it completely in most cases.
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The Mk. XIV was theoretically less accurate than the contemporary Norden bombsight. However, it was smaller, easier to use, faster-acting, and better suited to night bombing. In practice, it demonstrated accuracy roughly equal to the Norden's. It equipped the majority of the RAF bomber fleet during the second half of the war; small numbers of the Stabilized Automatic Bomb Sight and Low Level Bombsight, Mark III were used in specialist roles.
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The SABS consisted of three primary parts, the bombsight itself, also known as the "range unit", the stabilizing system, and the "bombing directional indicator" for the pilot and other indicators.
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He received a sentence of 18 years in prison on espionage charges and a two-year concurrent sentence under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. German instruments were fairly similar to the Norden, even before World War II. A similar set of gyroscopes provided a stabilized platform for the bombardier to sight through, although the complex interaction between the bombsight and autopilot was not used. The Carl Zeiss Lotfernrohr 7, or Lotfe 7, was an advanced mechanical system similar to the Norden bombsight, although in form it was more similar to the Sperry S-1. It started replacing the simpler Lotfernrohr 3 and BZG 2 in 1942, and emerged as the primary late-war bombsight used in most Luftwaffe level bombers.
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The main component of each Henry drawing machine was the bombsight computer. These mechanical analogue computers represented some of the most important technological advancements of World War Two. However, by the 1960s they already represented "old" technology when compared to the more modern digital computers then available. (O'Hanrahan 2005) The mechanical analogue bombsight computer was employed in World War Two bomber aircraft to determine the exact moment bombs were to be released to hit their target.
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While the Mk. XI was reaching its final design, the Navy learned of the Army's efforts to develop a synchronous bombsight, and asked Norden to design one for them. Norden was initially unconvinced this was workable, but the Navy persisted and offered him a development contract in June 1929. Norden retreated to his mother's house in Zurich and returned in 1930 with a working prototype. Lieutenant Frederick Entwistle, the Navy's chief of bombsight development, judged it revolutionary.
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Norden's original design was a conventional system known as an "equal distance sight" that was attached to his gyroscopic stabilizer system. The Navy asked him to replace the bombsight with a tachometric design on the same stabilizer. He initially refused, but eventually took a sabbatical in Europe and returned with a workable design that was delivered for testing in 1931. The Norden bombsight demonstrated itself able to drop bombs within a few yards of its targets from altitudes between .
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In order to make it fit on the platform, all of the mechanical calculator portions of the sight were removed. Instead, the bomb aimer had to use manual slide rule calculators to find the drift and bombing angles, and then set the bombsight to these values. The bombsight was unable to quickly adapt to changes in direction or altitude, and in this case was even slower to calculate such changes. Very few of the Mk. XI designs were produced.
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The second problem was that the sight was attached to the aircraft, and thus moved about during maneuvers, during which time the bombsight would not point at the target. As the aircraft had to maneuver in order to make the proper approach, this limited the time allowed to accurately make corrections. This combination of issues demanded a long bomb run. Experiments had shown that adding a stabilizer system to a vector bombsight would roughly double the accuracy of the system.
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The bombsight could be used against targets 90° to 40° in front of the aircraft, and up to 20° on either side. On final approach, the autopilot was engaged, while the bombsight adjusted the flight path in response to last-minute changes by the bombardier. Bomb release was normally automatic in order to reduce timing errors. The Lotfe 7 was normally installed near the nose of the aircraft with the mirror tube projecting through the fuselage to the outside of the aircraft.
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Levelling the bombsight was required before any use. The bombsight included two spirit levels for this, and was mounted to a friction-set ball so it could be rotated in any direction. This allowed it to be mounted to the side of aircraft like the Supermarine Walrus,See the selection of images on this site on the Supermarine Walrus for details of the mounting system, and the somewhat unwieldily result. or to the floor of dedicated bomber aircraft like the Bristol Blenheim.
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In early operations, RAF Bomber Command concluded that their existing bombsights, updated versions of the World War I-era CSBS's, were hopelessly outdated in modern combat. During low-level attacks, the bombers had only moments to spot the target and then manoeuvre for an attack, and often had to dodge fire all the while. When the bomber was turning, the bombsight, fixed to the frame of the aircraft, pointed out to the sides and could not be used to adjust the approach. On 22 December 1939, at a pre-arranged meeting on bombsight policy, Air Chief Marshal Sir Edgar Ludlow- Hewitt stated flatly that the CSBS did not meet RAF requirements and asked for a bombsight that would allow the bomber to take any sort of evasive action throughout the bomb run.
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Series identification was found on the deck emblem. Full wheelcovers were now standard. The vee in the bombsight ornament signified the V8 power under the hood. Interiors in most models were nylon and silky broadcloth.
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Henry's first drawing machine Each Henry drawing machine was based around an analogue bombsight computer in combination with other components which Henry happened to have acquired for his home-based workshop in Whalley Range, Manchester.
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This meant an average of one ship sunk for every attack made. At low level, it was not uncommon for German crews to achieve three out of four hits. However, many bombs failed to explode at low level, owing to improper fusing of the ordnance. Once the Lotfernrohr 7D bombsight was introduced— with a similar degree of accuracy to the top secret American Norden bombsight— more accurate bombing from 3,000 metres (9,840 feet) could take place with an error range of just 91 metres (300 feet).
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1923 Norden MK XI bombsight prototype Carl Lucas Norden (April 23, 1880 – June 14, 1965), born Carel Lucas van Norden, was the Dutch American engineer who invented the Norden bombsight. Norden was born in Semarang, Java. After attending a boarding school in Barneveld, Netherlands, he was educated at the ETH Zürich in Switzerland and then emigrated to the United States in 1904. Along with Elmer Sperry, Norden worked on the first gyrostabilizers for United States ships, and became recognized for his contributions to military hardware.
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79 After each completed mission, bomber crews left the aircraft with a bag which they deposited in a safe ("the Bomb Vault"). This secure facility ("the AFCE and Bombsight Shop") was typically in one of the base's Nissen hut (Quonset hut) support buildings. The Bombsight Shop was manned by enlisted men who were members of a Supply Depot Service Group ("Sub Depot") attached to each USAAF bombardment group. These shops not only guarded the bombsights but performed critical maintenance on the Norden and related control equipment.
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In ballistics terms, it is traditional to talk of the calculation of aiming of ordnance as the solution. The bombsight problem is the calculation of the location in space where the bombs should be dropped in order to hit the target when all of the effects noted above are taken into account. In the absence of wind, the bombsight problem is fairly simple. The impact point is a function of three factors, the aircraft's altitude, its forward speed, and the terminal velocity of the bomb.
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Type A-1 bombsight adapters added; 950 built. ;;TP-39Q-5 :One conversion to a two-seat training variant with additional cockpit added in nose – no armament. Enlarged tail fillet and a shallow ventral fin added.
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The Low Level Bombsight, Mark III, sometimes known as the Angular Velocity Sight, was a Royal Air Force (RAF) bombsight designed for attacks by aircraft flying below altitude. It combined components of the Mark XIV bomb sight with a new mechanical computer. It featured a unique solution for timing the drop, projecting a moving display onto a reflector sight that matched the apparent motion of the target at the right instant. The Mk. III was designed for, and mostly used by, Coastal Command aircraft in order to attack submarines.
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To improve the calculation time, the Norden used a mechanical computer inside the bombsight to calculate the range angle of the bombs. By simply dialing in the aircraft's altitude and heading, along with estimates of the wind speed and direction (in relation to the aircraft), the computer would automatically, and quickly, calculate the aim point. This not only reduced the time needed for the bombsight setup but also dramatically reduced the chance for errors. This attack on the accuracy problem was by no means unique; several other bombsights of the era used similar calculators.
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When production ended a few months later, 5,563 Sperry bombsight-autopilot combinations had been built, most of which were installed in Consolidated B-24 Liberator bombers. Expansion of Norden bombsight production to a final total of six factories took several years. The U.S. Army Air Forces demanded additional production to meet their needs, and eventually arranged for the Victor Adding Machine company to gain a manufacturing license, and then Remington Rand. Ironically, during this period the U.S. Navy abandoned the Norden in favour of dive bombing, reducing the demand.
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Typical bombsights of the pre-war era worked on the "vector bombsight" principle introduced with the World War I Course Setting Bomb Sight. These systems consisted of a slide rule-type calculator that was used to calculate the effects of the wind on the bomber based on simple vector arithmetic. The mathematical principles are identical to those on the E6B calculator used to this day. In operation, the bombardier would first take a measurement of the wind speed using one of a variety of methods, and then dial that speed and direction into the bombsight.
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The CSBS required the aircraft to remain level while the bomb aimer watched the drift along the thin parallel wires (white). On 28 March 1939, the head of RAF Bomber Command Air Chief Marshal Sir Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt hosted a conference on the state of Bomber Command. Among the many problems with operational readiness, he noted that RAF bombs were much too small and that bombsight technology was obsolete. Given the problems of obtaining a modern bombsight, he pressed for the creation of a high-speed bomber design that could safely attack at low levels.
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At this point the bombsight now has an accurate measurement of the true motion of the aircraft. This does not imply that it is accurately measuring the wind, as the initial inputs for airspeed or altitude might have been wrong. But this makes no difference in terms of the drop; as long as the sight's crosshairs remain on target, the motion over the ground is correctly measured and the bombsight will operate correctly. Setting the bomb type and trail moves a cam within the unit carrying several electrical contacts to a fixed angle.
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At least fifteen minutes before the bomber reached the target, the pilot would open valves to supply air to the bombsight. The bomb aimer would then start up the stabilizer platform, and wait as the gyros reached full speed. At this point the stabilizer platform was turned on and the bombsight was ready for use. As the bomber levelled off on its final approach, the bomb aimer would then dial in the altitude and air speed to the ground speed calculator, based on values provided by the pilot or navigator.
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The crew of three were accommodated in separate, pressurised compartments. The navigator, who also acted as bombardier, was accommodated in the glazed nose compartment and was provided with an OPB-5 bombsight based on the American Norden bombsight of the Second World War, while the pilot sat under a sideways opening bubble canopy with an armoured windscreen. The gunner sat in a separate compartment at the rear of the fuselage, operating a power driven turret armed with two Nudelman- Suranov NS-23 23 mm cannons with 250 rounds each. In service, the turret was sometimes removed as a weight saving measure.
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To use such a vector bombsight, the bomb aimer first requires an accurate measurement of the speed and direction of the wind. This was taken through a variety of methods, often using the bombsight itself as a reference. When these figures were dialled into the system, the calculator moved the sights fore or aft to account for the wind, as well as side-to-side to indicate the proper approach angle. The accuracy of such systems was limited by the time taken to measure the wind in advance of the bomb run, and the care taken to calculate the results.
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In response, earlier concepts of mating the ABS to a new stabilizer platform were carried out to produce the SABS. Like the Norden, the stabilizer was separate from the bombsight proper, although in the case of SABS the stabilizer moved the entire ABS bombsight, rather than just the aiming reticle as in the Norden. Unlike Norden, the SABS's stabilizer did not serve double-duty as an autopilot, as RAF bombers were already equipped with one. Instead, directional corrections from the bomb aimer were sent to a pilot direction indicator in the cockpit, similar to the original Norden models.
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The Canberra had initially been designed with no optical bombsight at all, relying entirely on H2S radar. However, the required version of the radar was not ready when the aircraft began to arrive, and they were redesigned to carry a bombsight. For this role the Mk. XIV was selected instead of the SABS, connecting it to the Canberra's internal navigation computer to feed it accurate wind information and thus eliminate the former source of inaccuracy. The Mk. XIV, having been designed to accept external inputs from the start, was much easier to adapt to this role.
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Operation was fairly similar to the Norden. The bombardier would first locate the target in the bombsight and continue to adjust the dials until it remained motionless in the eyepiece. This allowed the bombsight to calculate the wind speed from the cancelled out drift rate, which in turn allowed to make an accurate calculation of groundspeed. Unlike the Norden, the Lotfe 7 could view targets directly in front of the aircraft, so the bombardier could use the real target for adjustments, rather than having to "tune" the instruments on a test target located closer to the aircraft.
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Hendrie 2006, p.54. However it was considered the low-level sight's chief advantages would be demonstrated under operational conditions. The sight was considered a great advancement on any previous method of low-level bombing, either by eye or with a bombsight.
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Sperry was a military-related industry, and its work in developing both electrically powered gun turrets for bombers and the Norden bombsight brought him to the attention of his godfather, General Arnold, by then the Chief of the United States Army Air Corps.
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The former airbase is now the Lewistown Municipal Airport, which is home to the last remaining Norden bombsight storage facility, used to keep the revolutionary device safe from theft by enemy spies. The city park also contains a Minuteman III ballistic missile on display.
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Bombardiers were required to crawl down shafts that gave way to the "bubble," from which they had bird's-eye views of the ground below. The bombardier's job was to feed the bombsight the needed information, air speed, wind speed, wind direction, altitude, and the angle of drift. As the aircraft approached the target, the pilot turned the aircraft over to the bombardier and the Norden bombsight, which was also an automatic pilot that flew the aircraft as bombs were released over the target. Classroom instruction at the Albuquerque base was held at night and training missions were flown during the day to bombsights around Albuquerque.
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Leaving Charlotte's apartment, an attempt to abduct him by German spies is foiled by a passing London bobby. Tobel successfully demonstrates the bombsight for Sir Reginald Bailey (Holmes Herbert) and observers from Bomber Command. Tobel, now under the protection of Inspector Lestrade (Dennis Hoey) and Scotland Yard, tells Sir Reginald that, although willing to provide the British with his bombsight, only he will know its secret and has a complex plan for its manufacture to keep the secret safe. He separates his invention into four parts and gives one to each of four Swiss scientists, known only to him, to construct separately and whose names are unknown to each other.
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In the pre-war period, it was found that a significant source of error was due to the bombsight not being level with the ground when the bomb aimer was trying to sight through it. This was especially a problem during the initial part of the bomb run. In order to turn the aircraft onto the correct approach, the pilot would bank the aircraft, during which time the bombsight no longer pointed at the target. The bomb aimer had to wait until the turn was complete and the aircraft settled down to level again before they could see if the new line was correct.
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The RAF was working on such a design, the Automatic Bomb Sight, but development was slow and it had not been accepted for use when the war started. Learning of a similar design developed by the US Navy, the Air Ministry began extensive negotiations in an effort to gain a production licence for this Norden bombsight. The US Navy constantly refused these requests, deeming it too sensitive to risk losing over Germany, and their refusals ultimately led to significant political friction between the two nations. Ironically, the plans of the Norden bombsight had been passed to the German military by a US-based spy in 1938.
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To account for this side trail, the sight was rotated to one side or the other. The range unit also contained the bomb release mechanism. On the bombsight, this was an electrical contact system attached to the same output shaft as the sight, and a second contact connected to the cam-based trajectory calculator. The two contacts, along with automatic indicator slides, one for the viewing angle of the bombsight to the target, the other to the calculated drop angle at the bomb release point, would approach each other as the bomber flew towards the target, and completed the release circuit at the right moment for the drop.
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In spite of the security precautions, the entire Norden system had been passed to the Germans before the war started. A member of the German Duquesne Spy Ring, Herman W. Lang, who had been employed by the Carl L. Norden Corporation (manufacturers of the Norden bombsight), was able to provide vital details of the new bombsight to the Abwehr. During a visit to Germany in 1938, Lang conferred with German military authorities (Oberst Nikolaus Ritter of the Abwehr) and reconstructed sketches and plans of the confidential materials from memory. The Norden consisted of two primary parts, the optical system, and a large stabilization platform.
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On early models, rotating the compass face also rotated a shaft that ran forward under the main body of the bombsight and through a metal tube running out the lower front of the main housing. On later models, a large knob known as the milled head was placed directly behind the compass and drove this shaft independently of the compass face, allowing calculations to be carried out without changing the bombsight settings. The rotating shaft ran to the wind bar located in front of the body of the gunsight. The rotation of this bar to the selected angle mechanically represented the wind vector relative to the aircraft.
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Heidrich and Risheberger designed the buildings of Radio Park Elementary School, Westerly Parkway Junior High School and State College Senior High School. During World War II he worked for Carl N. Norden Company, which produced the Norden Bombsight. There he led a department designing technical manuals.
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An early use of fire-control systems was in bomber aircraft, with the use of computing bombsights that accepted altitude and airspeed information to predict and display the impact point of a bomb released at that time. The best known United States device was the Norden bombsight.
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Its long slim nose, housing the bombsight, gained it the nickname Pinocchio. An interesting development was the Ca.102quarter, a four- engine variant, with two engines on each wing, one facing forwards, the other backwards, all with two-blade propellers. Only one model was built, as performance was unimpressive.
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The heavily-armed B-17 was flying high-altitude daylight formation missions and bombing with precision due to the use of a secret Norden bombsight. While the RAF concentrate on night bombing, as more B-17s arrive, an intense round-the- clock bombing campaign against Nazi-occupied Europe begins.
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The collection includes approximately 500 working miniature engines as well as models of aircraft, automobiles, and other objects. Especially notable are a 1/6 scale model of a 1932 Duesenberg and several aluminum cutaway World War II fighter models. A Norden bombsight is displayed in the museum's collection.
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For anti- surface warfare in the maritime environment, the Vimy could also be armed with a pair of torpedoes. To improve bombing accuracy, the Vimy was equipped with the High Altitude Drift Mk.1a bombsight. Standard equipment also included two Michelin-built Mk.1 flare carriers.Bruce 1965, p. 10.
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"An open letter to our many friends in the macaroni-noodle industry", The Macaroni Journal, vol. XXXIII, no. 11 (Minneapolis, Minnesota: March 1952), p. 22. In World War II, Consolidated made tooling for the Norden bombsight, Grumman aircraft fighter wings and Worthington pumps as part of the war effort.
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During World War II, Rand transformed the Remington Rand company into a major defense contractor. The company manufactured parts and weapons for the U.S. military, including bomb fuses, the Norden bombsight and the M1911 pistol. In 1944, James Rand Sr. died."J.H. Rand Sr. Dead," New York Times, September 17, 1944.
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They may be controlled by the pilot directly and provide information through the head-up display or a video display on the instrument panel. The definition of bombsight is becoming blurred as "smart" bombs with in-flight guidance, such as laser-guided bombs or those using GPS, replace "dumb" gravity bombs.
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Former World War I ace pilot Captain Bob Dayton, (Donald Woods) is the owner of Sky Raiders, Inc., an aircraft company. Dayton has designed a bombsight and a new high speed fighter aircraft, the "Sky Raider". Dayton recruits young Tim Bryant (Billy Halop), a member of Air Youth of America, to help him.
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He sighted the turret through prominent blisters in the rear fuselage. The copilot could turn his seat 180° and manned a B-20 gun in the rear of the pilot's compartment.Gunston, p. 128 The Tu-8 was fitted with an OPB-4S Norden-type bombsight and had its maximum bombload increased to .
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On the 47th day Japanese sailors capture Louie and Phil. Now prisoners of war, Louie and Phil are imprisoned on Kwajalein Atoll. The two American airmen are interrogated for information about newer bombers and the Norden bombsight. Louie states that they flew older models and draws a rendition of a Philco radio.
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In 1942, Joe Smith is a "buck an hour" crew chief on the Lockheed P-38 Lightning assembly line in a Los Angeles defense plant. When plant president Mr. Edgerton and his supervisor Blake McKettrick calls him into his office, Joe is grilled by two men from Washington, Freddie Dunhill and Gus, who later ask him to draw from memory a blueprint put in front of him. When Joe shows he can draw the plans accurately, Edgerton promotes him to head up a new project based on the top secret Norden bombsight. Unable to tell his wife Mary and fourth-grade son Johnny or even his co-workers, about his new job, Joe is targeted by a group of men who want the secrets of the bombsight.
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Type 88 bombsight, torpedo release lever, and manual bomb release from a Nakajima B5N2 "Kate" at the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum The navigator/bombardier/observer position was equipped with a Type 90 bombsight, which was a long vertical tube located in the front-left of the seat. There was also a Type 3 reflector compass for precise navigation that was mounted on the top of the cockpit frame. The radio-operator/gunner position was equipped with one of the standard issue radio sets (e.g., Type 2 Mk3 or Type 96 Mk3 radio) that was mounted in front of the radio-operator/gunner's seat and behind the navigator/bombardier/observer's seat.Mikesh (2004) The radio-operator/gunner also operated one flexible 7.7 mm (.
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In most installations, like those in the Junkers Ju 88 or Heinkel He 111, the tube ended in a fairing under the fuselage with a protruding flat window in front. In other cases, like the Arado Ar 234 or the prototype bomber conversions of the Messerschmitt Me 262, the tube was open to the air, mounted so the mirror window was almost flush with the fuselage line. In the case of the single-seat Ar 234, the bombsight was difficult to access, so the autopilot was engaged first, allowing the pilot to remove the control yoke and access the bombsight. After the war about a thousand unused Lotfe 7's were found in the Zeiss factories and shipped to the USSR.
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Finally, the wind speed would be dialled into the wind speed knob, which would push the entire drift bar assembly to the right. When all of the adjustments are complete, the bombsight and airspeed shaft mechanically represent the yellow arrow, the wind bar represents the blue arrow, and the green arrow is formed by the drift wires providing direction, and the foresight is positioned at the tip of the green arrow. Once set, the bomb aimer uses the rear sights, or any other convenient part of the bombsight, as a reference location and spots past them through the drift wires. Although these are now angled several degrees to the right, the wind to the right is pushing the aircraft so its final motion is along the wires.
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When RAF Bomber Command complained that even the CSBS had too long a run-in to the target, efforts to deploy the ABS ended. For their needs they developed a new vector bombsight, the Mk. XIV. The Mk. XIV featured a stabilizing platform and aiming computer, but worked more like the CSBS in overall functionality – the bomb aimer would set the computer to move the sighting system to the proper angle, but the bombsight did not track the target or attempt to correct the aircraft path. The advantage of this system was that it was dramatically faster to use, and could be used even while the aircraft was manoeuvring, only a few seconds of straight-line flying were needed before the drop.
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The Oboe system, first used operationally in early 1943, offered real-world accuracies on the order of 35 yards, much better than any optical bombsight. The introduction of the British H2S radar further improved the bomber's abilities, allowing direct attack of targets without the need of remote radio transmitters, which had range limited to the line-of-sight. By 1943 these techniques were in widespread use by both the RAF and USAAF, leading to the H2X and then a series of improved versions like the AN/APQ-13 and AN/APQ-7 used on the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. These early systems operated independently of any existing optical bombsight, but this presented the problem of having to separately calculate the trajectory of the bomb.
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This bombsight incorporated an analog computer. He became executive director of Perkin-Elmer, and then vice-president, director and chief engineer of Sylvania Corporation. He was named president of GTE Labs in 1962. Davenport survived a plane crash on July 2, 1963, and he gave congressional testimony about improving seat belt safety in airplanes.
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The War Office discuss Barrington and are concerned that someone is spying on his work: possibly Trently - who was educated in Germany. Ronald makes friends with Mrs. Barrington's husband John (Leslie Banks), a brilliant but eccentric inventor, currently working on a bombsight for the Royal Air Force. However, he insists on working on his own.
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Combined with the bombsight mascot, VentiPorts put the driver at the controls of an imaginary fighter airplane. Upon seeing this, Buick chief Harlow Curtice was so delighted that he ordered that (non-lighting) VentiPorts be installed on all 1949 Buicks. Super script was found just above the full length body fender molding on the front fenders.
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The pilot is also given discrete flight adjustments to fly directly to the objective. After arriving above the target at 23,000 ft altitude, although obscured by a thick cloud cover, the bombardier uses the Norden bombsight to aim, before releasing the bomb load. The attack is successful with widespread destruction of the Kiyoshi aircraft plant located north of Tokyo.
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These seats were no more than cushions, a full harness and an oxygen and intercom facility. The visual bomb-aimer's compartment could be fitted with a T4 (Blue Devil) bombsight,Price, Blackman and Edmonson 2010, p. 102. in many B.2s this space housed a vertically mounted Vinten F95 Mk.10 camera for assessing simulated low-level bombing runs.
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Joe Connors is Oliver's bombardier and Sgt. Dixon his tailgunner. Flying low, Oliver's bomber is shot down before he can drop his bombs, and Connors remains at his post, sacrificing his life to destroy the bombsight, fulfilling an oath he took upon entry into Bombardier School. Oliver and the remainder of his crew, including Dixon, are captured.
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As a result of these changes, short aiming periods of a few seconds would be enough for an accurate drop. The new Mk. XII bombsight was first tested in September and October 1940 and by the end of October, 20 examples had been built. A slightly improved version, the Mk. XIII was designed but not put into production.
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On 21 September 1917, he was promoted to Staff Officer, 2nd Grade. Then on 1 February 1918, he was appointed Chief Experimental Officer. By the end of World War I, Bourdillon was a Captain and was awarded the Air Force Cross in the 1 January 1918 King's Birthday Honours List for his work on bombsight development.
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The second Uriah Heep album, Salisbury is named after the plain, as is the closing track on the album. The original cover featured a Chieftain tank, emphasising the plain's role as an Army training area. Salisbury Plain is mentioned as where the Tobel bombsight is tested in the 1942 film Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon.
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Washington Institute of Technology letter 26 Nov 1943 inviting Brown to submit her hair for the government war effort Reagan letter November 6, 1987 Norden bombsight crosshairs Norden bombsight Mary Babnik Brown (November 22, 1907 – April 14, 1991) was an American who became known for having donated her hair to the United States military during World War II. long, her blonde hair had never been chemically treated or heated with curling irons. Brown declined compensation for her donation, believing what she had done was her patriotic duty. President Ronald Reagan wrote to her on her 80th birthday in 1987 to thank her, and in 1990 she received a special achievement award from the Colorado Aviation Historical Society during a ceremony at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
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Norden bombsight crosshairs, 1944 English countryside The Norden bombsight was developed during a period of United States non-interventionism when the dominant U.S. military strategy was the defense of the U.S. and its possessions. A considerable amount of this strategy was based on stopping attempted invasions by sea, both with direct naval power, and starting in the 1930s, with USAAC airpower. Most air forces of the era invested heavily in dive bombers or torpedo bombers for these roles, but these aircraft generally had limited range; long-range strategic reach would require the use of an aircraft carrier. The Army felt the combination of the Norden and B-17 Flying Fortress presented an alternate solution, believing that small formations of B-17s could successfully attack shipping at long distances from the USAAC's widespread bases.
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Blackie eventually discovers that an espionage ring led by the Mechanical Man is trying to take a stolen navy bombsight out of the country. Faraday and his men follow Blackie to the midway to arrest him and prove handy in apprehending the spies. As a reward, Faraday decides to forget about the evidence linking Blackie to the theft of the pearls.
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Ballentine was assigned to the battleship after being commissioned. From February 1919 to May 1920, he served on the battleship . Ballentine was designated a Naval Aviator on 22 November 1920 after receiving flight training at Naval Air Station Pensacola. In 1923, he helped perform the first tests of Carl Norden's prototype bombsight at the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia.
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The building now serves as the community Civic Center for Beauregard Parish. Plaques commemorating Generals Bradley, Mark Clark, Eisenhower, Marshall and Patton, along with their pictures, hang on the walls near the entrances of meeting halls named in their honor. Fort Polk or Louisiana does not have a USO at this time. The museum also boasts a Norden bombsight, a very rare item.
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Both Barr and Sarant were trained and employed as electrical engineers and worked on military radar. Barr was discovered by counterintelligence to be a Communist and was fired. He and Sarant then found employment with Western Electric and worked on a highly secret radar bombsight. Barr and Sarant gave the USSR over 9,000 pages of documents detailing over 100 weapons systems.
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This would allow the bombsight to remain level while the aircraft maneuvered, giving the bombardier more time to make his adjustments, as well as reducing or eliminating mis-measurements when sighting off of non-level sights. However, this would not have any effect on the accuracy of the wind measurements, nor the calculation of the vectors. The Norden attacked all of these problems.
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RAF Museum's reserve collection. The Mk. XIVA computor, normally mounted on the left side of the forward fuselage. The wind speed and direction are set on the blue dials, the bomb's terminal velocity and the target altitude on the green dials. The Mark XIV Bomb Sight was a bombsight developed by Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command during the Second World War.
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The bomb-aimer's window on a South African Air Force Avro Shackleton maritime patrol / bomber aircraft A bombardier or bomb aimer is the crew member of a bomber aircraft responsible for the targeting of aerial bombs. "Bomb aimer" was the preferred term in the military forces of the Commonwealth, while "bombardier" (from the French word for "bomb thrower" and similar in meaning to "grenadier") was the equivalent position in the United States Armed Forces. In many planes, the bombardier took control of the airplane during the bombing run, using a bombsight such as the Norden bombsight which was connected to the autopilot of the plane. Often stationed in the extreme front of the aircraft, on the way to the target and after releasing the bombs, he could also serve as the front gunner in aircraft that had a front turret.
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The bombardier entered information on air and wind speed, wind direction, altitude, angle of drift and bomb weight into the computer which then calculated the bomb release point, using a complex arrangement of gyros, motors, gears and a telescope. (Jacobs 1996) It was in the early 1950s that Henry purchased his very first Sperry bombsight computer, in mint condition, from an army surplus warehouse in Shude Hill, Manchester. This purchase was inspired by Henry's lifelong passion for all things mechanical, which had been further fuelled by seven years serving as a technical clerk with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers during World War Two. (O'Hanrahan 2005) Henry so marvelled at the mechanical inner workings of this bombsight computer in motion, that he eventually decided to capture its "peerless parabolas" (as Henry termed its inner workings), on paper.
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On 19 January he went up in a Farman III biplane flown by renowned French aviator Louis Paulhan to drop two-pound sandbags in a demonstration of the feasibility of aerial bombing. Using an improvised bombsight of Beck's design, they made three drops from at 40 mph (64 km/hr). The drops were highly inaccurate because the bombsight was adjusted for a much higher rate of speed, but the concept was shown to be sound. On 29 November 1910 two second lieutenants, George E. M. Kelly of the 30th Infantry at the Presidio of San Francisco and John C. Walker, Jr. of the 8th Infantry at Fort Ord, received orders to attend the Curtiss Flying School expected to open in January 1911 on North Island at San Diego, to learn to fly and train to become instructors.
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By rotating the bombsight in relationship to the SBAE, the SBAE could account for wind and turbulence and calculate the appropriate directional changes needed to bring the aircraft onto the bomb run far more precisely than a human pilot. The minor adaptations needed on the bombsight itself produced what the Army referred to as the M-4 model. In 1937 the Army, faced with the continuing supply problems with the Norden, once again turned to Sperry Gyroscope to see if they could come up with a solution. Their earlier models had all proved unreliable, but they had continued working with the designs throughout this period and had addressed many of the problems. By 1937, Orland Esval had introduced a new AC-powered electrical gyroscope that spun at 30,000 RPM, compared to the Norden's 7,200 , which dramatically improved the performance of the inertial platform.
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During this time the drift wires were difficult to use, so the entire process of correcting the flight path was greatly extended. In the aftermath of the Wilhelmshaven raid on 3 September 1939, it was found that the lengthy setup and bomb run demanded by the CSBS made its aircraft extremely vulnerable to fighters and anti- aircraft artillery. At a pre-arranged meeting on 22 December 1939, Air Chief Marshal Sir Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt made a request for a new bombsight that did not require such a long run into the target, and which would allow the aircraft to manoeuvre throughout the bomb run. The solution to this problem was well understood within the industry: use gyroscopes to provide a level platform to mount the bombsight so it did not move relative to the ground even if the aircraft moved.
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Groves sent Kirkpatrick to supervise construction on Tinian by the Seabees of the 6th Naval Construction Brigade. Four air-conditioned Quonset huts of a type normally used for bombsight repair were provided for laboratory and instrument work. There were five warehouses, a shop building, and assembly, ordnance and administrative buildings. Ramsey overcame the problem of how to ship through the San Francisco Port of Embarkation.
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They included four tachometers, one per engine, a compass, a crude altimeter and airspeed indicator, two glass U-shaped tubes and a ball for bank indication, and a series of horizontal bars situated vertically on the nose of the fuselage for measuring climbs and descents. Later, in the bomber variants, a drift indicator and elementary bombsight was added to aid bombing.Darcey et al. 1995, p. 38.
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Ju 87 diving procedure Flying at , the pilot located his target through a bombsight window in the cockpit floor. The pilot moved the dive lever to the rear, limiting the "throw" of the control column. The dive brakes were activated automatically, the pilot set the trim tabs, reduced his throttle and closed the coolant flaps. The aircraft then rolled 180°, automatically nosing the aircraft into a dive.
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He was designated a naval aviator in 1923. Duties at the U.S. Navys Bureau of Aeronautics and Bureau of Ordnance soon followed. While there, Davis became a pioneer of dive bombing; he developed dive bombing techniques and in 1925, he designed a bombsight for use in dive bombing. By 1934, Davis, a lieutenant commander, became commander of the air group aboard the aircraft carrier .
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The plane made an emergency wheels up landing upon its return. Flying through intense flak on a mission against Bremen-Vegesack on 18 March 1943, in which bombing was to be done by squadrons, 1st Lieutenant Jack W. Mathis, was bombardier on the lead aircraft of the 359th. Less than a minute before bomb release, he was knocked nine feet back from his bombsight.
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Wing Commander G.C.C. Bartlett and his navigator Pilot Officer Longmuir stated that the sight was a great advance over previous systems. Patrick Blackett, head of the ORS, was also attending the meeting. He reported that the earlier Low Level Bombsight, Mark II produced error when flying level, as did the Mk. XIV. He suggested that both could be improved through the addition of a radio altimeter.
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This sight combined the images of the radar and a lens system in front of the aircraft, allowing them to be directly compared at once through a binocular eyepiece.Y-4 Horizontal Periscopic Bombsight. National Museum of the United States Air Force. 2 June 2015 Bombsights on older aircraft, like the Boeing B-29 Superfortress and the later B-50, were left in their wartime state.
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The Fw 200C-4 equipped the unit from February 1942, and added the pre-production Rostock and then standard FuG 200 Hohentwiel search radar, giving blind-bombing capability. The Fw 200C-4 reverted to the HDL 151 turret and MG 15s, while the Bola gondola retained a MG 131 machine gun or MG 151/20 forward-firing cannon depending if the Lofte 7D bombsight was fitted.
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At the same time the commanding general of the Western Division assigned Beck to organize and act as secretary for the International Air Meet taking place at Selfridge Field on the grounds of the Tanforan Racetrack in San Francisco, where Kelly and Walker also participated. Kelly's 30th Infantry provided a battalion to support military applications tested during the meet, building an encampment on the site as a subject for aerial photography, and maneuvering to avoid detection by aerial reconnaissance. On 15 January an officer in the Coast Artillery Corps, 2nd Lt. Myron S. Crissy, dropped 36 pounds of small bombs of his own design by hand from a Wright B biplane flown by Philip Parmalee at an altitude of . Although Beck later claimed to have assisted him by the development of an improved bombsight, Crissy denied any collaboration between them and did not use a bombsight in his test.
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Initially, most WAACs and WACs worked as file clerks, typists, stenographers, or motor pool drivers. Gradually, their jobs grew more technical as positions were created for weather forecasters, parachute riggers, radio operators and repair specialists, sheet metal workers, bombsight maintenance specialists, control tower operators, and cryptographers. In August 1943, Kirtland Field became host to a USAAF Provisional B-24 Liberator Pilot Transition School designed to train airplane commanders.
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Thus the ability of Fliegerführer Atlantik to find convoys remained sporadic until late in the command's service. Further limitations were a result of the design. A lack of proper bombsight equipment and poor forward visibility meant the aircraft had to attack from low level. This meant an approach at just 45 metres at 290 km/h (180 mph) and then release of bombs at 240 metres (790 ft) from the target.
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State Secretary Erhard Milch, production supremo, sympathised but the equipment was not yet available. The Lofte 7D bombsight did make a difference to Fw 200 operations. The aircraft could now bomb accurately to within 20 to 30 metres from an altitude of 4,000 metres (13,000 ft). III./KG 40 used the device in 42 attacks—26 on convoys—and claimed 11 ships sunk for 79,050 grt from 23 February—1 October.
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An electro-mechanical device in the tradition of complex post- World War II clocks such as master clocks, the Globus IMP instrument incorporates hundreds of mechanical components common to horology. This instrument is a mechanical computer for navigation akin to the Norden bombsight. It mechanically computes complex functions and displays its output through mechanical displacements of the globe and other indicator components. It also modulates electric signals from other instruments.
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One Bristol T.B.8 was fitted with a prismatic Bombsight in the front cockpit and a cylindrical bomb carrier in the lower forward fuselage, capable of carrying twelve 10 lb (4.5 kg) bombs, which could be dropped singly or as a salvo as required. This aircraft was displayed at the Paris Salon de l'Aéronautique and evaluated by the French military before being purchased by the Royal Navy Air Service.
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A primitive autopilot device, the Siemens K4Ü, was installed and could maintain bearing using the rudder's control surfaces. The bomb bay accommodated four bomb racks, the No. 5 for SC50 bombs and two ETC 500 racks to carry heavier loads of up to each. A Lotfe A, or B bombsight was issued together with the BZA-2 aperture (a modernised optical lens system). The aircraft's bomb bay allowed two options.
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Laboratories included aircraft communication systems, high-frequency and microwave radar systems, identification, friend or foe (IFF) systems, radar altimeters, and long-range navigation (LORAN) equipment. In addition to the regular curriculum, there were special courses on subjects such as the Norden bombsight and the magnetic anomaly detector (MAD), both highly classified at that time, and the Navy's first drone aircraft, the Target Drone Denny 1 (TTD-1).Watson, op. cit., pp.
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The Glasgow Army Airfield Norden Bombsight Vault was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2011. It is a one-story concrete shed with a projection that has -thick walls and a poured concrete floor. It protected Norden bombsights at the Glasgow Army Airfield during World War II. The bombsights were top-secret and were used on B-29 bombers. It had steel vault doors which have been removed.
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This disclosure dispelled any tension left between the delegations, and the meeting then went smoothly. The magnetron would enable the production of radar units small enough to be installed in night fighters, allow aircraft to locate surfaced U-boats and provide great navigational assistance to bombers. It is considered to be a significant factor in the Allied victory in the Second World War. Britain was interested in the Norden bombsight.
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The CSBS Mk. IA, the first widely produced vector bombsight. The drift wires are visible on the right, the windage calculator on the left, and the altitude scale in the middle (vertical). The actual sights are the white rings near the top of the altitude slider and white dots mid-way along the drift wires. The drift wires are normally taut, this example is almost a century old.
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The Ministry of Aviation gave an order for the bomb bay to be retrofitted; this variant became known as the J-1. In all but the powerplant, it was identical to the F-4. The final variant of the F series was the F-5, with bombsight and powerplants identical to the E-5. The F-5 was rejected as a production variant owing to the superior performance of the He 111 P-1.
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The original Scottsbluff Municipal Airport closed to make way for the new airfield; the old airport later became a prisoner of war camp. Construction began on September 7, 1942. A temporary railroad spur was constructed and some of concrete for three runways was poured in forty-five days. There were about 108 buildings on the ground including barracks, mess halls, officers' quarters, warehouses, a hangar, a camouflage instruction building, and a bombsight storage building.
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On September 18, 1947, he became part of the newly formed branch of the armed forces, the United States Air Force. Felices received training in multi-engines and also completed the weapons training course. He was assigned in 1952, to the 303rd Bombardment Wing as the 359th Bombardment Squadron operations officer. Felices participated in a bombing competition, using a B-29 Superfortress equipped with an APQ-7 radar set and a Norden bombsight rate head.
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"Garrett and Pressurized Flight: A Business Built on Thin Air". Pacific Historical Review 35: 329–43. During World War II, the invention of the Norden bombsight allowed bomber planes to hit precision targets from high altitudes, but at 25,000 feet a single degree of oscillation in the plane's flight course threw a bomb 400 feet off its target. The Flight Control Equipment system commonly known as “auto-pilot” was initially invented by SperryHistory.net.
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The first was the setting for "trail", which was pre-set at the start of the mission for the type of bombs being used. The second was the "index window" which displayed the aim point in numerical form. The bombsight calculated the current aim point internally and displayed this as a sliding pointer on the index. The current sighting point, where the prism was aimed, was also displayed against the same scale.
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In the postwar era, the development of new precision bombsights essentially ended. At first this was due to the military drawdown, but as budgets increased again during the opening of the Cold War, the bomber mission had passed to nuclear weapons. These required accuracies on the order of , well within the capabilities of existing radar bombing systems. Only one major bombsight of note was developed, the Y-4 developed on the Boeing B-47 Stratojet.
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It was also known as the Blackett sight after its primary inventor, P. M. S. Blackett. Production of a slightly modified version was also undertaken in the United States as the Sperry T-1, which was interchangeable with the UK-built version. It was the RAF's standard bombsight for the second half of the war. Developed starting in 1939, the Mk. XIV began replacing the First World War–era Course Setting Bomb Sight in 1942.
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Both offered more accuracy than was really needed, and neither was going to be available immediately. Accordingly, in 1939 the Royal Aircraft Establishment started examining a simpler solution under the direction of P.M.S. Blackett. These efforts produced the Mark XIV bomb sight. The Mk. XIV moved the calculator off of the bombsight itself to a separate box, which also included instruments that automatically input altitude, airspeed and heading, eliminating manual setting of these values.
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The Carl Zeiss Lotfernrohr 7 (Lot meant "Vertical" and Fernrohr meant "Telescope"), or Lotfe 7, was the primary series of bombsights used in most Luftwaffe level bombers, similar to the United States' Norden bombsight, but much simpler to operate and maintain. Several models were produced and eventually completely replaced the simpler Lotfernrohr 3 and BZG 2 bombsights. The Lotfe 7C, appearing in January 1941, was the first one to have gyroscopic stabilization.
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In 1916, Henry Wimperis started the design of a new bombsight, working in collaboration with Scarff. This new Drift Sight included a simple system that greatly eased the measurement of the wind. By observing their movement over the ground, the aircraft would first determine the direction of the wind. The aircraft would then turn to fly at right angles to this wind direction so that the wind was pushing the aircraft sideways.
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Lt. Peter Haynes and Hawai Sepoy 1st Class Kartar Singh Taunque (later Wing Commander), as the air gunner/bombardier, conducted a daring bombing raid in Waziristan during the World War II operations. Wing Cdr. Kartar Singh Taunque Peter Haynes and Taunque were flying Wapiti II Army Co-operation biplane during this sortie. Peter Haynes flew steady at a constant altitude as Taunque conducted precession bombing using 112-lb RL bombs and Mk.IX bombsight.
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After the war, Davenport completed his Ph.D. in physics in 1946 at the University of Pittsburgh. His dissertation was on the design of a radar-controlled missile, which was effectively the first guided missile. He went on to Harvard University from 1946-1950 to lead construction of the second-largest (92-inch) cyclotron and to teach physics at Radcliffe College. After Harvard, Davenport became chief engineer for the B-47 bombsight at Perkin-Elmer Corporation (Stamford, CT).
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The Royal Air Force introduced into operational service in 1943 an improved precision bombsight: the Stabilizing Automatic Bomb Sight. 617 Squadron achieved a precision of at the V1 Weapon launch site at Abbeville on 16/17 December 1943. Bomber Command Diary December 1943 The Disney bomb, by contrast, was designed from the start to penetrate the thick concrete roofs of fortified bunkers. Whereas the earthquake bomb's target was the bunker itself, the Disney bomb's target was the bunker's contents.
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Sumrall, pp. 132 Based on costly lessons in the Pacific theater, concerns were raised about the ability of the armor on these battleships to withstand aerial bombing, particularly high altitude bombing using armor piercing bombs. Developments such as the Norden bombsight further fueled these concerns. While the design of the Iowas was too far along to adequately address this issue, experience in the Pacific theater eventually demonstrated that high altitude unguided bombing was ineffective against maneuvering warships.
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Despite its poor performance during most of 1942, III./KG 40's ability to attack Allied shipping was improved late in the year. During the last months of 1942 the unit received 18 C-4 variants of the Fw 200 which were fitted with the Lotfe 7D bombsight. This sight reduced the Condors' vulnerability to anti- aircraft fire by allowing them to bomb targets from medium altitudes; previously they had only been able to attack accurately from low levels.
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The squadron also detached Mitchells to act as navigation ships for Douglas A-20 Havocs of the 312th Bombardment Group attacking targets in southwestern New Guinea. The A-20s were not equipped with bombsights and could only make medium altitude attacks by "dropping on leader" (releasing their bombload at the same time as the lead aircraft, equipped with a bombsight, in a formation). Squadron aircraft also dropped food and supplies to isolated parties in the interior of the island.
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The lifeboat, designed by yachtsman Uffa Fox, laden with supplies and powered by two motors, was aimed with a bombsight near to ditched air crew and dropped by parachute into the sea from an altitude of about .Barfield 1972, p. 159. Warwicks were credited with rescuing crews from Halifaxes, Lancasters, Wellingtons and B-17 Flying Fortress, and during Operation Market Garden, from Hamilcar gliders, all of which ditched in the English Channel or North Sea.Barfield 1972, pp.
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They sat midship, where the radio operator would normally sit, since they used an electronic not optical bombsight. By the time of the United States' entry into the Second World War, three Observer Badges were authorized by the Army Air Forces. The first was the Combat Observer Badge: in appearance an Aviator Badge with a large 'O' in the center. For Balloon Observers, a separate badge was created: the Observer Badge augmented with a balloon insignia.
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Pilot and gunner sat close together in two tandem cockpits, with the gunner armed with a Lewis gun on a specially designed high-speed gun mounting that allowed the gun to be stowed to reduce drag, with the pilot armed with a single synchronised Vickers machine gun.Jarrett 1994, p.47. Up to of bombs could be carried under the wings,Taylor 1974, p.136. aimed by the gunner whose seat folded to allow use of a bombsight.
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B Mk IV nose closeup showing bombsight and clear nose, plus engine nacelles and undercarriage While timber construction was considered outmoded by some, de Havilland claimed that their successes with techniques used for the DH 91 Albatross could lead to a fast, light bomber using monocoque-sandwich shell construction.Birtles 2017, chs. 2, 3. Arguments in favour of this included speed of prototyping, rapid development, minimisation of jig-building time, and employment of a separate category of workforce.
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This was probably the most technically skilled ground-echelon job, and certainly the most secret, of all the work performed by Sub Depot personnel. The non- commissioned officer in charge and his staff had to have a high aptitude for understanding and working with mechanical devices. As the end of World War II neared, the bombsight was gradually downgraded in its secrecy; however, it was not until 1944 that the first public display of the instrument occurred.
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Norden bombsight display in the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania The new design, the Mark XV, was delivered in production quality in the summer of 1931. In testing it proved to eliminate all of the problems of the earlier Mk. XI design. From altitude the prototype delivered a CEP of , while even the latest production Mk. XI's were . At higher altitudes, a series of 80 bomb runs demonstrated a CEP of .
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The request for a new bombsight was quickly passed on to the Royal Aircraft Establishment, where Patrick Blackett of the Aeronautical Research Committee volunteered to lead the effort. His solution to the problem was a thorough revision of the CSBS concept. The advance in the Blackett design was the way the sighting head was aimed. Instead of dialling the parameters into the sight directly as in the CSBS, these inputs were dialled into a separate console.
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The range unit was the heart of the SABS, and the earlier ABS. This was a mechanical calculator with three internal functions. The first calculated the angular rate of motion of a stationary location on the ground, which provided the ground speed of the aircraft, and output this to a reflector sight mounted on the left side of the bombsight. The key component of this system, and other tachometric designs, was the ball-and-disk integrator.
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If the aircraft simply points toward the target, along the green arrow, the wind will cause it to drift to the right. In order to approach the target properly, the aircraft needs to turn to the left until the portion of its airspeed equal to the wind speed cancels out the drift. The resulting direction is represented by the yellow arrow in the diagram above. On the CSBS each of these arrows has a mechanical equivalent in the bombsight.
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Although the CSBS automated the calculation of the effects of the wind, it did not automate the measurement of the wind itself. The bombsight manual describes several ways to do this. One is an adaptation of the method used with the Drift Sight. Prior to approaching the target, the bomb aimer would have the pilot turn onto the expected wind line, and dials in zero wind speed and due north wind direction, which points the drift bar straight forward.
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A B-29B of the 501st Bombardment Group takes off on a mission on 26 June 1945. The long horizontal bar running between the aircraft's landing gear is the antenna for the Eagle radar. The AN/APQ-7, or Eagle, was a radar bombsight system developed by the US Army Air Force. Early studies started in late 1941 under the direction of Luis Alvarez at the MIT Radiation Laboratory, but full- scale development did not begin until April 1943.
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The bomb aimer then watched the target in the sight until it crossed the pointer, and dropped the bombs. Similar bombsights were developed in France and England, notably the Michelin and Central Flying School Number Seven bombsight. While useful, these sights required a time-consuming setup period while the movement was timed. A great upgrade to the basic concept was introduced by Harry Wimperis, better known for his later role in the development of radar in England.
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Before 1939, all sides operated under largely theoretical models of air warfare. Italian theorist Giulio Douhet in the 1920s summarised the faith that airmen during and after World War I developed in the efficacy of strategic bombing. Many said it alone could win wars, as "the bomber will always get through". The Americans were confident that the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber could reach targets, protected by its own weapons, and bomb, using the Norden bombsight, with "pickle barrel" accuracy.
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Nazi agent Felix Lynx (Eduardo Ciannelli) attempts to steal these designs for his own country. Lynx is determined to seize this valuable new aircraft, with the help of his female accomplice Innis Clair (Jacqueline Dalya) and of a criminal named John KAne who happens to be a perfect double for Dayton. All attempts, however, to steal the fighter aircraft prototype, fail. Dayton's new bombsight is being tested in Hawaii, and Lynx intercepts a Sikorsky S-45 flying boat on the way to Honolulu.
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As the technique required the aircraft to fly at very low altitudes directly at the ship, it made shooting down the aircraft easier as well. In the immediate pre-war era, there was considerable effort to develop new bombsights that would allow the aircraft to remain at higher altitudes. The most notable was the US Navy's Norden bombsight, which was fit to most Navy aircraft. In practice, these proved largely useless, and the skip-bombing technique was soon introduced operationally.
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Holmes is saved at the last minute, however, by Watson and Lestrade, who with Hoffner's help, successfully followed the drops. Scotland Yard apprehends the spies, but Moriarty escapes. When he attempts to complete his escape through a secret passageway, he falls sixty feet to his death; Holmes has discovered the criminal's hidden trap door and left it open. With Tobel saved and the bombsight recovered, Watson notes that things "are looking up... this little island is still on the map".
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The Low Level Bombsight Mk. III consisted of two parts, the computor, and the sighting head, shown here. The bomb aimer looked through the glass plates to see an image of moving horizontal lines, and released the bombs when their motion matched the motion of the target. The computor for the Mk. III was very simple, with inputs for the airspeed and altitude only. The range can be read off the series of lines on the white cylinder visible through the perspex window.
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This led to the introduction of the pilot direction indicator, or PDI. These consisted of a pair of electrical pointers mounted in a standard diameter instrument panel mount. The bombardier used switches to move the pointer on his unit to indicate the direction of the target, which was duplicated on the unit in front of the pilot so he could maneuver the aircraft to follow suit. Norden's first attempt at an improved bombsight was actually an advance in PDI design.
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His idea was to remove the manual electrical switches used to move the pointer and use the entire bombsight itself as the indicator. He proposed attaching a low-power sighting telescope to a gyro platform that would keep the telescope pointed at the same azimuth, correcting for the aircraft's movements. The bombardier would simply rotate the telescope left or right to follow the target. This motion would cause the gyros to precess, and this signal would drive the PDI automatically.
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In testing on the bomb range, the Mk. XIV demonstrated an average accuracy of from altitude. In service, the average systematic error was , while the random error was . In comparison, units using the much more complex Stabilized Automatic Bomb Sight (SABS) improved the systematic error to under the same operational conditions and altitude. A series of reports in the summer of 1944 produced by Bomber Command's operational research division attempted to explain these differences, starting with problems in the bombsight itself.
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The same system also included a set of contacts that connected earlier, turning on a red lamp on top of the bombsight and another in front of the pilot. These remained lit through the approach, for about ten minutes, and turned off the instant the bombs were released. The sight was driven electrically from the aircraft's 24 Vdc power supply. This powered both the sight rotation motor as well as various lamps and the electrical contacts that triggered the bombs to drop.
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The CSBS Mk. IX mounted in a Fairey Battle. The bomb aimer is sighting through the white ring-shaped backsights to the pin shaped foresights (just visible against the armoured cable) and holding the bomb release switch in his right hand. The Course Setting Bomb Sight (CSBS) is the canonical vector bombsight, the first practical system for properly accounting for the effects of wind when dropping bombs. It is also widely referred to as the Wimperis sight after its inventor, Harry Wimperis.
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The wire sights of the earlier models were replaced by reflector sights indicating the location the bombs would hit if dropped at that instant. As the sighting head lacked the vector computer it was much smaller than earlier models, which allowed it to be easily mounted on a stabilized platform. This allowed the sights to be used even while the aircraft was maneuvering, and required only 10 seconds to settle. Together, these changes dramatically simplified the task of maintaining an accurate bombsight setting.
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While the basic system was being tested, consideration was being given to the displays and ballistics computer. This led to a "gold plated" design known as the Universal Bomb Sight, or UBS. Developed by Bell Labs, the UBS was an enormous mechanical computer, about , that could be provided with any sort of inputs and conditions, and provide a bombing cue. Unlike similar models like the Norden bombsight, the UBS was designed to have little settling time, and would allow maneuvering throughout the approach.
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Although these developments were well known within the industry, only the US Army Air Corps and US Navy put any concerted effort into development. During the 1920s, the Navy funded development of the Norden bombsight while the Army funded development of the Sperry O-1. Both systems were generally similar; a bomb sight consisting of a small telescope was mounted on a stabilizing platform to keep the sighting head stable. A separate mechanical computer was used to calculate the aim point.
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1104, and 20 November 1914, p. 1138. In 1915 he assumed command of 'C’ Flight of No. 14 Squadron which was then under formation. The squadron commenced operations in the Sinai and Palestine campaign in November 1915, defending the Suez Canal from Turkish invasion. Blackburn received the Military Cross and also designed a bombsight which 2nd Lieutenant Cedric Waters Hill successfully used to destroy the water tank of the remote Turkish outpost at Bir el Hassana on 26 February 1916.
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That has led to a series of increasingly sophisticated bombsight designs, dedicated to high- altitude level bombing. Bombsights were first used before World War I, and have since gone through several major revisions. The earliest systems were iron sights, which were pre-set to an estimated fall angle. In some cases, they consisted of nothing more than a series of nails hammered into a convenient spar, lines drawn on the aircraft, or visual alignments of certain parts of the structure.
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The bombsight is then set to indicate that angle. The bombs are dropped when the target passes through the sights. The distance between the aircraft and target at that moment is the range, so this angle is often referred to as the range angle, although dropping angle, aiming angle, bombing angle and similar terms are often used as well. In practice, some or all of these calculations are carried out using angles and not points in space, skipping the final conversion.
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The latter's position was just at the wing cut-out; he also had a bombsight hatch in the floor. A little further back was the radio operator/rear gunner, clear of the trailing edge. The fuselage diameter decreased to the tail, where a squat fin carried a tall, horn balanced rudder which extended down to the bottom of the fuselage. The tailplane was strut supported from below and sat on the fin just above the fuselage; it was straight edged and carried unbalanced, split elevators.
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In 1941, at a staff meeting in Washington, D.C., two officers of the U.S. Army Air Corps (and old friends) debate the importance of bombardiers. Major "Chick" Davis (Pat O'Brien) argues that a bombardier, using the top secret American bombsight will be the "spearhead of our striking force." After a year of observing the Royal Air Force fight the German Luftwaffe, Capt. "Buck" Oliver (Randolph Scott) is not convinced a bomber can get "so close that a bomb can't miss" and that new pilots are the priority.
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The company continued to operate from the factory after his death in 1920, at one point making components for the World War II era Norden bombsight. The company moved out of the factory around 1954. The factory was demolished by Pittsburgh on March 17, 2015, after one of the factory's walls had partially collapsed onto an adjacent apartment building the night before. The factory had been owned by the city since 2012, but it was unable to allocate funds to correct structural and roof deficiencies.
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"Combat boxes" of 12 B-17 during bombing missions Marks and letters on the tails of B-17 during WWII in Europe The air corps – renamed United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) on 20 June 1941 – used the B-17 and other bombers to bomb from high altitudes with the aid of the then-secret Norden bombsight, known as the "Blue Ox","Blue Ox." National Geographic Magazine, Vol. LXXXIII, Number One, January 1943, p. 7, Ad(i). which was an optical electromechanical gyrostabilized analog computer.
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Then the requirement was again modified, this time calling for a maximum dive angle of 60°, which necessitated further structural strengthening and a big increase in weight. Problems arising from the latest requirement were never satisfactorily solved, due to the constant increases in loaded weight. Despite strengthened airframes, it was possible to overstress the airframe during dive-bombing. Although the German bomb-sights of the 1930s were inadequate, the later versions of the Lotfernrohr 7 proved to be comparable to the American Norden bombsight.
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After the field was closed on December 21, 1945, it was given to the city and transformed into a municipal airport. Childress Municipal Airport is a commercial airport located within city limits, 4 miles west of central Childress, Texas. It is owned and operated by the city of Childress, Texas. A feature item of the CAAF museum exhibit is the Norden Bombsight, the great secret weapon of World War II, which was housed at CAAF during the war and was used to train bombardier pilots.
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The player controls the pilot, co-pilot, bombardier, navigator, and gunners for the plane. As the bombardier, the player uses the included Photo Recon booklet (which is also the game's copy protection) to aim the bombsight over the landscape to find the target identified in the photo, pressing the salvo button. When attacked by fighters, the player operates as a gunner, tracking enemy fighters through one of the B-17's six gun positions, and uses twin 50-caliber machine guns that carry 2,000 rounds each.
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Freeman, p. 102 Flying through intense flak on a mission against Bremen-Vegesack on 18 March 1943, in which bombing was to be done by squadrons, 1st Lieutenant Jack W. Mathis, was bombardier on the lead aircraft of the group's 359th Squadron. Less than a minute before bomb release, he was knocked nine feet back from his bombsight. Although Lt Mathis was mortally wounded, he returned to his position to release his bombs and ensure the squadron struck its target, dying as he toggled the bomb release.
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During the London Blitz of 1940-41, the street was struck twice by high explosive bombs.Source: Air Raid Warden Post D2 (Borough of St Marylebone) located in the Royal Institute of British Architects on Weymouth Street and Portland Place. Records of the explosion noted on Bombsight (2013) Map of the London WW2 bomb census between 7/10/1940 and 06/06/1941 , accessed 01/10/2016. Some of the original 18th century buildings survive to this day, for example at 45-49 Weymouth Street.
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As a dive bomber, the Ju 88 was capable of pinpoint deliveries of heavy loads; however, despite all the modifications, dive bombing still proved too stressful for the airframe, and in 1943, tactics were changed so that bombs were delivered from a shallower, 45° diving angle. Aircraft and bomb sights were accordingly modified and dive brakes were removed. With an advanced Stuvi dive-bombsight, accuracy remained very good for its time. Maximum bomb load of the A-4 was , but in practice, standard bomb load was .
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They went on to suggest that bombs would be much more effective against small ships, especially if the Mark XIV bombsight was available. In one of the few wartime examples, the Air Ministry did not take all of ORS' advice. Henry Tizard sounded a contrary note in a January 1943 letter where he stated: This coincided with the introduction of the Strike Wing tactics in Coastal Command. Previously, attacks would be made by a variety of aircraft organized into loose groups, with fighter protection.
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"He never left the bombsight even when the Japs were shooting at him.""Comrade Spurs Hope for Hero Meyer Levin," The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 9, 1943 But on its return home the plane ran low on fuel and hit a major storm, which forced the plane to fly just above wave height. "The situation was hopeless," recalls Barbee, "and suddenly all the motors stalled. The Fortress plunged into the sea ..." Barbee remembers last seeing Levin grasping for the safety hatches which released the raft.
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Midland Army Air Field was home to the Army Air Forces Bombardier School, one of a dozen bombardier-training schools. It was one of the "West Texas Bombardier Quadrangle" schools of the Army Air Forces Training Command, along with Childress Army Airfield, San Angelo Army Airfield and Big Spring Army Airfield. The sole purpose of the Bombardier College was to train young men to use the Norden bombsight. The first group of cadets, Class 42–6, arrived for training from Ellington, Texas, on February 6, 1942.
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The Norden bombsight consisted of two primary parts, the gyroscopic stabilization platform on the left side, and the mechanical calculator and sighting head on the right side. They were essentially separate instruments, connecting through the sighting prism. The sighting eyepiece was located in the middle, between the two, in a less than convenient location that required some dexterity to use. Before use, the Norden's stabilization platform had to be righted, as it slowly drifted over time and no longer kept the sight pointed vertically.
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Gee was devised by Robert Dippy as a short-range blind landing system to improve safety during night operations. During development by the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) at Swanage, the range was found to be far better than expected. It then developed into a long-range, general navigation system. For large, fixed targets, such as the cities that were attacked at night, Gee offered enough accuracy to be used as an aiming reference without the need to use a bombsight or other external references.
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The Norden, now connected with the aircraft's built-in autopilot, had the ability to allow the bombardier alone to fully control minor movements of the aircraft during the bombing run. By May 1943 the U.S. Navy was complaining that they had a surplus of devices, with full production turned over to the USAAF. After investing more than $100 million in Sperry bombsight manufacturing plants, the USAAF concluded that the Norden M-series was far superior in accuracy, dependability, and design. Sperry contracts were canceled in November 1943.
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Barden Corporation was acquired by FAG in 1990.Hicks, Jonath, New York Times, FAG to Acquire Barden Corp. for $131 million, September 18, 1990 The irony of the acquisition by FAG was that Barden Precision Bearings had been used to make the Norden bombsight operate and facilitated destruction of the Schweinfurt bearing factories during World War II. In 2001, FAG was acquired INA-Holdings/Schaeffler KG (Schaeffler Gruppe). FAG is an acronym for Friedrich Fischer Aktien- Gesellschaft or Fischer AG which translates to Fischer Stock Company.
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The Low Level Bombsight was built using parts of the Mark XIV, stabilized in pitch rather than roll. A post-war upgrade, the T-4, also known by its rainbow code Blue Devil, connected directly to the Navigation and Bombing System computers to automate the setting of wind speed and direction. This eliminated the one potential inaccuracy in the system, further increased accuracy, and simplified operation. These equipped the V Bomber force as well as other aircraft until their retirement from service in the 1960s.
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The development and operation of naval fire-control systems is extensively covered throughout Friedman and Baker, 2008. This system of progressive estimation is easily adapted to the bombsight role. In this case, the unknown measurement is not the target's speed or heading, but the bomber's movement due to the wind. To measure this, the bomb aimer first dials in estimates of the wind speed and direction, which causes the computer to begin moving the bombsights to stay pointed at the target as the bomber moved toward it.
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The US Navy began a bombsight development program with Carl Norden during the 1920s, initially focused on a gyroscopically stabilized sight of otherwise unadvanced design. The Navy had found that bombsights were almost always used with the sights not properly leveled with respect to the ground, so any angles measured through the sight were wrong. An error of only a few degrees represents an error of hundreds of feet when bombing from high altitudes. Stabilization, which automatically levels the sight, was found to roughly double overall accuracy.
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The system was first used operationally with the B-29 Superfortress in the Pacific Theater starting in May 1945. The addition of the APA-46 and 47 "Nosmo" synchronized a Norden bombsight with the APQ-7, and the entire assembly became known as the APQ-7A. The war ended shortly after this system was introduced, and Eagle saw little real world use. Post-war efforts focused on the K-system, as Eagle's unique antenna design made it difficult to use with higher speed jet powered bombers.
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In 1916 he introduced the Drift Sight, which added a simple system for directly measuring the wind speed. The bomb aimer would first dial in the altitude and airspeed of the aircraft. Doing so rotated a metal bar on the right side of the bombsight so it pointed out from the fuselage. Prior to the bomb run, the bomber would fly at right angles to the bomb line, and the bomb aimer would look past the rod to watch the motion of objects on the ground.
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Facing a lack of production capability, Sperry was contracted to produce the Mk. XIV in the US, calling it the Sperry T-1.Henry Black, "The T-1 Bombsight Story", 26 July 2001 Both the British and Germans would later introduce Norden-like sights of their own. Based at least partially on information about the Norden passed to them through the Duquesne Spy Ring, the Luftwaffe developed the Lotfernrohr 7."The Duquesne Spy Ring" , FBI The basic mechanism was almost identical to the Norden, but much smaller.
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The main distinguishing characteristic between it and the Yak-200 was an external radome under the rear fuselage for the PSBN-M (pribor slepovo bombometahniya i navigahtsii—blind-bombing and navigational device) search/bomb-aiming radar as was fitted on the Ilyushin Il-28. An OPB-6SR (opticheskiy pritsel bombardirovochnyy—optical synchronized bombsight) and an AFA-BA-40 camera were also fitted; the latter could tilt 15° aft to record bomb impacts. All this equipment weighed which forced the fuel load to be reduced by in compensation.
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He attended Air Corps technical schools on armament, bombsight maintenance and power turret. From May 1942 to April 1943 he was with the 88th Bombardment Group at Walla Walla Army Air Base in Washington. He then served until November 1945 as an aerial gunnery officer with the 11th Bombardment Group in the Southwest Pacific Area, where he flew 25 combat missions totalling 147 combat hours in B-24 Liberator bombers. He was promoted to first lieutenant on 20 November 1942, captain on 1 September 1943, and major on 14 July 1945.
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Cadet Pete Jordan is not up to the complexity of the training and soon washes out. Connors reveals to Davis that a spy wants to buy information from him about the secret bombsight, and helps Davis lure the spy into a trap where he is arrested. Cadet Paul Harris, brilliant in ground school and a hero for saving his bomber from destruction when a flare goes awry, is conscience stricken that his mother thinks he will be a murderer of innocent civilians. Davis reassures him with a patriotic pep talk.
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The nose was fitted with a rotating machine gun mount, offset to allow the pilot a better field of forward vision. The cockpit was fully glazed, with the exception of the lower right section, which acted as a platform for the bombardier-gunner. The commonly-used Lotfernrohr-series bombsight penetrated through the cockpit floor into a protective housing on the outside of the cockpit. Between the forward and rear bulkhead was the bomb bay, which was constructed with a double-frame to strengthen it for carrying the bomb load.
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A section of PLUTO pipeline Following the outbreak of the Second World War Hartley was seconded from Anglo-Iranian to the Ministry of Aircraft Production in 1940. From 1940-1 he assisted with the development of a stabilized bombsight which was used by RAF Bomber Command in the sinking of the German battleship Tirpitz in 1944. From 1942 Hartley worked with the Petroleum Warfare Department and was appointed as its technical director. Here he developed, at the request of Air Chief Marshal Arthur Harris, the Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation which was known as FIDO.
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A traditional Buick styling cue dating to 1949 is a series of three or four 'vents' on the front fenders behind the front wheels. The source of this design feature was a custom car of Buick stylist Ned Nickles, which in addition had a flashing light within each hole, each synchronized with a specific spark plug to simulate the flames from the exhaust stack of a fighter airplane. Combined with the bombsight mascot (introduced in 1946), Nickle's custom Buick invoked an imaginary fighter airplane. The flashing light feature was not used by Buick in production.
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Haydon started to design a variety of products for wartime use such as time delay relays, repeat cycle timers, and electromechanics devices. Most of the designs were classified and even Haydon's management did not know their end use. During World War II Haydon made an important contribution to the war effort that made it possible for the United States Army Air Corps (now the United States Air Force) to continue its accurate targeting of strategic and tactical targets. Specifically, reference is made to the Farnsworth Research Bombing Control System that improved upon the Norden Bombsight.
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The Highball weapon featured in the film was an actual development of Barnes Wallis's "dam-busting" Upkeep bomb, and the footage seen in the film of Mosquitoes dropping Highballs on land is genuine archive film. Charles Gray's character mentions Barnes Wallis during his briefing, in such a way as to imply that the name was well known to the RAF men. The special Highball bombsight seen in the film is also a genuine representation of the sight used for dropping Highball. The car driven by David McCallum was a 1935 Godsal V8 Corsica.
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The Studio One building was originally owned by William Fox and was used as a Norden bombsight facility during World War 2. In 1968 the building was bought another d transformed into The Factory nightclub, named after the furniture manufacturing business in the lower floor of the building. The Factory became a popular 1960s-style discothèque that was frequented by Hollywood celebrities, but it only lasted a few years. Studio One was founded on the same site in the early 1970s by part-owner Scott Forbes, a Boston optometrist.
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A semi-retractable landing gear was fitted, with the wheels protruding below the wings to potentially limit damage to the aircraft in a "wheels-up" landing. A crew of three was normally carried beneath a large "greenhouse" canopy almost half the length of the aircraft. The pilot sat in front; a rear gunner/radio operator took the rearmost position, while the bombardier occupied the middle seat. During a bombing run, the bombardier lay prone, sliding into position under the pilot to sight through a window in the bottom of the fuselage, using the Norden Bombsight.
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On April 18, 1942, then Captain Greening, piloting the Hari Kari-er, a B-25B Mitchell medium bomber equipped with the "Mark Twain" bombsight he designed, launched from the United States Navy's aircraft carrier , in the Doolittle Raid of Japan. He led a flight of three aircraft to bomb oil refineries, docks, warehouses and industrial areas of Yokohama. He and his crew survived the raid, reaching China in the area northeast of Quzhou before they ran out of gas and had to abandoned their aircraft. After the Doolittle raid, he went back to the war.
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At the time of Dahlgren's establishment, the area was extremely remote and relatively unpopulated. Thus, to recruit and retain the highly specialized work force required, the Navy promised to supply housing, food and medical services, schools, recreation, and other socially needed infrastructure. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dahlgren was involved in testing bombsights, including the Norden bombsight, for the Navy's fledgling air forces. But, until World War II, much of the principal work at Dahlgren surrounded the proofing and testing of every major gun in the Navy's arsenal.
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The internal space of the central fuselage was largely dedicated to a large 5.0 meter (16 ft 5 in) weapons bay, along with substantial internal fuel tankage.Gunston and Gilchrist 1993, pp. 124–125. The Vautour IIB bomber lacked any sort of radar arrangement or many of the contemporary navigational aids and attack systems that were installed upon several aircraft performing the same role during this era. Aiming of the armaments was performed by a bombardier, who would principally perform his bomb-aiming function using a Second World War-vintage American-built Norden bombsight.
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Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) pretends to be a Nazi spy to aid scientist Dr. Franz Tobel (William Post Jr.) and his new invention, a bombsight, in escaping a Gestapo trap in Switzerland. Holmes and Franz fly to London, where Holmes places him under the protection of his friend, Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce). The scientist slips away against Holmes' instructions for a secret reunion with his fiancee, Charlotte Eberli (Kaaren Verne), and gives her an envelope containing a coded message. He tells Charlotte to give it to Holmes if anything should happen to him.
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The Lightning was modified for other roles. In addition to the F-4 and F-5 reconnaissance variants, a number of P-38Js and P-38Ls were field- modified as formation bombing "pathfinders" or "droopsnoots", fitted with a Norden bombsight or an H2X radar system. Such pathfinders would lead a formation of medium and heavy bombers; or of other P-38s, each loaded with two bombs; the entire formation releasing their ordinance when the pathfinder did. 44-27234 a former P-38L converted as a P-38M Night Lightning.
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Desmond Paul Henry (1921–2004) was a Manchester University Lecturer and Reader in Philosophy (1949–82). He was one of the first British artists to experiment with machine-generated visual effects at the time of the emerging global computer art movement of the 1960s (The Cambridge Encyclopaedia 1990 p. 289; Levy 2006 pp. 178–180). During this period, Henry constructed a succession of three drawing machines from modified bombsight analogue computers which were employed in World War II bombers to calculate the accurate release of bombs onto their targets (O'Hanrahan 2005).
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In 1941 Bomber Command's Operational Research Section (ORS) had been investigating Coastal Command operations against German U-Boats, which until this time had been only moderately successful at best. Comparing average bombing accuracy with the bombs being used, they suggested that a larger bomb be developed for attacking U-Boats on the surface. This study also demonstrated that the aircraft were able to aim the bombs accurately in azimuth, but they had serious problems determining the proper instant to release them. This suggested that a new bombsight dedicated to the role be developed.
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Since the target was well below the aircraft during the approach, typically only the bomb aimer could see it. Looking along the line extending out the front of the bombsight, they would see if the bomber was going to pass over the target, and issue corrections to the pilot if it wasn't. Once they were lined up, they waited for the target to pass through the horizontal line of the crosshairs, and released. Although the effect of the wind after the drop is small, the wind's effects on the aircraft in flight are not.
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Winds at typical bombing altitudes tend to be fairly strong, and it was not uncommon for there to be a wind. Compared to the aircraft's typical speed, this represents 20% of the overall velocity of the aircraft when it drops its bombs. Measuring this wind is accomplished by looking through the bombsight at objects on the ground, and then calculating the angle needed to fly to offset this motion. High-level bombsights generally spent a considerable amount of their design complexity on trying to account for the effect of wind.
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The standard crew for a Lancaster consisted of seven men, stationed in various positions in the fuselage. Starting at the nose, the bomb aimer had two positions to man. His primary location was lying prone on the floor of the nose of the aircraft, with access to the bombsight controls facing forward, with the Mark XIV bomb sight on his left and bomb release selectors on the right. He also used his view out of the large transparent perspex nose cupola to assist the navigator with map reading.
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When the Korean War opened, these aircraft were pressed into service and the Norden once again became the USAF's primary bombsight. This occurred again when the Vietnam War started; in this case retired World War II technicians had to be called up in order to make the bombsights operational again. Its last use in combat was by the Naval Air Observation Squadron Sixty-Seven (VO-67), during the Vietnam War. The bombsights were used in Operation Igloo White for implanting Air-Delivered Seismic Intrusion Detectors (ADSID) along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
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The L-1 never matured, and Inglis later helped Seversky to design the improved C-4. The wider Army establishment became aware of the Mark XI in 1929 and was eventually able to buy an example in 1931. Their testing mirrored the Navy's experience; they found that the gyro stabilization worked and the sight was accurate, but it was also "entirely too complicated" to use. The Army turned its attention to further upgraded versions of their existing prototypes, replacing the older vector bombsight mechanisms with the new synchronous method of measuring the proper dropping angle.
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Mk. XV's were initially installed with the same automatic PDI as the earlier Mk. XI. In practice, it was found that the pilots had a very difficult time keeping the aircraft stable enough to match the accuracy of the bombsight. Starting in 1932 and proceeding in fits and starts for the next six years, Norden developed the Stabilized Bombing Approach Equipment (SBAE), a mechanical autopilot that attached to the bombsight.Flight, August 1945, p. 180 However, it was not a true "autopilot", in that it could not fly the aircraft by itself.
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Barden UK started life in 1947 as EMO Instrumentation. The founders, Bill Spencer and Stan Hensby, had several years of experience working in the Sperry Brentford gyro factory, cultivating their expertise in precision instrument bearings. After years of expansion, The Barden Corporation (US) purchased EMO InstrumentationHartford Courant, December 16, 1959, p9 and established The Barden Corporation (UK) Ltd in 1961.Corporations, Who Owns Whom: UK & Ireland, 1972 p784 An ironic twist to the purchase was that Barden was created to supply bearings for a competing bombsight (Norden) with the Sperry product.
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The CSBS was the first bombsight that allowed the bomber to approach the target from any direction, which offered greatly increased tactical freedom. The downside to the CSBS was that the settings, made through four main input dials, were useful for one operational setup, a given altitude and heading. If the aircraft manoeuvred, the entire system had to be reset. Additionally, the system required the bomber's direction to be compared to objects on the ground, requiring a time-consuming process sighting through thin metal wires against a suitable object on the ground below.
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It was known as a difficult and dangerous target at night and they were relieved to be recalled when near Vlissingen. They jettisoned their bombs over the sea before returning.. The squadron was selected for special training in the use of two kinds of new bombsight for use with a special bomb designed for attacks on capital ships. However, Gibson advised that the aircraft should not attack any ships below 8,500 feet. They put this training into practice with a marathon flight to Gdynia on 27 August 1942.
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A bombsight that was used by Maltby's crew on Operation Chastise is said to have been passed initially onto Maltby's father Ettrick shortly after the dams raid. It remained at Hydneye House school until its demolition, ending up in the possession of a former pupil, who sold it at auction in 2015. It is believed to be the only original bomb sight used on the dams raid that is still remaining. Maltby's log book is still in existence and is available for online access on the IBCC archive website.
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Observing the sideways drift of the aircraft by comparing the motion of objects on the ground to a metal rod along the side of the bombsight, the drift could be seen. Using a knob, the rod was angled away from the side of the aircraft until objects could be seen moving directly along the line of the rod. A gear in the knob that adjusted the rod angle also drove the sights fore or aft, moving them to account for the wind speed. This eliminated the need for a stopwatch to measure the ground speed.
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Simple trigonometry can calculate the angle that the target would appear when the aircraft was at the drop point. This is known as the range angle or drop angle, and was typically looked up from a set of pre-computed tables or using a simple mechanical calculator. The bombsight is then set to that angle, and the bomb aimer drops the bombs when the target passes through the sights. In the presence of a cross-wind, as the aircraft flies forward the wind will push it sideways, away from the drop point.
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At the end of the wind bar is the wind screw knob, which is used to set the wind speed. As the knob is rotated, a plate inside the wind bar moves fore and aft along the direction of the bar. Connected to and extending from the front of the main bombsight housing is the drift bar, normally forming over ½ of the overall length of the device. The drift bar is pivoted at its base, just in front of the compass area, allowing it to rotate to the left or right.
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The bombsight solution is now almost complete, having calculated the ground speed and zeroed out any sideways drift. All that is left is the calculation of the time of fall, which, multiplied by the ground speed, gives the range. The CSBS solves this through the height bar, which extends vertically from the center of the device where the compass section meets the drift bar. Turning a knob at the top of the height bar (or using a slip fitting on earlier models) moves the height slider up or down to set the aircraft's altitude.
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The direction of the yellow arrow is that of the aircraft itself, represented in the bombsight by its mounting to the aircraft fuselage. The length of the yellow arrow is set by rotating the air speed drum, carrying the windage calculator with it. The milled head is used to rotate the wind bar to the same angle as the wind, in this case about 120 degrees. This would leave the wind bar almost at right angles to the drift bar, with the wind speed knob easily accessible on the left.
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Enola Gay bombardier Thomas Ferebee with the Norden Bombsight on Tinian after the dropping of the atomic bomb Little Boy. In the late 1930s, Ritter became Chief of Air Intelligence in the Abwehr and he operated under the code name: DR. RANTZAU. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, instructed Ritter to contact a former spymaster he knew from the first World War who was living in New York, Fritz Joubert Duquesne. Back in 1931, Ritter had met Duquesne in New York, and the two spies reconnected in New York on 3 December 1937.
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Originally the formation of the Special Duties and Performance Flight (SDPF) was established in December 1941 at Laverton, Victoria. The unit was reformed as No 1 Air Performance Unit (1 APU) in December 1943, the Unit was responsible for carrying out flight trials of new aircraft as well as aircraft modifications. During World War 2, flying trials included Spitfire, Beaufighter and Boomerang performance tests, as well as evaluations on various aircraft modifications including gun, radar and bombsight installations. In addition, the Unit carried out performance tests on captured Japanese 'Oscar' and 'Tony' fighters.
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The Encyclopedia of Military Aircraft, 2006 Edition, Jackson, Robert Parragon Publishing 2002 Variations on the design were common, like the US Estoppey bombsight. All of these bombsights shared the problem that they were unable to deal with wind in any direction other than along the path of travel. That made them effectively useless against moving targets, like submarines and ships. Unless the target just happened to be travelling directly in line with the wind, their motion would carry the bomber away from the wind line as they approached.
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Versions for different speeds, altitudes and bomb types were introduced as the war progressed. After the war, the CSBS continued to be the main bombsight in British use. Thousands were sold to foreign air forces and numerous versions were created for production around the world. A number of experimental devices based on a variation of the CSBS were also developed, notably the US's Estoppey D-1 sight,"Interwar Development of Bombsights" , US Air Force Museum, 19 June 2006 developed shortly after the war, and similar versions from many other nations.
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They suffered from an effect known as "Dutch roll" that made them more difficult to turn and tended to oscillate after levelling. This further reduced the time the bomb aimer had to adjust the path. One solution to this later problem had already been used for some time, the use of some sort of gimbal system to keep the bombsight pointed roughly downward during maneuvering or being blown around by wind gusts. Experiments as early as the 1920s had demonstrated that this could roughly double the accuracy of bombing.
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There was no bombardier position, as the rear gunner was supposed to direct the bombing run through a periscopic bombsight fitted ahead of him, a disposition that proved unworkable in the field. ;Potez 633.01:The first two-seat bomber prototype flew in late 1937. The Armée de l'air ordered 133 Potez 633s in 1938, but two months later decided all aircraft in the light level bomber category should be 3-manned, like the Douglas DB-7 and Bloch MB.175. The French order for 633s was converted into an order for more 631s.
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In 1943, she saw an advertisement in a Pueblo newspaper that said the government was looking for hair from women for the war effort, although no details were given as to how it would be used. The ad said only that they wanted blonde hair that was at least , and which had not been treated with chemicals or hot irons. "What she didn't know back in 1942 was that her hair was used as cross hairs in a secret bombsight used on bombers." Brown's hair was long and had never been cut, chemically treated or heated with irons.
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VIII Bomber Command's early operations in 1942 and 1943 had shown it that weather conditions in the European Theater of Operations were such that visual bombing using the Norden bombsight was possible only during limited times. It became apparent that to conduct a successful bombing campaign, the command would need to have the capability of bombing through overcast. It determined to train crews to bomb using radars developed by the Royal Air Force (RAF), including H2s "Stinky" and AN/APS-15 "Mickey" radars. In addition, the 329th Bombardment Squadron conducted trials with the Gee navigation system.
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In December the group transferred once more, this time to Telergma Airport, Algeria, where it participated in the North African campaign as part of Twelfth Air Force. The aircraft of the 17th Group left for Africa equipped with the Norden Bombsight, however only the leader of each flight carried the Norden, with the remainder dropping their bombs when the leader dropped. As German fighter opposition declined, the Marauder crews in the Mediterranean began removing the four package guns. Upon the expulsion of Axis forces from North Africa in May 1943, the 17th transferred to Sedrata Airfield, Algeria, to begin air operations against Pantelleria.
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The Lotfernrohr 7 bombsights, which became the standard bombsight for German bombers, were also fitted to the P-2. The P-2 was also given "field equipment sets" to upgrade the weak defensive armament to four or five MG 15 machine guns. The P-2 had its bomb capacity raised to 4 ESA-250/IX vertical magazines. The P-2 thus had an empty weight of 6,202 kg (13,272 lb), a loaded weight increased to 12,570 kg (27,712 lb) and a maximum range of 2,100 km (1,305 mi). The P-3 was powered with the same DB601A-1 engines.
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During the Second World War Hartley was seconded to the government where he was involved in the development of the bombsight which sank the Tirpitz, the Operation Pluto pipeline project and the FIDO fog dispersion system. Following the war he was rewarded with an appointment as Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), a United States Medal of Freedom and £9000 cash. He retired from Anglo-Iranian in 1951 and was elected president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He was elected president of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1959, but died three months into his tenure.
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Blake continued on operations for the next several months, leading his wing on long- range patrols as far as Brest but during this time was also involved in the development of a gyroscopic gunsight for fighters. This combined a conventional deflector gunsight with aspects of a bombsight. In August 1942, his award of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) was announced, the published citation reading: A few days later, on 19 August, Blake led his wing in support of the Dieppe Raid. Taking off from RAF Thorney Island, they encountered a group of Focke Wulf Fw 190s.
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The pilot of bomber versions was provided with a telescopic bombsight. The aircraft was powered by an Aichi Atsuta liquid-cooled inverted V12 engine, a licensed copy of the German DB 601, rated at 895 kW (1,200 hp). The radiator was behind and below the three-blade propeller, as in the P-40 Warhawk. The aircraft had a slim fuselage that enabled it to reach high speeds in horizontal flight and in dives, while it had excellent maneuverability despite high wing loading, with the Suisei having superior performance to contemporary dive bombers such as the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver.
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Evans, Down to Earth, pp. 145–146 By the time he took command, the Canberras were flying a greater proportion of their missions at lower levels in daylight, using visual bomb-aiming methods honed during their earlier service in Malaysia; this gave the bombers an average circular error probability (CEP) of 50 metres. Evans introduced intensive post-mission analysis to refine their technique, and permitted his pilots to bomb at the lowest level possible at which the bombsight would operate. The CEP was eventually reduced to 20 metres, making the Canberras the most accurate bombing force in the region.
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Freeman Army Airfield was named in honor or Captain Richard S. Freeman. A native of Indiana and 1930 graduate of West Point, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, was awarded the Mackay Trophy, and was one of the pioneers of the Army Air Mail Service. Captain Freeman was killed on 6 February 1941 in the crash of a B-17 Flying Fortress (B-17B 38-216) near Lovelock, Nevada while en route to Wright Field, Ohio. The aircraft was equipped with the top secret Norden bombsight and sabotage was suspected as the cause of the crash, but never was proven.
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Combined with the bombsight mascot, VentiPorts put the driver at the controls of an imaginary fighter airplane. Upon seeing this, Buick chief Harlow Curtice was so delighted that he ordered that (non-lighting) VentiPorts be installed on all 1949 Buicks, with the number of VentiPorts (three or four) corresponding to the relative displacement of the straight-eight engine installed. Dynaflow was now standard equipment, and engine horsepower was increased to 150 through a slight increase in the compression ratio. This contributed in conjunction with the now standard Dynaflow in giving the new Buicks a top speed of .
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A further addition produced a bright line on the display indicating the direction of travel. A later modification allowed the heading indicator display to be manually controlled by the operator. This was used in concert with the Mark XIV bomb sight to accurately correct for any wind blowing the aircraft off the bomb line. The indicator was set to an initial angle provided by the bomb aimer, and from then the navigator could see any residual drift on his display and call out corrections to the pilot, and to the bomb aimer who would update his settings in the bombsight.
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A similar calculator formed the basis of the Torpedo Data Computer, which solved the more demanding problem of the very long engagement times of torpedo fire. A well-known example is the Norden bombsight which used a slight variation on the basic design, replacing the ball with another disk. In this system the integrator was used to calculate the relative motion of objects on the ground given the altitude, airspeed, and heading. By comparing the calculated output with the actual motion of objects on the ground, any difference would be due to the effects of wind on the aircraft.
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G-VROE, a preserved Anson C.21 operated by the Classic Air Force, 2005 Initially, the Anson was flown with a three-man crew, which comprised a pilot, a navigator/bomb-aimer and a radio operator/gunner, when it was used in the maritime reconnaissance role;Flight 30 January 1936, p. 117. from 1938 onwards, it was typically operated by a four-man crew.Jackson 1990, p. 326. The bomb-aimer would perform his function from a prone position in the forward section of the nose, which was provisioned with a bombsight, driftsight, and other appropriate instrumentation, including a landing light.
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When the base closed it was converted to civilian uses. The airfield became "Arnold Field Airport", and over the years, the hundreds of buildings of the support station located to the southwest of the airfield were sold, removed or torn down. Today, the only evidence of the containment area are a Norden bombsight storage building, tall chimneys where the theatre and other sites were located, and the large aircraft parking apron. Forlorn of aircraft, the apron now had hundreds of over the road trailers and an open storage yard with a few buildings erected on the concrete.
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The Canberra principally differed from its preceding piston-powered wartime bombers by its use of twin Rolls-Royce Avon turbojet engines. The fuselage was circular in cross section, tapered at both ends and, cockpit aside, entirely without protrusions; the line of the large, low-aspect ratio wings was broken only by the tubular engine nacelles.Flight, 15 December 1949, p. 766. The Canberra had a two-man crew in a fighter-style cabin with a large blown canopy, but delays in the development of the intended automatic radar bombsight resulted in the addition of a bomb aimer's position housed within the nose.
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Historian E. Bartlett Kerr supported this assessment, and argued that the firebombing of Japan's major cities was the key factor motivating Hirohito's decision to end the war.Kerr (1991), pp. 291–293 American historian Barrett Tillman has also written that area attacks were unavoidable because, owing to the limitations of their bombsight and the high winds common over Japan, the B-29s were incapable of bombing individual targets without also causing widespread damage to surrounding areas. The charred remains of a woman who was carrying a child on her back, Tokyo 1945 The atomic bomb attacks have been the subject of long-running controversy.
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A painting depicting the loading of Raduga Kh-15 missiles on a Tu-22M rotary launcher. The bomber depicted is an early Tu-22M2, with distinctive air intakes. OBP-15T Targeting bombsight on Tupolev Tu-22M(0) Older cockpit of Tupolev Tu-22M3 bomber, navigator's and weapon systems officer's panels Tupolev Tu-22M3 taking off at Ryazan Dyagilevo In 1962, with the introduction of the Tupolev Tu-22, it became increasingly clear that the aircraft was inadequate in its role as a bomber. In addition to widespread unserviceability and maintenance issues, the Tu-22's handling characteristics proved to be dangerous.
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Hastings, Bomber Command USAAF raid on ball bearing works at Schweinfurt, Germany The United States Army Air Forces adopted a policy of daylight precision bombing for greater accuracy as, for example, during the Schweinfurt raids. That doctrine, based on the erroneous supposition that bombers could adequately defend themselves against air attack, entailed much higher American losses until long-range fighter escorts (e.g. the Mustang) became available. Conditions in the European theatre made it very difficult to achieve the accuracy achieved using the exceptional and top-secret Norden optical bombsight in the clear skies over the desert bombing ranges of Nevada and California.
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This eliminated the need to manually signal the pilot, as well as eliminating the possibility of error. In U.S. Army Air Forces use, the Norden bombsight was attached to its autopilot base, which was in turn connected with the aircraft's autopilot. The Honeywell C-1 autopilot could be used as an autopilot by the flight crew during the journey to the target area through a control panel in the cockpit, but was more commonly used under direct command of the bombardier. The Norden's box-like autopilot unit sat behind and below the sight and attached to it at a single rotating pivot.
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Chapter 16 Through January 1945, it bombed airfields and installations on New Guinea, Celebes, and Halmahera, and flew reconnaissance missions. The group also detached Mitchells to act as navigation ships for Douglas A-20 Havocs of the 312th Bombardment Group attacking targets in southwestern New Guinea. The A-20s were not equipped with bombsights and could only make medium altitude attacks by "dropping on leader" (flying in formation and releasing their bombload at the same time as the lead aircraft, equipped with a bombsight). Group aircraft also dropped food and supplies to isolated parties in the interior of the island.
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On 18 December 1939, Vickers Wellington bombers carried out a raid on German shipping in what became known as the Air Battle of the Heligoland Bight. Detected on radar and engaged en route to their targets, over half the attacking force was destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Ludlow-Hewitt presented a report on the attack on 22 December 1939, noting that flying straight and level for the CSBS made the bombers easy targets for fighters and anti-aircraft gunners. He again pressed for a new bombsight that featured stabilization to allow the aircraft to manoeuvre while it approached the target.
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The output of the calculator drove flexible shafts that rotated the sight head to the proper angles in azimuth and altitude, representing the wind drift and range angle. The sight head replaced the older wire crosshairs with a modern reflector sight that was easy to see at night. The sight could be rotated manually to view objects well in front of the aircraft, allowing the bomb aimer to select among a wider variety of objects to use for drift measurements. With the CSBS, the sighting system and calculator were the same device, which required the bombsight to be fairly large.
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The computor could even account for steady changes in altitude, allowing the bomb run to take place in a shallow climb of up to 5degrees or dive of up to 20 degrees. The resulting Mk. XIV was first tested in June 1941. It was the first modern bombsight that allowed for accurate bombing immediately after radical manoeuvring, with a settling time as little as 10 seconds. The fast settling time was invaluable during night bombing missions, as it allowed the bomber to fly a corkscrew (a helical path), climbing and turning, and then level out immediately before the drop.
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Production was too slow to meet the demand; between July and October, fewer than a hundred a month were being delivered. As the design was finalized, automated production was undertaken and by mid-1943, 900 a month were available. This was enough to equip the heavy bombers as they arrived from the production lines and by late 1942 the Handley Page Halifax was being delivered with the sight head already installed. To fill the demand for other aircraft, especially smaller ones like the de Havilland Mosquito, the Air Ministry began looking at US manufacturers to supply the bombsight.
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A separate electrical connection input the direction measured on the distant reading compass, using a selsyn. The CSBS had introduced a mounting system on the left side of the bombsight that allowed it to be easily removed and then replaced without affecting its levelling. The Mk. XIV was designed to mount to this same system, which it did by mounting all the moving parts on a square platform that then connected to the mount. A small thumbscrew on the mount allowed it to be levelled if needed, checked against a spirit level mounted just above it.
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A stabilizer for the ABS began development, but to fill the immediate need for a new bombsight, the simpler Mark XIV bomb sight was introduced. By the time the SABS was available, the Mark XIV was in widespread use and proving good enough that there was no pressing need to replace it. The SABS briefly saw use with the Pathfinder Force before being turned over to No. 617 Squadron RAF, starting in November 1943. This squadron's Avro Lancasters were undergoing conversion to dropping the Tallboy bomb as a precision weapon, and required the higher accuracy of the SABS for this mission.
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While in Germany, Lang met with Ritter and was also received by Hermann Göring. In 1945, General George Patton's Third U.S. Army Division came upon a hidden factory in the Tyrolean Alps and captured the factory used to produce the German version of the Norden bombsight. Everett "Ed" Minster Roeder, another German agent in the U.S., worked for the Sperry Gyroscope Company of Brooklyn as an engineer and designer of confidential materials for the U.S. Army and Navy. From Roeder the Abwehr obtained the plans for an advanced automatic pilot device that was later used in Luftwaffe fighters and bombers.
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Using visual sighting, the range at which the target is first sighted remains fixed, based on eyesight. As aircraft speeds increase, there is less time available after the initial spotting to carry out the calculations and correct the aircraft's flight path to bring it over the proper drop point. During the early stages of bombsight development, the problem was addressed by reducing the allowable engagement envelope, thereby reducing the need to calculate marginal effects. For instance, when dropped from very low altitudes, the effects of drag and wind during the fall will be so small that they can be ignored.
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Sonar was not included, but there was more attention given to recognition (IFF), direction-finding, and LORAN radio-navigation systems. There were also special courses on subjects such as the Norden bombsight, the magnetic anomaly detector (MAD), and the Target Drone Denny (TDD-1). One of the laboratories was in a hangar that contained several aircraft for ground-testing of electronic equipment. NATTC Ward Island also had a small fleet of aircraft of various types that operated from nearby NAS Corpus Christi; every student was required to have flight time in operating the on-board equipment.
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Then, in World War II, tachometric bombsights were often combined with radar systems to allow accurate bombing through clouds or at night. When postwar studies demonstrated that bomb accuracy was roughly equal either optically or radar-guided, optical bombsights were generally removed and the role passed to dedicated radar bombsights. Finally, especially since the 1960s, fully computerized bombsights were introduced, which combined the bombing with long-range navigation and mapping. Modern aircraft do not have a bombsight but use highly computerized systems that combine bombing, gunnery, missile fire and navigation into a single head-up display.
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Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Locomotive 1079 on static display, 2002 After the discovery of its resources of plentiful natural gas and abundant clay, Coffeyville enjoyed rapid growth from 1890 to 1910, as its population expanded sixfold. From the turn of the 20th century to the 1930s, it was one of the largest glass and brick manufacturing centers in the nation. During this same period, the development of oil production attracted the founding of several oil field equipment manufacturers, and more workers and residents. Coffeyville industrialist Douglas Brown founded Coffeyville Multiscope, which produced components of the Norden bombsight.
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The badge was also awarded to certain ground personnel at the discretion of their commanding officer. Non- crewmembers eligible for the badge were individuals with flying status such as aircraft maintenance supervisors and technical inspectors. For example, aircrew badges were issued to Automatic Flight Control Equipment (A.F.C.E.) and Bombsight Shop personnel and others essential to "keep 'em flying" who flew instructional and maintenance flights but who did not actually take part in combat missions during World War II. With the creation of the United States Air Force as a separate branch of service in 1947, the Army was left without an Aircrew Badge until the Korean War.
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While he leaves the plant late at night, his car is forced off the road and Joe is brought to a deserted house. The four men who have kidnapped him, blindfold Joe and beat him, trying to force him to draw the plans of the bombsight. Remembering that his son also had a secret he was keeping no matter what he and his wife asked, and that Johnny was studying about Nathan Hale, Joe refuses to cooperate and is beaten severely. When the spies realize they have no option but to kill Joe, he is driven away but takes the opportunity to throw himself out of their car.
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Ground radar systems for automated guidance of aircraft to a predetermined point (e.g., for bomb release using a bombsight or avionics radar) included the July 1951 AN/MPQ-14 Radar Course Directing Central. By 1954 the MARC (Matador Airborne Radio Control) used the AN/MSQ-1A for missile guidance to the terminal dive point, and SAGE GCI provided computer-controlled guidance of aircraft to continuously-computed interception points (1958 AN/FSQ-7 Bomarc missile guidance and the later Ground to Air Data Link Subsystem for fighters). Despite the availability of solid-state military guidance computers in 1961, planning for a USAF vacuum-tube trajectory computer/radar system began in early 1965.
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1943 AAF Bombardier School patch for Carlsbad Army Airfield with Bugs Bunny AAF Bombardier School patch for Deming Army Airfield with The Witch form of the Evil Queen from Disney's Snow White. The school was moved from Hobbs Army Airfield, the 1st class graduated March 6, 1943; & Deming had 7 "Bombardier Training Squadrons": 966th, 971st, 972nd, & 974-7th. A Bombardier School was a United States Army Air Forces facility that used bombing ranges for training aircrew. After ground simulator training with the Norden bombsight, the 12- to 18-week course recorded each student's scores for approximately 160 practice bomb drops of "Bomb Dummy Units" (BDU), both in daytime and at night.
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Nikolaus Ritter, to make contact with Duquesne. Ritter had been friends with Duquesne back in 1931, and the two spies reconnected in New York on 3 December 1937. Ritter employed several other successful agents across the U.S., most notably Herman Lang, who delivered to the Germans the blueprints for the Top Secret Norden bombsight, but he also made the mistake of recruiting a man who would later become a double agent, William Sebold. On 8 February 1940, Ritter sent Sebold to New York under the alias of Harry Sawyer and instructed him to set up a shortwave radio-transmitting station to establish contact with the German shortwave station abroad.
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Me 210 featured a bomb bay, unlike its predecessor Bf 110 Comparison of the wing planforms of the Me 210 and its successor, the Me 410 Hornisse. The Bf 110 carried its ordnance externally beneath the wings and fuselage, but this created drag; the Me 210 avoided this problem by housing the bombs in an enclosed bomb bay, in the nose of the aircraft. The Me 210 could carry up to two 500 kg (1,100 lb) bombs. The Me 210 had dive brakes fitted on the tops of the wings, and a Stuvi 5B bombsight ("Stuvi"-Sturzkampfvisier, dive-bombing sight) in the nose, for shallow-angle dive bombing.
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He trained as a bombardier and earned a Distinguished Flying Cross flying during combat in B-24 Liberators with the 530th Bomb Squadron, 380th Bomb Group (Heavy) in the South Pacific during World War II. His retelling of his wartime exploits is contained in his 2005 book The Flying Circus: Pacific War—1943—As Seen through A Bombsight. After the war, he made his home in Weatherford, where he joined partners in forming a Trade Show exhibition and marketing firm. As a Democrat, he won his first election without opposition in 1946 to the Texas House of Representatives, where he served from 1947 to 1949.
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47) This is in contrast to Henry who had to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to manipulate and modify the components of the bombsight computers to construct the drawing machines. (O'Hanrahan 2005) During the 1980s, the application in computers of the microchip (developed by 1972) increased the affordability of a home computer and led to the development of interactive computer graphics programmes like Sketchpad and various Paintbox systems. (Darley 1991) During this period, computer art gave way almost completely to computer graphics as the computer's imaging capabilities became exploited both industrially and commercially and moved into entertainment related spheres, e.g.: Pixar, Lucas Films.
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Henry's drawing machines of the 1960s represented a remarkable innovation in the field of art and technology for a variety of reasons. Firstly, the bombsight analogue computer provided not only the inspiration but also the main tool for producing highly original visual effects. (O'Hanrahan 2005) Secondly, his machines' reliance on a mechanics of chance, as opposed to pre-determined computer programmes, ensured the unrepeatable and unique quality of his infinitely varied machine-generated effects or "mechanical fractals". (O'Hanrahan 2005) Thirdly, the spontaneous, interactive potential of his drawing machines' modus operandi pre-empted by some twenty years this particular aspect of later computer graphic manipulation software.
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Bombing from high altitudes posed several issues, principally amongst these being accuracy. Wallis himself acknowledged that the accuracy called for to employ the penetration bomb from 40,000 ft was difficult to achieve; specifically, there was an assumption that around 25 per cent of days throughout the year would be suitable for performing bombing missions in, but that during such missions the benefits of being undisturbed from ground-based anti-aircraft fire would lead to equivalent accuracy to conventional bombers flying at 15,000–20,000 ft under gunfire.Sweetman 1982, p. 18. In response to these difficulties, Wallis had proposed the adoption of a new gyroscopic bombsight to provide for greater accuracy.
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The basic concept behind any bombsight is the determination of the range, the distance the bombs will move forward after they are dropped from the aircraft. When dropped at relatively low speeds, as in the case of World War II aircraft, the primary force on the bomb when it leaves the aircraft is gravity. Acting alone, gravity will accelerate the bomb downward, and when this is added to the initial forward velocity given to it by the motion of the aircraft, the path becomes a parabola. However, this path is modified by drag, which reduces the initial forward velocity over time, causing the path to become more vertical.
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Over Japan, bomber crews soon discovered strong winds at high altitudes, the so-called jet streams, but the Norden bombsight worked only for wind speeds with minimal wind shear. Additionally, the bombing altitude over Japan reached up to , but most of the testing had been done well below . This extra altitude compounded factors that could previously be ignored; 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. Unable to obtain the Norden, the RAF continued development of their own designs.
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By 1938, information about the Norden had worked its way up the Royal Air Force chain of command and was well known within that organization. The British had been developing a similar bombsight known as the Automatic Bomb Sight, but combat experience in 1939 demonstrated the need for it to be stabilized. Work was under way as the Stabilized Automatic Bomb Sight (SABS), but it would not be available until 1940 at the earliest, and likely later. Even then, it did not feature the autopilot linkage of the Norden, and would thus find it difficult to match the Norden's performance in anything but smooth air.
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In the P.32 he could use the bombsight when sitting facing forward and, by rotating his seat, take up his third role as navigator at a chart table. There was a walkway aft, which passed in turn the pilot's and second pilot's open cockpits in tandem on the port side, the wireless/camera operator's internal position near the leading edge, the dorsal gunner's cockpit and the tail gunner's station in the extreme, slightly drooped tail. The second pilot was optional; he might be an instructor or a relief. The dorsal gun could be manned either by the wireless operator or the tail gunner.
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Griffith, pp. 39–40. Devotees of Billy Mitchell, many of whom had served with the 1st Provisional Air Brigade, dominated the faculty of the Tactical School at Maxwell. With their students, they developed a theory of warfare that invoked the superiority of the long-range bomber over all other types of aircraft. Going beyond Mitchell's ideas, they de-emphasized balanced forces and support of ground troops in favor of a doctrine that heavily armed bombers could fight their way to industrial targets in daylight, unescorted by fighters, and with precision bombing (made possible by the introduction of the Norden bombsight in 1931),Miller, p. 39Griffith, p. 15.
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One of the large T-2 Hangars was dismantled and re-erected at North Weald airfield. It is believed to be the one nearest the M11 motorway, and now used as a freight forwarding warehouse. A section of the perimeter track and some loop dispersal hardstands are still intact, connected to a small private landing strip converted from a straight section of the wartime perimeter, aligned 04/22, and one small section of a secondary full-width runway (09/27) on the southeast side . On the northeastern side, the Operations block, Norden Bombsight Store, and the base of the pilots' briefing room are grouped together, and are in quite good condition .
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He had a Scarff ring-mounted .303 in (7.7 mm) Lewis Gun, but to fulfil his role as torpedo or bomb aimer, he moved into a prone position in a station below the pilot's cockpit. This had a bombsight, used via an opening with a sliding door in the bottom of the fuselage and had bomb fusing and release controls plus altitude and airspeed gauges and a hand- operated rudder control for yaw corrections on target. The Beagle was initially powered by a 460 hp (340 kW) Bristol Jupiter VIIIF radial engine mounted in a smooth and rather pointed nosecone, leaving the tops of the nine cylinders exposed.
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Primary topics in the Secondary School at NATTC Ward Island were advanced electronic circuits, advanced radio receivers and transmitters, antennas and arrays, synchros and servomechanisms, waveguides and microwave transmission, and cavity magnetrons. Laboratory efforts centered on aircraft communication systems, high-frequency and microwave radar systems, radar altimeter systems, identification, friend or foe (IFF) systems, and long-range navigation (LORAN) systems. In addition to the regular curriculum, there were special courses on subjects such as the Norden bombsight and the magnetic anomaly detector (MAD), both highly classified at that time, and the Navy's first drone aircraft, the Target Drone Denny 1 (TDD-1).Watson, op. cit.
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In order to approach a target at the tip of the green arrow with the crosswind indicated in blue, the bomber has to turn upwind and point its nose in the direction of the yellow arrow. By flying in that direction, the wind will blow the bomber along the green line. The bombsight problem is the need to determine the exact spot in the air where the bombs should be dropped to hit a target on the ground. Due to the acceleration of gravity, bombs follow a roughly parabolic path, the steepness being defined by the forward speed of the aircraft at the instant of release.
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"Visual Flight Planning and Procedure" Compounding this inaccuracy is that it is made using the instrument's airspeed indication, and as the airspeed in this example is about 10 times that of the wind speed, its 5% error can lead to great inaccuracies in wind speed calculations. Eliminating this error through the direct measurement of ground speed (instead of calculating it) was a major advance in the tachometric bombsights of the 1930s and 40s. Finally, consider errors of the same 5% in the equipment itself, that is, an error of 5% in the setting of the range angle, or a similar 5% error in the levelling of the aircraft or bombsight.
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One of the most fully developed examples of such a sight to see combat was the German Görtz bombsight, developed for the Gotha heavy bombers. The Görtz used a telescope with a rotating prism at the bottom that allowed the sight to be rotated fore and aft. After zeroing out sideways motion the sight was set to a pre-set angle and then an object was timed with a stopwatch until it was directly below the aircraft. This revealed the ground speed, which was multiplied by the time taken to hit the ground, and then a pointer in the sight was set to an angle looked up on a table.
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Furthermore, when the survival of the USSR was in doubt, Marshal Stalin refused offers of air support, demanding instead maximum lend-lease deliveries. By the time Stalin finally agreed to activate the plan, in a meeting with US ambassador W. Averell Harriman on 2 February 1944, Soviet victory was assured. Indications are that Stalin wished to obtain all possible information about superior American technology, and assigned officers with the stated objectives of learning as much as they could about US equipment and concepts of operation. For example, the USSR demanded and obtained the secret Norden bombsight, and also obtained wide photographic coverage of Europe from American aircraft.
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Until 15 May, GBA crews performed shallow dive attacks from higher altitude, which resulted in reduced losses, but the attacks had clearly been inaccurate, as the Bréguet lacked a bombsight, and they increased vulnerability to German fighters. On subsequent missions, the GBAs re-introduced low-level attacks, but with smaller formations. As the position of the French and Allied armies grew steadily more desperate, the assault groups were engaged daily, still enduring losses to anti-aircraft fire, but also increasingly to German fighters. In late June, the Armée de l'Air tried to evacuate its modern aircraft to North Africa, out of German reach, from where many hoped to continue the fight.
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During World War II, Merton worked as a researcher with the Admiralty and RAF, analysing the performance of pilots and developing optimum strategies for air defence, anti-submarine warfare and aerial bombardment. After discovering that the depth charges used by British anti- submarine aircraft often detonated too deep to destroy German U-boats, Merton and his fellow researchers developed an improved bombsight for naval bombers. Between 1943 and 1945, Merton also served as a scientific adviser to Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell, who in turn advised Winston Churchill in military and scientific matters. After the war, Merton served for some years as chairman of the Fulmer Research Institute at Stoke Poges, conducting materials research for state and industrial projects.
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On March 7, 1936, Sarnoski enlisted in the United States Army as an air cadet, entering service in Baltimore, Maryland. After basic training he was assigned to the 2nd Bomb Group at Langley Field, Virginia, with additional training at Lowry Field, Colorado, where he completed the Advanced Aircraft Armorer's Course in 1939. In 1940 he was discharged from the Regular Army to reenlist in the Air Corps in order to train as an air crewman, completing the Bombsight Maintenance Course. Sarnoski was promoted to Sergeant, made an enlisted bombardier in B-17 Flying Fortress bombers, and returned to Langley as part of the 41st Reconnaissance Squadron, attached to the 2nd Bomb Group.
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Ross Harold Arnett Jr. (April 13, 1919 – July 16, 1999) was an American entomologist noted for his studies of beetles, and as founder of the Coleopterist's Bulletin. Born in Medina, New York, he was a star student at Cornell University, where he became interested in beetles and started on a revision of the Nearctic Silphidae. He graduated in 1942, the same year that he married his high school sweetheart Mary Ennis. His first job was at the New York State Conservation Department, studying the stomach contents of game birds, but in July 1942 he joined the US Army (as a private) and was sent to Lowry Air Force Base to study the Sperry bombsight.
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It is unlikely that restaurants in the New York City area would understand what a customer was asking for if the diner used the "Manhattan" phrase. The dish was first served in a restaurant under the name "Beef Manhattan" in a now-defunct Indianapolis deli in the late 1940s where it gained traction as a Hoosier staple. The dish was named by Naval Ordnance Plant Indianapolis (NOPI) workers who were trained on a fabrication of the Norden Bombsight in Manhattan during World War II. They enjoyed the open-faced sandwich they had in Manhattan and brought it back to their cafeteria as the "Beef Manhattan". In Indiana, it is served on bread.
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Over the next three years, nearly 148,000 Hispanic-Americans volunteered for or were drafted into military service. As in other conflicts, Hispanics fought as members of the Armed Forces. In 1953, Salvador E. Felices, who joined the Air Force in 1947, flew in 19 combat missions over North Korea, during the Korean War, as combat operation officer for the 344th Bombardment Squadron. In 1954, he was reassigned and stationed at the Castle Air Force Base in California. He was assigned in 1952, to the 303rd Bombardment Wing as the 359th Bombardment Squadron operations officer. Felices participated in a bombing competition, using a B-29 Superfortress equipped with an APQ-7 radar set and a Norden bombsight rate head.
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James Kelly was born in Philadelphia, the son of a shoe manufacturer. He studied at the School of Industrial Arts (now the University of the Arts (Philadelphia) in 1937, the Pennsylvania Academy of Art in 1938, at the Barnes Foundation in 1941 where he had a scholarshipActon, David, The Stamp of Impulse: Abstract Expressionist Prints, The Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA, 2001, p. 112. and from 1951-54 at the California School of Fine Art (now the San Francisco Art Institute). He interrupted his art career by enlisting in the Air Force in World War II, serving in the Pacific repairing the ultra-secret Norden bombsight for Boeing B-24 planes for the entirety of the war.
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The US had been introduced to the glide bombing concept by the Royal Air Force just before the US's entry into the war. "Hap" Arnold had Wright Patterson Air Force Base begin development of a wide variety of concepts under the GB ("glide bomb") and related VB ("vertical bomb") programs. These were initially low importance, as both the Army Air Force and US Navy were convinced that the Norden bombsight would offer pinpoint accuracy and eliminate the need for guided bombs. It was not long after the first missions by the 8th Air Force in 1942 that the promise of the Norden was replaced by the reality that accuracy under was essentially a matter of luck.
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The new unit required more space than McCook Field offered, so in an effort to keep the Air Service presence at Dayton, Ohio a local interest group led by John H. Patterson and his son Frederick bought of land, including Wilbur Wright Field and donated it to the Air Service, creating Wright Field. From Wright Field the division continued to work on aviation advancements including engine design, navigation and communications equipment, cockpit instrumentation, electrically-heated flight clothing, and in-flight refueling equipment. The Physiological Research Laboratory led pioneering research in pilot exposure to extremes of speed, pressure, and temperature. Specific advancements of the division in the 1930s include the Norden bombsight, internal bomb bay, and power-operated gun turret.
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As U.S. participation in the war started, the U.S. Army Air Forces drew up widespread and comprehensive bombing plans based on the Norden. They believed the B-17 had a 1.2% probability of hitting a target from , meaning that 220 bombers would be needed for a 93% probability of one or more hits. This was not considered a problem, and the USAAF forecast the need for 251 combat groups to provide enough bombers to fulfill their comprehensive pre-war plans. After earlier combat trials proved troublesome, the Norden bombsight and its associated AFCE were used on a wide scale for the first time on the 18 March 1943 mission to Bremen-Vegesack, Germany;Neillands, Robin (2001).
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This was essentially a large mechanical calculator that directly represented the wind triangle using three long pieces of metal in a triangular arrangement. The hypotenuse of the triangle was the line the aircraft needed to fly along in order to arrive over the target in the presence of wind, which, before the CSBS, was an intractable problem. Almost all air forces adopted some variation of the CSBS as their standard inter-war bomb sight, including the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army, who used a version designed by Georges Estoppey, the D-series. It was already realized that one major source of error in bombing was leveling the aircraft enough so the bombsight pointed straight down.
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This would move the sights to indicate the direction the plane should fly to take it directly over the target with any cross-wind taken into account, and also set the angle of the iron sights to account for the wind's effect on ground speed. These systems had two primary problems in terms of accuracy. The first was that there were several steps that had to be carried out in sequence in order to set up the bombsight correctly, and there was limited time to do all of this during the bomb run. As a result, the accuracy of the wind measurement was always limited, and errors in setting the equipment or making the calculations were common.
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Also, both the U.S. Government and its Army Air Forces commanders were reluctant to bomb enemy cities and towns indiscriminately. They claimed that by using the B-17 and the Norden bombsight, the USAAF should be able to carry out "precision bombing" on locations vital to the German war machine: factories, naval bases, shipyards, railroad yards, railroad junctions, power plants, steel mills, airfields, etc. In January 1943, at the Casablanca Conference, it was agreed RAF Bomber Command operations against Germany would be reinforced by the USAAF in a Combined Operations Offensive plan called Operation Pointblank. Chief of the British Air Staff MRAF Sir Charles Portal was put in charge of the "strategic direction" of both British and American bomber operations.
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The co-pilot/radio-operator and dorsal gunner were accommodated under a large greenhouse-style canopy, the navigator in the extreme nose, and the tail-gunner in his own pressure cabin sitting on a downward-firing ejection seat. The forward compartment crew members were intended to have ejection seats but photographic evidence in the reference given does not show this. '150' was provided with the latest radios, radars and navigation aids, with a ground mapping bombsight radar in a chin fairing under the nose, which also housed the taxi and landing lamps. Despite the high priority given to the actual aircraft, progress was slow during the design and construction phases due, in no small part, to the low priority given to the foreign OKB for resources.
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Later, at the airfield, Muggs jokingly appoints himself as the new operator of the flying ambulance owned by Dr. Richard Nagel (George Pembroke) and gives his pals a tour of the aircraft. Their playful games are soon brought to a halt by Nagel, the secret leader of a spy ring, who angrily orders the group off his aircraft. Mr. Reynolds, certain that spies are working at the plant, asks Danny to act as a decoy so that the spies can be identified, and has him deliver to a downtown office a fake set of plans for a new bombsight. As Reynolds predicted, Nagel's men ambush Danny on his way to the office, but the plan goes awry when the detectives sent to trail Danny lose him.
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An improvised method using compressed air was discouraged by Rolls-Royce, but some operators used air-starting successfully, the benefit being significant cost savings over the use of cartridges.Petter-Bowyer 2005, pp. 95–96. Various avionics were installed on the Canberra, many with their origins during the Second World War. They included Gee-H navigation, Rebecca beacon-interrogation distance-measuring equipment, very high frequency (VHF) radio, radio compass, radar altimeter, identification friend or foe (IFF), and Orange Putter radar warning receiver. Perhaps the most crucial of the mission systems was the H2S automatic radar bombsight, which was mounted in the nose; delays in the development of the H2S intended for the Canberra led to early aircraft being fitted with a T.2 optical sight for visual bombing.
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Over a short period of time of continual adjustments, the drift would stop, and the bombsight would now hold an extremely accurate measurement of the exact ground speed and heading. Better yet, these measurements were being carried out on the bomb run, not before it, and helped eliminate inaccuracies due to changes in the conditions as the aircraft moved. And by eliminating the manual calculations, the bombardier was left with much more time to adjust his measurements, and thus settle at a much more accurate result. The angular speed of the prism changes with the range of the target: consider the reverse situation, the apparent high angular speed of an aircraft passing overhead compared to its apparent speed when it is seen at a longer distance.
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After control of the aircraft was passed to the bombardier during the bomb run, he would first rotate the entire Norden so the vertical line in the sight passed through the target. From that point on, the autopilot would attempt to guide the bomber so it followed the course of the bombsight, and pointed the heading to zero out the drift rate, fed to it through a coupling. As the aircraft turned onto the correct angle, a belt and pulley system rotated the sight back to match the changing heading. The autopilot was another reason for the Norden's accuracy, as it ensured the aircraft quickly followed the correct course and kept it on that course much more accurately than the pilots could.
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About the same time as the operation was being carried out, General James Fechet replaced General Mason Patrick as commander of the USAAC. He received a report on the results of the test, and on 6 January 1928 sent out a lengthy memo to Brigadier General William Gillmore, chief of the Material Division at Wright Field, stating: He went on to request information on every bombsight then used at Wright, as well as "the Navy's newest design". However, the Mark XI was so secret that Gillmore was not aware Fechet was referring to the Norden. Gilmore produced contracts for twenty-five examples of an improved version of the Seversky C-1, the C-3, and six prototypes of a new design known as the Inglis L-1.
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In 1944 Mahaddie and a number of other senior officers from Bomber Command were "seconded" to the Eighth Air Force to brief them on the navigational and directional techniques in use by the Pathfinder Force. Bomber Command also hoped to sway the Americans to join their efforts with those of Bomber Command in their night time attacks upon Germany. The Americans held faith in their Norden bombsight, and believed that daylight bombing was the only way to accurately strike at and destroy the target. Bomber Command believed in dropping a large concentration of bombs on the target to destroy it, made use of the cover of night to help protect their aircraft and used navigational aids and the Pathfinder Force to accurately hit and destroy their targets.
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During the 1930s, advances in mechanical computers introduced an entirely new way to solve the bombsight problem. These sorts of computers were initially introduced for naval uses around the turn of the 20th century,Norman Friedman and A. D. Baker, "Naval Firepower: Battleship Guns and Gunnery in the Dreadnought Era", Naval Institute Press, 2008, p. 167. later examples including the Admiralty Fire Control Table, Rangekeeper and Torpedo Data Computer. Fed a variety of inputs such as the angle to the target and its estimated speed, these systems calculated the future position of the target, the time that the ordnance would take to reach it, and from this, the angles to aim the guns in order to hit the target based on those numbers.
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The Navigation and Bombing System, or NBS, was a navigation system used in the Royal Air Force's V-bomber fleet. Primary among its parts was the Navigation and Bombing Computer (NBC), a complex mechanical computer that combined the functions of dead reckoning navigation calculation with a bombsight calculator to provide outputs that guided the aircraft and automatically dropped the bombs with accuracy on the order of a few hundred metres on missions over thousands of kilometres. Inputs to the NBS system included late models of the H2S radar, the True Airspeed Unit, an astrocompass, the Green Satin radar, and a radio altimeter. These inputs were used to set the Ground Speed Unit, which carried out the navigation calculations, which in turn fed the NBS.
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He purchased of land at Five Mile Bar for one dollar, where he built a compound that included a two-story house, blacksmith shop, a stone turret, and a bomb shelter. The defensive structures reflected his sense of continual threat from the federal government, which peaked in 1956 when Howard Zahniser's Wilderness Act threatened to designate the Five Mile section of the Salmon River as a non-habitable Primitive Area, and he was in danger of being evicted. Hart volunteered to serve in World War II, but due to an enlarged heart, he was assigned to a Boeing plant in Kansas where he worked on the Norden bombsight. Following the war, he returned to his compound and was employed by the National Forest Service.
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However, President Roosevelt apologised and said that it was not available to Britain unless it could be shown that the Germans had something similar. Tizard was not unduly dismayed as he thought there were other US technologies more useful to Britain than the bombsight, and he asked for the unit's external dimensions so that British bombers could be modified to take it, if it became available at some future date. Bowen stayed in America, and a few days later, at the General Electric labs in New Jersey, he showed the Americans that the magnetron worked. The Bell Telephone Company was given the job of making magnetrons, producing the first thirty in October 1940, and over a million by the end of the war.
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Calculating the effects of an arbitrary wind on the path of an aircraft was already a well- understood problem in air navigation, one requiring basic vector mathematics. Wimperis was very familiar with these techniques, and would go on to write a seminal introductory text on the topic.Harry Egerton Wimperis, "A Primer of Air Navigation", Van Nostrand, 1920 The same calculations would work just as well for bomb trajectories, with some minor adjustments to account for the changing velocities as the bombs fell. Even as the Drift Sight was being introduced, Wimperis was working on a new bombsight that helped solve these calculations and allow the effects of wind to be considered no matter the direction of the wind or the bomb run.
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In the case of Oboe, these calculations were carried out before the mission at the ground bases. But as daylight visual bombing was still widely used, conversions and adaptations were quickly made to repeat the radar signal in the existing bombsights, allowing the bombsight calculator to solve the radar bombing problem. For instance, the AN/APA-47 was used to combine the output from the AN/APQ-7 with the Norden, allowing the bomb aimer to easily check both images to compare the aim point. Analysis of the results of bombing attacks carried out using radio navigation or radar techniques demonstrated accuracy was essentially equal for the two systems – night time attacks with Oboe were able to hit targets that the Norden could not during the day.
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At the attack ranges being considered, thousands of miles, radio navigation systems would not be able to offer both the range and the accuracy needed. This demanded radar bombing systems, but existing examples did not offer anywhere near the required performance. At the stratospheric altitudes and long "sighting" ranges being considered, the radar antenna would need to be very large to offer the required resolution, yet this ran counter for the need to develop an antenna that was as small as possible in order to reduce drag. They also pointed out that many targets would not show up directly on the radar, so the bombsight would need the ability to drop at points relative to some landmark that did appear, the so-called "offset aiming points".
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ROTC students at MIT in 2019 MIT's involvement in military science surged during World War II. In 1941, Vannevar Bush was appointed head of the federal Office of Scientific Research and Development and directed funding to only a select group of universities, including MIT. Engineers and scientists from across the country gathered at MIT's Radiation Laboratory, established in 1940 to assist the British military in developing microwave radar. The work done there significantly affected both the war and subsequent research in the area. Other defense projects included gyroscope-based and other complex control systems for gunsight, bombsight, and inertial navigation under Charles Stark Draper's Instrumentation Laboratory; the development of a digital computer for flight simulations under Project Whirlwind; and high-speed and high-altitude photography under Harold Edgerton.
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After it was found the resolution of the early sets was too low to be useful over large cities like Berlin, in 1943 work started on a version operating in the X band at 3 cm (10 GHz), almost contemporaneously with the introduction of its American equivalent, the 10 GHz H2X radar in October of that year. A wide variety of these H2S Mk. III versions were produced before the Mk. IIIG was selected as the late-war standard. Development continued through the late-war Mk. IV to the 1950s era Mk. IX that equipped the V bomber fleet and the English Electric Canberra. In the V-force, Mk. IXA was tied into both the bombsight and navigation system to provide a complete long-range Navigation and Bombing System (NBS).
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The job training of women was so completely integrated with the entire AAF training program that virtually no separate statistics are available as a basis for comparing the record of the women with male trainees. Obviously, this policy meant that the Wacs had to be as well qualified as men to enroll in and graduate from a training course. It is known only that approximately 2,000 women completed courses in AAF technical schools, including those for Link-trainer instructors, airplane mechanics, sheet-metal workers, weather forecasters, weather observers, electrical specialists of several kinds, teletype operators, control-tower specialists, cryptographers, radio mechanics, parachute riggers, bombsight- maintenance specialists, clerks, photo-laboratory technicians, and photo- interpreters. The AAF showed no reluctance in opening up its noncombat jobs to women, even jobs which required "unwomanly" mechanical skills.
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They would then use the rotating base plate to move the line left or right to cover the target, calling out any corrections needed to account for drift or the motion of the target. As the aircraft approached the target, the vertical angle would increase and the bomb aimer would account for this by rotating the sight downward progressively. Normally the drop would occur when the target was about 45 degrees below the aircraft, so this needed to be adjusted only once or twice. At some point, the motion of the lines and the target would be equal and the bombs would be released by pressing a button on the end of a flexible cable connected to the timed release system positioned to the right of the bombsight.
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This trait in Japanese bomber and fighter design manifested itself again in its successor, the Mitsubishi G4M, whose design so strongly emphasized fuel and bomb load for long-range strikes at the expense of defence that its vulnerability to fighters and ground and surface gunfire earned it the unofficial nickname of "one shot lighter" by Allied fighter pilots.Encyclopedia of aircraft, Michael John Haddrick Taylor, John William Ransom Taylor, Putnam, 1978 - Transportation - 253 pages The bombsight used in the G3M was primitive compared to the mechanisms used in the G3M's contemporaries such as the B-17 Flying Fortress and Heinkel He 111. Aside from the limited precision necessary in its naval role as a long-range torpedo bomber against Allied naval fleets, the G3M frequently operated with other G3M units in massive "wave" formation.
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It was to begin its attack in a shallow dive outside the ships' range of fire, and after reaching a speed of , the pilot would "toss" the bomb at the target using a simple computerized sight, and then climb back out of range. The aircraft was designed to withstand 12 g during pullout. The computerized bombsight was not delivered in time to be fitted to the aircraft. Several other versions of the basic airframe were proposed as well. The Hs 132B used the Junkers Jumo 004 engine in place of the BMW 003, and added two MG 151/20 cannons. The HS 132C was a more extensively modified version intended for bomber interception, featuring the larger Heinkel HeS 011 engine, two 151/20s and two MK 103 or MK 108 cannons.
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Both were complex and had to be separately maintained to keep them operational. German instruments were actually fairly similar to the Norden, even before World War II. In the Lotfe 7, a similar set of gyroscopes provided a stabilized platform for the bombardier to sight through, although the more complex interaction between the bombsight and autopilot of the Norden was not used. The Lotfe 7 was dramatically simpler, consisting of a single metal box containing the vast majority of the mechanism, with a tube (Rohr) extending out the bottom with a mirror that reflected the image of the target into a small telescope in the box. The mechanisms within combined the functions of the Norden's stabilizer and optics, moving the mirror to stabilize the image as well as tracking the target.
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Arthur "Bomber" Harris's strategy for the RAF Bomber Command was to attack area targets that the bombers could be more certain of hitting at night, while the U.S. preferred daylight, precision bombing techniques."The Bomber War" by Robin Neillands, , p.23 The development since the 1930s of gyroscope- stabilised optical bombsights, such as the Norden bombsight, also helped the Allied air forces' ability to accurately strike their targets with medium- to high-altitude level bombing attacks. Nazi Germany used high level bombers such as the Heinkel He 111, the Dornier Do 17 and multi-role aircraft such as the Junkers Ju 88 against the Allies in the Battle of Britain,"The Bomber War" by Robin Neillands, , Chapter 2 both for carpet bombing and for precision attacks on British radar stations as part of Operation Eagle.
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These could be used to replace a complex table of numbers with a carefully shaped cam-like device, and the manual calculation though a series of gears or slip wheels. Originally limited to fairly simple calculations consisting of additions and subtractions, by the 1930s they had progressed to the point where they were being used to solve differential equations.William Irwin, "The Differential Analyser Explained", Auckland Meccano Guild, July 2009 For bombsight use, such a calculator would allow the bomb aimer to dial in the basic aircraft parameters – speed, altitude, direction, and known atmospheric conditions – and the bomb sight would automatically calculate the proper aim point in a few moments. Some of the traditional inputs, like airspeed and altitude, could even be taken directly from the aircraft instruments, eliminating operational errors.
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At the same time, the ever-increasing power levels of new jet engines led to fighter aircraft with bomb loads similar to heavy bombers of a generation earlier. This generated demand for a new generation of greatly improved bombsights that could be used by a single- crew aircraft and employed in fighter-like tactics, whether high-level, low- level, in a dive towards the target, or during hard maneuvering. A specialist capability for toss bombing also developed in order to allow aircraft to escape the blast radius of their own nuclear weapons, something that required only middling accuracy but a very different trajectory that initially required a dedicated bombsight. As electronics improved, these systems were able to be combined together, and then eventually with systems for aiming other weapons.
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NSWCDD conducts basic research in all systems-related areas and pursues scientific disciplines including biotechnology, chemistry, mathematics, laser and computer technology, chemical, mechanical, electrical and systems engineering, physics and computer science. Distinguished figures who have worked for the NSWCDD include physicists Albert Einstein, Edward Teller, Carl Norden, and computer pioneers Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper. Engineering projects of historical or military significance developed at NSWCDD include the triggering device on the Hiroshima atomic bomb, the Norden Bombsight used on most American bombers such as the B-17 Flying Fortress, B-24 Liberator and B-29 Superfortress during World War II, the Standard missile used on modern United States Navy warships, and the warhead for the AIM-54 Phoenix. Current projects include the majority of US research into directed-energy weapons, railgun technology and weapons integration for the Littoral combat ship.
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Bruce 1965, p. 4. However, While the DH.9 was deemed to be suitable for daytime bombing operations, it was found to be incapable of effective nighttime bombing due to the pilot's view being obstructed and visibility via the bombsight being unsuitable.Bruce 1965, p. 5. The DH.9's performance in action over the Western Front was typically deemed to have been a disaster; heavy losses of the type were quickly incurred, attributed to both its poor performance and to engine failures, despite the prior derating of its engine to reduce the failure rate.Bruce 1965, p. 6. By December 1918, Holt Thomas claimed in an advertisement that Airco was the largest aircraft company in the world, being engaged in the construction of aeroplanes, engines and propellers in large numbers, as well as a number of airships and flying boats.
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No. 617 (Dambusters) Squadron was a special duties Squadron within No. 5 Group, based at Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire. Composed of experienced bomber crews, it was equipped with Barnes Wallis’s 12,000 lb “Tallboy” Deep Penetration bomb and a precision bombsight that required high flying skills and crew teamwork to achieve extreme accuracy. Benny and his crew were part of an experiment by Air Vice-Marshal Sir Ralph Cochrane, Air Officer Commanding No. 5 Group, taking a few novice crews who were rated above average and who might quickly be able to assimilate the skills required to achieve No. 617 Squadron’s high standards. His first operation with No. 617 Sqn was on August 18, 1944, against the U-boat pens at La Pallice. Flying as a second pilot with one of the Squadron’s veteran crews, he familiarised himself with operational procedures.
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In early 1940 there was a lengthy debate within the Air Ministry, and the government in general, about whether or not the United States should be told of the many technological developments taking place in the UK. The UK was suffering from a lack of manpower and production capacity, problems the US could easily solve. They also hoped to gain access to the Norden bombsight, which was several years ahead of their version, the Automatic Bomb Sight. However, the radar concepts were believed to be among some of the most advanced in the world, and giving them to the US would mean surrendering some of the UK's best ideas to exploitation by what was then still a non-aligned party. Ultimately, Winston Churchill personally overrode any remaining objections, and tasked Henry Tizard with making the arrangements.
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The Bristol T.B.8 was an early British single engined biplane built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company. They were fitted with a prismatic Bombsight in the front cockpit and a cylindrical bomb carrier in the lower forward fuselage capable of carrying twelve 10 lb (4.5 kg) bombs, which could be dropped singly or as a salvo as required. The aircraft was purchased for use both by the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), and three T.B.8s, that were being displayed in Paris during December 1913 fitted with bombing equipment, were sent to France following the outbreak of war. Under the command of Charles Rumney Samson, a bombing attack on German gun batteries at Middelkerke, Belgium was executed on 25 November 1914. The dirigible, or airship, was developed in the early 20th century.
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Photo of the AFCE and Bombsight shop ground crew in the 463rd Sub Depot affiliated with the USAAF 389th Bomb Group based at Hethel, Norfolk, England Since the Norden was considered a critical wartime instrument, bombardiers were required to take an oath during their training stating that they would defend its secret with their own life if necessary. In case the plane should make an emergency landing on enemy territory, the bombardier would have to shoot the important parts of the Norden with a gun to disable it. The Douglas TBD Devastator torpedo bomber was originally equipped with flotation bags in the wings to aid the aircrew's escape after ditching, but they were removed once the Pacific War began; this ensured that the aircraft would sink, taking the Norden with it."The Aviation Factfile: Aircraft of World War II" (2004) p.
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When Norden heard of the U.S. Army's dealings with Sperry, Theodore Barth called a meeting with the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy at their factory in New York City. Barth offered to build an entirely new factory just to supply the U.S. Army, but the U.S. Navy refused this. Instead, the U.S. Army suggested that Norden adapt their sight to work with Sperry's A-5, which Barth refused. Norden actively attempted to make the bombsight incompatible with the A-5, and it was not until 1942 that the impasse was finally solved by farming out autopilot production to Honeywell Regulator, who combined features of the Norden-mounted SBAE with the aircraft-mounted A-5 to produce what the U.S. Army referred to as "Automatic Flight Control Equipment" (AFCE) the unit would later be redesigned as the C-1.
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Wimperis decided to attack the calculation problem by incorporating a similar vector calculator directly into the bombsight, combining it with a drift measure similar to the one from the earlier Drift Sight. Like the Drift sight, simply taking a measure of the wind using the sight itself provided all of the unknown variables needed to completely calculate the bombing approach. Unlike the Drift Sight, the new design not only calculated the effect on the distance the bombs travelled, but also indicated the proper direction to fly to approach the target so the aircraft reached it with no residual sideways motion – thereby cancelling any drift no matter the approach direction. His new Course Setting Bomb Sight featured a large compass at the rear that could be used for making general calculations of wind speed or solving navigational problems.
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The armaments were removed, eliminating the weight from the guns, turrets, armor plating and bombsight. In their place, additional fuel tanks were installed in the bomb bay. This modification was later redesignated the TB-25D. The crew complement was pilot, co-pilot, navigator, weather officer, radio operator and flight engineer.Tannehill, The Hurricane Hunters, 132–149. 1st WRS RB-17E "The Green Banana" & Crew – 9 June 1944 The squadron received an initial nine TB-25Ds, in May 1943, and two more TB-25Ds in the next year. In August 1944, the squadron received nine B-25Js with the same modifications. The D models had a top speed of 284 mph at 15,000 feet with a range of 1,500 miles. The J models had a top speed of 272 mph at 13,000 feet with a range of 1,350 miles.
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The Bomb Trajectory Group (BTG) was the AN/MSQ-77's analog ballistic computer using 3-dimensional double-integration to continually predict the bomb impact point from an aircraft track during a bomb run. The Cartesian aircraft data were propagated by the BTG mathematical modeling which included aerodynamics for different bombs, Earth "curvature and Coriolis corrections", and vacuum tube integrating amplifiers. The integration was based on the varying aircraft position and velocity prior to the bomb release, so as with the use of the Norden bombsight analog computer in World War II, a nearly steady bomb run was required for the AN/MSQ-77 to provide sufficient bombing accuracy. As in the 1950s Nike missile guidance system(s), electro-mechanical servos controlled sine/cosine resolvers in a feedback loop for computing the simulated bomb's horizontal velocity and along with the drop rate, the simulated bomb's airspeed and dive angle ("Pitch Servo").
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Following the production of the 600 lb depth bomb, a Mark III angular- velocity, low-level bombsight was developed. At the eighth meeting of the Anti-Submarine Committee, chaired by de la Ferté, on 16 December 1942 at H.Q. Coastal Command, they examined ORU reports of the results with the device. No. 59 Squadron RAF had been given the task of testing the sight and were operating the Liberator MkIII during the period that the results were gathered. AOC Wing Commander G.C.C Bartlett AFC & P/O H.R. Longmuir (Bomber Leader) presented the following report to the committee: > Thirty-four bombs were dropped by three aimers (P/O H.R. Longmuir, F/O G.W. > LaForme & F/O F.W.W. Cole) at a stationary target, and later on a target > towed at 8 knots [9.2mph]. For [a total of] forty-two bombs the average > range error was 18yd [yards].
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Operations began with 97 Squadron on 19 August and 215 Squadron three nights later. Cologne railway station was bombed by two 216 Squadron aircraft on 21/22 August and six attacks were made on the German chemical industry, the raid on 25 August by two 215 Squadron aircraft on the works at Mannheim being particularly accurate. Five aircraft of 216 Squadron attacked on 2/3 September, one bomb causing M400,000 worth of damage and the first attack by 115 Squadron was made on 16/17 September, when seven Handley Pages were lost to engine-trouble or anti-aircraft fire. The improved O/400 had started to enter service in April 1918, gradually allowing the re- equipment of more squadrons. The O/400s could carry new bombs, which were aimed with the Drift Sight Mk 1A bombsight; each raid was conducted by up to forty O/400s.
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This basic idea was later expanded to allow the navigator's measurements to be automatically sent back to the bombsight, meaning the bomb aimer no longer had to do this during the approach. Since the other settings, like altitude and airspeed, were already automatically fed in from the aircraft instruments, this left only the selection of the elevation of the target over sea level to be set manually, which could be done before the mission. The other problem was that when the aircraft rolled, the signal hit the ground only on the lower side of the aircraft, filling one side of the display with a solid signal while the other side was blank. This was particularly annoying because it was during the last minute of the approach to the target that the navigator would be giving course corrections to the pilot, rendering the display unusable every time the pilot responded.
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Swiss Venoms were also subject to multiple improvement and upgrade programmes, including life extension modifications, the addition of ultra high frequency (UHF) radio sets, and an improved license-built bombsight. In 1962, all of the remaining Venoms in RAF service were withdrawn from first-line duties, having proven their worth in a variety of locations across the world, in peace and war, and in some of the most difficult climates the RAF has ever faced. The last non- RAF Venoms to leave active service were the aircraft in service with the Swiss Air Force, the last of which being retired from combat duties during the latter part of 1983. About 10–20 Venoms continue to fly as of 2017, performing at various air shows, while a number of examples are preserved in museums in the United Kingdom and abroad, in non-flying, static display condition.
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In this case only the forward speed and altitude have any measurable effect. One of the earliest recorded examples of such a bombsight was built in 1911 by Lieutenant Riley E. Scott, of the U.S. Army Coast Artillery Corps. This was a simple device with inputs for airspeed and altitude which was hand-held while lying prone on the wing of the aircraft. After considerable testing, he was able to build a table of settings to use with these inputs. In testing at College Park, Maryland, Scott was able to place two 18 pound bombs within 10 feet of a 4-by-5 foot target from a height of 400 feet. In January 1912, Scott won $5,000 for first place in the Michelin bombing competition at Villacoublay Airfield in France, scoring 12 hits on a 125-by-375 foot target with 15 bombs dropped from 800 meters.
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The Norden M1 Bombsight Ground Classroom Training M-38A2 concrete practice bombs Bombardier cadets in training with AT-11s at Kirtland, 1943 Albuquerque AAB Station photo, April 1942 Bombardier graduation ceremony With the departure of the 19th Bombardment Group from Albuquerque Army Air Base in the fall of 1941, Major General Arnold moved the military's bombardier school from Louisiana to Albuquerque for two reasons—good weather and the availability of vacant land on which to build bombing ranges. It was proclaimed the "World’s First Bombardier School", and on 24 December 1941 it was officially designated an Army Air Forces Advanced Flying School under the USAAF Western Flying Training Command. The 56th and 88th School Squadrons, the 9th Materiel Squadron, and the 92nd Quartermaster Battalion arrived the week after the Pearl Harbor Attack, followed shortly by the 383rd and 384th School Squadrons and the 459th Ordnance Company. The director of the school, Colonel John P. Ryan, was praised for rapidly organizing the nation's first permanent bombardier training school.
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The Mk. X proved to be very difficult to read at night and bombers that carried it were quickly refitted with the earlier Mk. VII or Mk. IX sight. The Norden was unable to work at night at all; the bomb aimer had to locate the target long in advance of the drop point using a built-in telescope and targets were simply not visible at the required distances in low light. What was needed was a new bombsight, one that could be very quickly set up, had useful illumination of the crosshairs for night use, and was stabilized so the bomb aimer could watch the approach as the bomber was manoeuvring. An early attempt was the Mk. XI, which mounted a cut-down CSBS on the front of a gyro unit taken from a Sperry Gyroscope artificial horizon, to provide stabilization in the horizontal plane, useful for aiding drift measurements and corrections.
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In 1935, he was promoted to Brigadier General, one of four in the Army Air Corps at that time, and was given command of the Materiel Division at Wright Field; for the next four years, he would push for increased funding for research and development, as well as key technologies such as B-17s, the Norden bombsight, and the high- octane gasoline that would later power the fighters of World War II in the European and Pacific theaters. In 1939, he was reassigned to the command of the Air Training division in Texas; however, he died from a heart attack in June of the next year. Over a year after his death, the Army Air Corps began to make use of Robins' contributions during its actions in World War II. The Warner Robins Army Air Depot (now the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center, or WR-ALC) at Robins Field, later to become Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, was named in honor of General Robins, and is also a major depot for Air Force logistics in its own right.
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Later in the war, women were trained to replace men as radio operators on U.S. Army hospital ships. The "Larkspur", the "Charles A. Stafford", and the "Blanche F. Sigman" each received three enlisted women and one officer near the end of 1944. This experiment proved successful, and the assignment of female secretaries and clerical workers to hospital ships occurred soon after. Eventually the Air Force obtained 40% of all WACs in the Army; women were assigned as weather observers and forecasters, cryptographers, radio operators and repairmen, sheet metal workers, parachute riggers, link trainer instructors, bombsight maintenance specialists, aerial photograph analysts, and control tower operators. Over 1,000 WACs ran the statistical control tabulating machines (the precursors of modern-day computers) used to keep track of personnel records. By January 1945 only 50% of AAF WACs held traditional assignments such as file clerk, typist, and stenographer. A few Air Force WACs were assigned flying duties; two WAC radio operators assigned to Mitchel Field, New York, flew as crew members on B-17 training flights. WAC mechanics and photographers also made regular flights.
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They claimed that by using the B-17 and the Norden bombsight, the USAAF should be able to carry out "precision bombing" on locations vital to the German war machine: factories, naval bases, shipyards, railroad yards, railroad junctions, power plants, steel mills, airfields, etc. In January 1943, at the Casablanca Conference, it was agreed RAF Bomber Command operations against Germany would be reinforced by the USAAF in a Combined Operations Offensive plan called Operation Pointblank. Chief of the British Air Staff MRAF Sir Charles Portal was put in charge of the "strategic direction" of both British and American bomber operations. The text of the Casablanca directive read: "Your primary object will be the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic system and the undermining of the morale of the German people to a point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened.", At the beginning of the combined strategic bombing offensive on 4 March 1943 669 RAF and 303 USAAF heavy bombers were available. In the late 1943, the 'Pointblank' attacks manifested themselves in the infamous Schweinfurt raids (first and second).
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The forward glazing of the He 177 A's "stepless" cockpit had each set of its characteristic framing members, of four supporting frame members per set running in each orthogonal direction, running as the parallels and meridians on a globe would. Two sets of four almost square windows, themselves arranged in a square of four windows each on each side of the upper cockpit, just behind the "fishbowl's" rear edge, provided sideways vision from the cockpit for the pilot and crew. Photographic evidence shows these side windows were produced with slight differences in external appearance between those built by Heinkel (with its primary headquarters, Heinkel-Nord plant near Rostock, and the satellite Heinkel-Süd plants around Vienna) and those built by Arado Flugzeugwerke (nearby to the Heinkel-Nord plant, with Arado based in Warnemünde), the only major subcontractor for the He 177 A's airframes. Often, the two lower rows of the "fishbowl's" windows in the nose glazing were made opaque, with the exception of the bombardier's protruding bombsight window offset to starboard in the lower nose glazing, either by painting them over or replacing them with metal panels that performed the same function.
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The IAR 37 prototype was flown for the first time in 1937 to meet a requirement for a tactical bombing and reconnaissance aircraft. The IAR 37 was an unequal-span single bay biplane with a fixed tailwheel landing gear and powered by a licensed copy of the Gnome-Rhône Mistral Major radial engine called the IAR K14-II C32 with 870 HP. It had room for a crew of three under a continuous glazed cockpit, pilot at the front then observer and a gunner at the rear. It had dual controls and was fitted with a locally designed bombsight and a camera. The IAR 37 entered production in 1938, but production of the engine lagged, preventing the aircraft from being completed, and it was replaced on the production line by the IAR 38, powered by the reliable BMW 132 engine. As availability and reliability of the K.14 engine improved, the incomplete IAR 37s were fitted with IAR K.14-III C36 with 930 HP to allow their completion and production was switched to the improved IAR 39, which also used the IAR K.14-IV C32 with 960HP.
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This led to the concept of a "Strike Sight" that would combine altitude, airspeed and the gun/bombsight into a single gunsight-like display. There was fierce competition between supporters of the new HUD design and supporters of the old electro-mechanical gunsight, with the HUD being described as a radical, even foolhardy option. The Air Arm branch of the UK Ministry of Defence sponsored the development of a Strike Sight. The Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) designed the equipment and the earliest usage of the term "head-up-display" can be traced to this time.John Kim, Rupture of the Virtual, Digital Commons Macalester College, 2016, p. 54 Production units were built by Cintel, and the system was first integrated in 1958. The Cintel HUD business was taken over by Elliott Flight Automation and the Buccaneer HUD was manufactured and further developed, continuing up to a Mark III version with a total of 375 systems made; it was given a 'fit and forget' title by the Royal Navy and it was still in service nearly 25 years later. BAE Systems, as successor to Elliotts via GEC-Marconi Avionics, thus has a claim to the world's first Head Up Display in operational service.
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Atwood was named associate director of the Boston Research and Development Laboratory of AC Spark Plug Division of General Motors (AC Delco) after the purchase. In 1961, Atwood was appointed director of engineering of Milwaukee operations of AC Spark Plug, a manufacturer of the Norden Bombsight and similar instruments during World War II. The Milwaukee operations of AC Spark Plug was made a separate division of General Motors as AC Electronics in the late 1960s, but as the space race wound down in the early 1970s, this division was merged with Delco Radio and the combined division was renamed Delco Electronics with headquarters in Kokomo, Indiana. In 1970, Atwood was appointed the Indianapolis (Indiana) Operations Manager for the newly formed Detroit Diesel Allison Division of GM. In 1974 he became the first general manager of GM's short lived Transportation Systems Division. Later in 1974 he was named general manager of Delco Electronics Division of GM. In 1978, Atwood was named a General Motors vice- president and General Manager of the Detroit Diesel Allison Division, In 1981 he was promoted to group executive in charge of the Electrical Components Group, and later that year, he was assigned responsibility for the worldwide Truck and Bus Group.
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