Post by JanetPost by Peter T. DanielsPost by Sam PlusnetPost by Peter T. DanielsPost by Athel Cornish-BowdenOn 2018-10-11 15:24:14 +0200, "Peter Duncanson [BrE]"
Post by Peter Duncanson [BrE]In BrE a bombardier doesn't fly missions.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/bombardier
A rank of non-commissioned officer in certain artillery
regiments, equivalent to corporal.
Origin
Mid 16th century (denoting a soldier in charge of a bombard,
an early form of cannon): from French, from Old French
bombarde ?cannon?
The BrE equivalent of an AmE "bombardier" is a "bomb aimer".
Silly language.
Silly response.
The word "Bombardier" had been in use in BrE since (as Peter said) the
16th Century & it had a firmly established meaning.
When a new term was required in the 20th Century for an entirely new
activity, referring to the person who aimed the bombs as a "bomb aimer"
wasn't much of a leap.
You don't "aim" a bomb. You drop it in the general vicinity of something
you want to destroy.
That was the American approach in WW2.
Completely false.
Post by JanetBoth the Luftwaffe and RAF achieved night-time precision bombing in
WW2.
For some values of 'precision'.
Post by Janethttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_bombing
"The Luftwaffe addressed this issue first by using a series of radio
beams to direct aircraft and indicate when to drop bombs. Several
different techniques were tried, including Knickebein, X-Gerät and Y-
Gerät (Wotan). These provided impressive accuracy?British post-raid
analysis showed that the vast majority of the bombs dropped could be
placed within 100 yards (91 m) of the midline of the beam, spread along
it a few hundred yards around the target point, even in pitch-dark
conditions at a range of several hundred miles. But the systems fatally
depended on accurate radio reception, and the British invented the first
electronic warfare techniques to successfully counter this weapon in the
'Battle of the Beams'
The RAF later developed their own beam guidance techniques, such as GEE
and Oboe. These systems could provide an accuracy of about 100 yards
radius, and were supplemented by the downward-looking radar system H2S.
The British development of specialist 'Earthquake' bombs (which needed
to be dropped very accurately) led to the development of supporting
aiming techniques such as SABS and the Pathfinder Force. Specialist
units such as 617 squadron were able to use these and other techniques
to achieve remarkable precision, such as the bombing of the Michelin
factory at Clermont-Ferrand in France, where they were required to
destroy the workshops but leave the canteen next to them standing.
This development process, driven by the need to bomb in unsighted
conditions, meant that by the end of World War II, unguided RAF bombs
could be predictably delivered within 25 yards of a target from 15,000
feet height, and precisely on it from low level."
Different story for the US bombers
"For the U.S. Army Air Forces, daylight bombing was normal based upon
box formations for defence from fighters. Bombing was coordinated
through a lead aircraft but although still nominally precision bombing
(as opposed to the area bombing carried out by RAF Bomber Command) the
result of bombing from high level was still spread over an area. Before
the war on practice ranges, some USAAF crews were able to produce very
accurate results, but over Europe with weather and German fighters and
anti-aircraft guns and the limited training for new crews this level of
accuracy was impossible to reproduce. The US defined the target area as
being a 1,000 ft (300 m) radius circle around the target point - for the
majority of USAAF attacks only about 20% of the bombs dropped struck in
this area."
If you believe all the propaganda.
In practice Bomber Commands night bombing was so poor,
typically with a CEP of 5 miles,
that carpet bombing was the only thing
that they could do reliably.
Arthur 'Bomber' Harris admitted as much,
by claiming that he was engaged in 'morale bombardment'.
His target was not factories, nor specifically the workers in them.
He was indiscriminately killing as many civilians as he could,
claiming that this would in some unspecified way
force the collapse of the regime.
Nowadays we call this kind of thing terrorism.
The opposite of course happened
Goebbels c.s. could with good justification say:
See? Those terrorists are out to kill us all.
Our only option is to fight to the last man.
Britain has nothing to be proud of here,
Jan
PS This wiki page must have been written by a Brit.
The denigration of the USAAF is completely unjustified.
While Harris achieved very little of practical use
it was the USAAF that destroyed the Luftwaffe.
See for example
<https://www.amazon.com/dp/0811706591/?tag=dcglabs-20>