Grand Forks herald. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1916-1955, 1918-09-06
AIR BOMBING
IS A SCIENCE
Year and Half Ago it Was
Believed to be a Hit and
Miss Came.

Behind British Lines in France,
Aug. i2S.-(Correspondence of The
Associated Press)-Aerial bombing Is
today far more Of an exact science
than was supposed possible a year
and a half ago. In the early days or
the war. dropping bombs was largely
a matter of luck. and the straight Y
of the aviator was the only factor re-
lied upon for success. -
Today, however, matters are en-
tirely different. Accurate bomb
sights have peer produced which,
carefully used, are a guarantee OF
the bomb falling or the object aimed
at, within a very small margin of err
ror. OF course, in the cas- of all such
instruments, the human element is
sometimes responsible for errors of
calculation, and a small error on a
bomb-sight at 5000 feet will send a
bomb far out of it's course. In the
words of an American airman who
has done some splendid raiding work
in Trance:
1T is wonderful what you can miss
with a bomb"
From this it must not be thought
that the majority Of Allied bombs do
in the German lines; for aerial photo
graphs taken after raids have shown
that they do. But emphasis is laid
on the Importance of the personal
factor in bombing. In the excite
ment of work of this kind-often in
the midst of heavy shell fire-a very
cool head is required to manipulate
an instrument as delicate as a bomb
sight. British airmen for example,
receive a very thorough training in
bombing before they. are allowed to
proceed overseas. and must obtain a
certain number of hits before they
car graduate.
1t is thought that quite a lot Of the
wanton and useless destruction OF
private property in England by Ger
maj raiders is due to sheer bad bomb
ing. Undoubtedly the Central Pow
ers are behind the Allies in regard to
~twin-engined bombing airplane re-
Gently captured was found a crude
copy of an English bomb-sight which
was introduced more than two years
ago..
Aerial bombs range in size from 10
pounds up to fifty or sixty times that
weight and are roughly of two kinds,
incendiary and high-explosive. They
are generally laid on their sides in
racks underneath the airplane; but
sometimes they are carried in cells
SpSSAoAJ iSeOo III SAO AooCid6O WI
body) of the machine. In either case
they are fused and released by levers
placed convenient to the pilot or OBJ
server, the bombs themselves being
far out of reach.
= When a bomb is released it does
n~otlfall directly ~downwards but takes
a forward path as it drops, in the di-
rection in which the machine is
travelling. This is due to the momen-
tam impaired to it by the speed Of
the aircraft.
A factor Of great importance in
bombing is the time-length Of the
fuse. For example, if a railway juno
ton was being attacked, "a bomb
which exploded on contact would do
far more danger than one with a de-
lay fuse; for the former would have
a wide. low radius Of action-smash-
ing up the railway lines-while the
latter would during the delay bury
itself in the ground and merely make
a deep crater Of small area.
The reverse, however, would apply
in the case of a munition factory. A
bomb exploding on contact would go
off as soon as it touched the roof, do
ing little or no damage to the re-
mainder of the building; but an op-
propriately timed delay fuse would
give, the bomb time to crash through
to the middle or ground floors, where
it would be Intimately more d~estruc-
tive.