Talk:Norden bombsight

message: This article states that the problem of bombs falling at supersonic velocity was hard to solve.   I would thik so, since no projectile has a terminal velocity in any medium higher than the speed of sound in that medium.
:See Tallboy bomb for how a bomb can fall far faster than sound. --Philip Baird Shearer 10:16, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Supersonic velocity 

message: I'm new here, but the text in this article copies the text found at this page:
almost exactly, with a fair amount of original extra words/facts thrown in as well.  The page appears to be a US Military site, so maybe it is not a problem, but I figured I'd post this just in case.
:Thanks; I'll add it to the list of links. Melchoir 05:30, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copied text 

message: The article omits a key point, that is short and to the point, and makes the whole article understandable to the average person.  The article does not mention the simple fact that the Bombardier took over certain flight controls from the pilot, for the short duration that they approached the target.   They would switch to autopilot, and the Bombardier had Auto-Pilot controls.  The Bombardier "dialed in"  direction headings into the Auto-Pilot.     Marc S. 206.192.35.125 (talk) 12:21, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Auto-Pilot

message: The article says both that "its existence was a closely guarded secret" and that it was "marketed as the tool to win the war; and it was often touted that the bombsight would drop bombs in pickle barrels".  Where was it marketed and who was being touted to if even its existence was a secret?  KarlM 06:44, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: First, it was guarded as a secret; then it was used for propaganda purposes. The fact that Germany, at least later in the war, could not start bomber planes at targets in Great Britain made it possible to reveal the bombsight's existence - how could the Germans profit from knowing about the Norden if they could not bomb anything? And except from Pearl Harbor I don't know of any large Japanese bombing raid; so any bombsight knowledge would not have helped them... Perhaps I should re-read that book by Stewart Halsey Ross to know the exact reasons. And remember: Even if the USAAF says it has a secret bombsight it is propaganda. --Keimzelle 21:35, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've read many WWII-era magazines and the existence of the Norden Bombsight was anything but secret, as Keimzelle implies. Its mechanism was claimed to be highly secret, though other comments on this page raise doubts about that.  ·:· Will Beback  ·:· 16:32, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Secret 

message: What's a bombsight? --Abdull 16:23, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Gee-I guess we may need another article. A bombsight is an optical-mechanical device used to aim free-falling bombs at their targets. -Will Beback 22:20, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bombsight 

message: Dither currently states:
:Airplane bombers used mechanical computers to perform navigation and bomb trajectory calculations. Curiously, these computers (boxes filled with hundreds of gears and cogs) performed more accurately when flying on board the aircraft, and less well on ground. Engineers realized that the vibration from the aircraft reduced the error from sticky moving parts.
This seems to partially contradict this page which states:
:In combat, this accuracy was never achieved - because the Norden had been tested under "artificial conditions" at the US proving grounds, for example in the absence of anti-aircraft fire and/or adverse weather.
Ewlyahoocom 14:29, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is absolutely no contradiction, Ewlyahoocom. The second paragraph ("In combat, ...") is from me, the first one is not. The second paragraph only compares test flights (for example, at USAAF bombing ranges in the USA), which had idealized conditions – like perfect weather, no anti-aircraft fire, relatively low altitudes – to the actual bombing that took place over Japan. In both cases, bombs were dropped from flying aircraft; and the "dither" effect was always in place when bombs were dropped. Or do you honestly think that the Norden bombsight would let you drop bombs less precisely when your plane is still standing on the runway? :-)--Keimzelle 03:16, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah-ha! I misread "artificial conditions" to mean some kind of testing on the ground. Ewlyahoocom 17:07, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dither & Bombsights 

message: John Lienhart of the University of Houston College of Engineering says the secrecy of the Norden bombsight was mostly hype. The device was downgraded from "secret" to "confidential" in 1935 and to "restricted," the lowest classification, in 1942. A Norden employee sold plans for the device to the Germans in 1937 for $3,000, but the Germans never used it because they practiced dive bombing, not strategic bombing. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Newschief (talk • contribs) 01:53, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Was secret overrated? 

message: This article makes a fairly big deal discussing how the Norden never lived up to its theoretical accuracy, but it is worth asking "what was the alternative?". Depending on the size of the target, 10% of bombs hitting a target from 4 miles in the air seems like it could be considered darned accurate. One must also keep in mind that practically all WWII aerial weapons were wildly inaccurate by modern standards.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.7.110.100 (talk) 11:14, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I would suggest that the biggest problem in WWII was not being able to bomb super accurately but to find the target. There are numerous examples of air forces bombing the wrong cities. In that respect, the Norden was no more effective than any other, just as you say. Flanker235 (talk) 15:11, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Accuracy Vs. What? 

message: Based on these articles, the device's existence was certainly not secret at least not by 1940 and may have been acquired by Germany as early as 1938. "A government witness against 16 suspected Nazi spies testified today that he had offered to attempt to obtain the secret of the famed Norden bomb-sight for Germany in 1940; but was told not to bother 'because it already was in the possession of the gestapo'. The witness was William A. Sebold, a naturalized American citizen and former employe of the Consolidated Aircraft Co., of San Diego, Cal., his testimony was in support of United States Attorney Harold M. Kennedy's contention that Germany has had possession of the bomb-sight since 1938." from "Federal Agent says Nazis had bombsight in '38." Jefferson City Post-Tribune. Jefferson City, Missouri. Tuesday, September 09, 1941. Page 4. --Dual Freq (talk) 17:27, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Acquired by Germany before World War II and 1940s sources 

message: Carl Noden is not mentioned in the summary. Shouldn't he deserve a mention? Sbohra 09:01, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Inventor

message: From family lore, my great-uncle Bailey Snider, a graduate of Berkeley and my grandfather's younger half-brother, was one of the many who worked on the development (or improvements) to the Norden bombsight.  The only information the family has is about the cross-hairs.  The original cross-hair materials available were either too thick for any accuracy, or were too fragile to be stretched tightly enough to provide the straight lines needed.  Ultimately, the web strands (silk) of black widow spiders was used for both its strength and its fineness. I don't know the truth of this, but it makes sense, especially since there is still such a demand for this fiber that they have recently genetically modified goats to produce milk from which this same thread can be drawn on a larger scale than milking spiders.Kjj11 (talk)`  —Preceding undated comment added 19:41, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Norden Bombsight Crosshairs 

message: One of the bombardiers in this movie indicated that the calculations these women made were fed into the Norden site.
In early December 1941, Betty Jean Jennings was a freshman completing her first semester at a rural Missouri college. In Philadelphia, Doris and Shirley Blumberg were seniors at Girl’s High and Marlyn Wescoff was completing a minor in business machines at Temple University. In an era of limited career opportunities for women, these bright students anticipated low paying careers as schoolteachers or bookkeepers. But on Sunday, December 7, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and changed these young women’s lives forever. With Pearl Harbor suddenly drawing the US in to WWII, the Army launched a frantic national search for women mathematicians.
http://www.topsecretrosies.com/Top_Secret_Rosies/Project_Background.html
Can anyone verify the use and entry process of the calculations in the Norden?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brentvan (talk • contribs) 16:41, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: AFAIK they weren't involved specifically with the Norden bombsight, what they were calculating were generalised ballistic tables: If a bomb of this weight and this shape is dropped from an aircraft travelling at such a speed, in a wind of such a strength and such a direction, how far away does it land?  These offsets were of course an important part of the setup (ie during construction) of the Norden, and some of the tables of settings that a bombardier would enter into the sight before and during a mission. They knew bomb details beforehand, but they'd measure winds over the target in flight, using the drift sight. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:40, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Female computers of WW II 

message: The lead has a reference to the naming of this device as "Blue Ox". I read quite a bit on this machine, and have never come across this term before. Looking about at the usual suspects, I can find only a single historical reference to this term, from a Boeing advertisement that ran in a few magazines circa 1942/43. I can find no evidence in any of the other references, or talking to any of the owners or former bombardiers I know, that anyone ever used this term in practice. I am going to move it from the LEAD to the body unless anyone has a good reason not to. Maury Markowitz (talk) 15:14, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Blue Ox" name 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I discovered that some links to sources, namely Searle and Correll, followed dead or broken links. In the case of Correll, a simple updated format was needed. In the case of Searle, the source can be found in the IEEE's database after some Googling, but requires institutional access. I found a copy of it (in better quality, too) over at http://docslide.us/documents/the-bombsight-war-norden-vs-sperry.html. Since that seems kind of sketchy (and takes forever to load), I rehosted it and changed the link. Lueking (talk) 22:32, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links to sources 

message: In the Basic operation section, two angles are defined:
The Norden thus calculated two angles: the range angle based on the altitude, airspeed and ballistics; and the current angle to the target, based on the ground speed and heading of the aircraft. The difference between these two angles represented the "correction" that needed to be applied to bring the aircraft over the proper drop point.
In order for this to be correct, each of the two angles must be the angle of the line-of-sight (LOS) to the target.  The current angle is the LOS at any point in time during the bomb run. The range angle must be the LOS to the target at the drop point when the end of the bomb trajectory would strike the target.
A diagram of this would be of great help.Tvbanfield (talk) 21:55, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusion with angles 

message: :"in peacetime testing the Norden demonstrated a circular error probable (CEP)[a] of 75 feet (23 m), an astonishing performance for the era."
Not at all astonishing if the bombs are dropped from a height of 20 feet. This information about the height is missing however, which makes the statement useless at best. 91.10.31.154 (talk) 14:00, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: As long as you're bombing the right city... Flanker235 (talk) 15:12, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rubbish in the Lede 

message: "The bombardier when waited for the target to pass through the second crosshair to time the drop".--Please fix (while i fix other articles). Thanks. 2001:2020:32B:D93D:D080:1137:E89C:E7EB (talk) 21:55, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please fix