PRINCIPLES OF OPERATION OF THE NORDEN BOMBSIGHT WWII TRAINING MOVIE 23251

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One of a series of classified films made for the Army Air Forces during WWII about the Norden Bombsight, this film focuses on the principles behind the device. During the entire war the Norden was considered a top secret piece of equipment and normally when it was shown in training films, it was hidden behind a piece of canvas or otherwise "blacked out". This series of films provides a rare look at the operation of the bombsight as it was presented to bombardiers.
The Norden Mk. XV, known as the Norden M series in Army service, was a bombsight 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. It was the canonical tachometric design, a system that allowed it to directly measure the aircraft's ground speed and direction, which older bombsights could only measure inaccurately with lengthy in-flight procedures. The Norden further improved on older designs by using an analog computer that constantly calculated the bomb's impact point based on current flight conditions, and an autopilot that let it react quickly and accurately to changes in the wind or other effects.
Together, these features seemed to promise unprecedented accuracy in day bombing from high altitudes; in peacetime testing the Norden demonstrated a circular error probable (CEP)[a] of 23 metres (75 ft), an astonishing performance for the era. This accuracy allowed direct attacks on ships, factories, and other point targets. Both the Navy and the AAF saw this as a means to achieve war aims through high-altitude bombing; for instance, destroying an invasion fleet by air long before it could reach US shores. To achieve these aims, the Norden was granted the utmost secrecy well into the war, and was part of a then-unprecedented production effort on the same scale as the Manhattan Project. Carl L. Norden, Inc. ranked 46th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.
In practice it was not possible to achieve the expected accuracy in combat conditions, with the average CEP in 1943 of 370 metres (1,200 ft) being similar to Allied and German results. Both the Navy and Air Forces had to give up on the idea of pinpoint attacks during the war. The Navy turned to dive bombing and skip bombing to attack ships, while the Air Forces developed the lead bomber concept to improve accuracy, while adopting area bombing techniques by ever larger groups of aircraft. Nevertheless, the Norden's reputation as a pin-point device lived on, due in no small part to Norden's own advertising of the device after secrecy was reduced late in the war.
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[@SuperScottCrawford]

I'm 50, but I feel I'll never sound as old as the narrator, who's probably only 30.

[@tomarmadiyer2698]

That transatlantic accent carries hard

[@thinkcivil1627]

I have a deep respect for the men who did this. Besides having to know how to do all of that automatically, you have to remember that during the bombing run, the plane had to fly in a straight line, instead of using tactics to avoid enemy fire, so they were the most vulnerable to the flak going off all around them and being shot at by enemy aircraft. Plus, most of these guys were just out of high school. More allied soldiers were killed during these bombing runs over Europe than all that were lost in the entire Pacific theatre during the war. The loses were higher early in the war, because the allies didn't have fighter escorts with the range to help protect them deep inside Europe, and the German airforce still was dominated the skies. Incredible.

[@ggaggagga4]

A perfect book that explains the horrors and costs these men VOLUNTEERED FOR, is MASTERS OF THE AIR by Donald L Miller. It is an awe-inspiring read.

[@reallyhappenings5597]

Bombardiers were officers, and officers had college.

[@dukecraig2402]

The auto pilot was flying the plane during the bomb run, it's a myth that the bombardier was flying it, they could only correct it to the left or right to line up the target. A USAAF post war report showed that neither flak or fighter's had any affect on bomb accuracy, the biggest reason cited was the fact that the auto pilot was in control during the bomb run. Also, the 8th Air Force lost more men than the Marine's did in WW2 but they certainly didn't lose more men than were lost in all of the Pacific campaign, the fact is the Marine's total loss of men in the Pacific was a fraction of all US losses in the PTO, the Marine's and the Navy combined only represent ⅓rd of all the losses in the Pacific, the Army number's lost in the Pacific represent ⅔rds of all the losses. The Army was involved with most of the island campaigns that people believe were Marine only operations, Iwo Jima was about the only island battle that was exclusively Marine's, Pelilu, Saipan and just about every other one also involved Army divisions. It seems like the War Department concentrated mostly on the Marine Corps when it came to news footage and publicity for the land battles in the Pacific, most likely because the Army got exclusive coverage in Europe, bit despite the average persons perception the fact is ⅔rds of all losses in the Pacific were Army.

[@rjtrisurfer]

My dad was in the Army Air Corp over in England during the war, for a short time he had the worst job in the Air Force. His job was to sit in a jeep at the end of the runway and wait for a B-17 to crash, his ONLY responsibility was to retrieve the Norden bomb site. He had to ignore any wounded airmen that might have survived! He told me they had plenty of planes and people to fly them, it was the bomb site that was in short supply. Needless to say he didn't last long, he couldn't do it for long. He also said that a day never went by in his remaining 60 years that he didn't think of that experience. Ron W.

[@davidgreen5099]

my dad was there too. with the 8th AF. he was a radio repairman on B17s.

[@larrybuxton541]

Ron Weiss has

[@reallyhappenings5597]

Tough as it was, that was an important job he did.

[@COBARHORSE1]

He must have checked out very highly to be trusted to have that assignment. We were terrified of that technology getting into enemy hands.

[@wood6393]

@@COBARHORSE1 Unfortunately it did fall into their hands. My great-uncle was a gunner on a B-17 named "One Mission Lulu" (8th AF, 349th Bomber Group, 100th Air Wing). On March 3rd, 1944, they mistakenly landed in Denmark, thinking it was Sweden, after being forced to abandon their mission due to weather and heavy flak. The aircraft and crew were captured immediately by German forces and the crew was unable to destroy their bomb sight prior to capture. And that's how the Germans acquired the Norden.

[@kevinb9407]

I remember seeing Norden devices in aircraft museums, and was always so astonished by the complexity of the device. Now after seeing this film I can see why it was so difficult to master.

[@davidthompson9359]

I didn't find out until after she died, but my aunt worked on the assembly line for the Norden Bombsight.

[@mike89128]

After the war it was discovered that both the Germans and Japanese had obtained Nordens early in the war. Germany felt that it wasn't any more accurate than the one they were using at lower altitudes. The Japanese had actually improved the sight.

[@bafalconbafalcon3184]

hi,do you have more info on that,i'd like to find out more,cheers.

[@artdonovandesign]

The Germans did indeed have the secret plans, Mike! The German-born Bomb Site Inspector for the C.L. Norden Corp was a man named Herman Lang and he worked in the Norden plant that manufactured the site on Long Island. He was beyond suspicion as he was the Final Inspector for the bomb site. Lang was a German sympathizer and passed on all of the top secret schematics to the Nazis in 1938- three years before we entered the war. I don't know weather he was ever tried for treason.

[@yetanother9127]

@@artdonovandesign Lang was tried for espionage, not treason--served 18 years. Since the US was technically not at war with Germany at the time, he wasn't "levying war against the United States, or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort", to quote the legal definition of treason, but he could be tried for passing state secrets to what was then a non-belligerent power.

[@paulloveless9180]

Can you point me to where I could find out more about what you have said above?

[@gastonbell108]

Ya, the Norden was hyped as utterly war-winning from roughly 1939 to 1972, based largely on propaganda and rosy memory... then people started actually writing scholarly analyses. It wasn't that great, certainly far less accurate than the Army Air Forces under Hap Arnold insisted it was. If it was, they wouldn't have needed to resort to area bombing of cities by night with thousands of incendiary sticks scattered like dandelion fluff. They tried accurate high level day bombing - they couldn't hit a damn thing. They tried low level day bombing - they lost 30% of their planes each mission. The Norden was not a decisive piece of equipment in WW2 - I question whether it was even a cutting-edge piece of equipment. Radar was certainly much more of a decisive asset for the USA.

[@tomkent4656]

The angle of the dangle is equal to the heat of the meat.

[@ericthompson5704]

tom kent only with a coefficient equal to the mass of the ass.

[@MrWolfTickets]

LOL

[@BOBANDERSON5150]

Now that's FUNNY!!!! I couldn't have said it better myself !!!

[@biffcopeland2854]

That was funny to all us 5th grade boys back in 1954

[@pauldenniss5230]

x the throb of the knob

[@joestrike8537]

First time I heard about this device was in a 1960's sitcom set on a WW2-era navy base. I forget the episode's plot but it involved keeping something (unrelated to the war) under wraps & one of the characters says "this is a more important secret than the Norden Bombsight!" Then a few years later a talk show guest was describing a friend coming across a war surplus Norden in a junk store who sat down & started operating it, having a heavy nostalgia moment remembering himself back in that WW2 bomber...nice to finally learn the whole story of exactly why this thing was so important.

[@orbitingeyes2540]

Good clip. My father was flight engineer and top-turret gunner on B-24s in 8th AF, 20th Bomb Division, 448th Bomb Group (H), 712sq at Station 146, Seething field. He flew 32 missions in lead crew with the Norden and H2x.

[@wood6393]

My great-uncle was 8th AF. 349th Bomber Group, 100th Air Wing, to be exact.

[@jamesbrowne6351]

These were great machines that were hampered in their accuracy because they were not designed to be used at the very high altitudes that most missions were flown at to increase survivability of the aircraft and crew.

[@richardcranium5839]

the biggest problem wasnt the altitude from my research but the varying wind speed and direction at different levels of the atmosphere. little was known about the jet streams back then.

[@sciencecompliance235]

I second what Richard said. The higher you fly, the more variables between you and your target.

[@ramal5708]

This device worked in tandem with AN/APQ-7 Radar in the B-29 bombers and worked quite well in low altitude-night bombing of Japan. Norden is most accurate in mid to low altitude. The B-17s and B-24s used on Germany was high altitude bombing

[@thethirdman225]

@@richardcranium5839 The biggest problem was always finding the target. The British showed that using dead reckoning, only one bomb in a hundred got within five miles of the target. This improved with the introduction of radios navigation systems like Gee but it would only guarantee to get you over the right city. The Americans didn’t think this would apply to them because they were bombing by day but in fact, they had little more success. So the problem didn’t really come down to bombsights or surface winds or even bomb asymmetries (American GP bombs were very primitive). Even if you got to the right city, in Germany there was always a chance it would be completely socked in and you would have to resort to area bombing at best. No bombsight would make any difference to any of these problems. Finding the right place to drop bombs in WWII was always the most difficult task.

[@augustuskelley4170]

My grandfather was a civilian engineer assigned to the US Army Air Corps- one of three people with the security clearance to dismantle and repair them. One was assigned to the pacific theater, one stateside, and my grandfather was assigned to Europe. When a bombsight would break they would lock it in a vault. His job was to travel from airfield to airfield where they’d lock him in the vault with the sights, and he’d knock to be let out when he was done. He earned a silver star for figuring out how to marry the bombsight with the primitive night vision technology to enable precision night bombing. I have the award letter signed by Dwight Eisenhower.

[@macmike8329]

Can't believe i just watched this.

[@loginavoidence12]

now you no longer have to sit down to take a dump. you're part of the elite club now, friend

[@vanceduke5196]

I remember watching this as a young airman in 1942. It was as confusing then as it is now. Everyone in my bomber unit agreed to get shit face about 10 minutes before bombs away. That bomb site was such a headache. So much easier to use drunk. We never hit anything anyway. Couple of cows, If we where lucky a french postal vehicle. Frankly I am surprised we won that war.

[@emusunlimited]

Wow, I would love to hear your stories if you don't mind talking about them.

[@kitharrison8799]

A fantastic upload, I've been trying to understand the bombsight as part of wider reading on the B-17. Amazing technology for the time. All that ingenuity to blow people up.

[@JamesAllmond]

My grandfather had a hand in making those, or rather the machinery used to make it. Was a machinist and natural mechanical engineer. Was ordered to never talk about it, and didn't until the 1970's when the entire story came out in movies and books...

[@hyperintelligentfish3873]

Analogue engineering for the win!

[@MaskedVengeanceTV]

absolutely amazing! thank you so much for your unbeatable videos! cheers!

[@williamdmason9375]

That was supremely interesting and how it was achieved bombsight to target acquisition, it's one heck of a lot to absorb, you'd have to a mathematician just to use it and bloody good I.Q as well but then radio bombing was introduced so I'll watch that as well Thankyou very much

[@TeamFish15]

I’d love to see how common core could complicate this even more than it already is.

[@KlausTirpitzEsq]

MichaelKingsfordGray shuddup Tone

[@originallynot]

m.kzbin.info/www/bejne/goKbf6VplJdqaJY This might explain a bit

[@Catcrumbs]

@MichaelKingsfordGray Who says that isn't his 'real adult name'? Prejudiced much?

[@rokuthedog]

@MichaelKingsfordGray only idiots use their real name online

[@bobbarclay3203]

We would learn about how Jim Crow affected black and other marginalized factory workers. We would have a chapter or 2 on the linkage between American Imperialism and the need for high tech weapons. By the time in April when they get around to the mathematics involved, we would learn that sine, cosine, and tangent are artifacts of western caucasion influence on trigonometry, which is itself discriminatory when you consider how hard it is for women to make their own contributions. The final exam would contain only one question about targeting systems. Q 10- Is warfare inherently racist? Everyone who gets that right gets an A. Everyone who gets it wrong gets a participation trophy, unless the white male students are decent enough to give their trophy to one of several groups that apparently are mistreated by society and deserve reparations.

[@robertbilling6266]

Interesting. When I wa learning radio navigation as a PPL in the 80s we ran into a simpler version of the wind drift issue. The mathematics of the solution was exactly the same.

[@PanWayOut]

Without taking into account the 1000mph speed of the earth moving below, I cannot begin to imagine how you ever hit a single target with any accuracy. Or is the Coriolis effect just myth?

[@davidschwartz5127]

Too bad the most interesting stuff was hidden by the PF# and the clock timmer!

[@thomash4578]

If you purchase a copy, it will be clean.

[@randallr.8394]

Really like these old videos...keep em comin!

[@robinj.9329]

An incredible piece of technology! Even for the early 1940's!

[@youngmasterzhi]

Yet Sperry’s bombsight was way better as it operates entirely on electrical systems rather than electromechanical systems used in the Norden. This made Sperry’s bombsight more stabilized, made synchronous corrections during autopilot and achieve relatively better accuracy and precision in targeting. The only reason why Sperry’s bombsight wasn’t used is because Norden was able to build relations with the US Navy and Airforce, did a lot of mass marketing to both obtain military contracts and boost enlistment into the US Air Force, and propagated multiple myths exaggerating the effectiveness of the bombsight

[@riffhammeron]

I had no idea that the bomb site communicated with the pilot. Very cool!

[@c182SkylaneRG]

Neither did I. I was under the impression that it was a rudimentary Autopilot that took over complete control from the pilot, forcing him to sit back and enjoy the ride for the most dangerous 5 minutes of the flight.

[@pweter351]

I thought the site took over the plane the pilots did nothing they handed over control to the bombadier

[@christiank.bagleyofficial736]

I think it's interesting the way folks used to speak English in the USA better than they seem to do these days.

[@thethirdman225]

Why for you think dat, bruh?😁

[@dozer1642]

I can’t believe all of this information is out on the internet now. The kraughts are on to us now.

[@hatuletoh]

Don't worry, the bombsight wasn't nearly as effect in practical application as they were under controlled test conditions. On the other hand, it was still a damn sight better (pun shamefully intended) than anything the krauts came up with.

[@hyacinthbucket3803]

Colonel Hogan can rest easy now.

[@loginavoidence12]

eh, they had an agent steal the plans and send it to Germany where they knocked it off

[@adendominic542]

you all prolly dont give a damn but does anyone know of a tool to log back into an instagram account?? I stupidly forgot the account password. I would appreciate any tips you can offer me

[@zahiremiliano2485]

@Aden Dominic instablaster ;)

[@michaelamoroso5695]

Had no idea that dropping bombs was so complex

[@jackfrost2146]

I think I'll stick with my cardboard tube bomb sight---my brain broke trying to follow those instructions.

[@grumblesa10]

It's just an analog angular rate-of-change calculator: to solve the release point problem. For all that complexity, the CEP of aircraft using the Norden at high-altitude was almost identical to RAF, Red Air Force and Luftwaffe results with similar tachymetric analog sights.

[@princeofcupspoc9073]

It's not that bad. You have to "guestimate" wind, weather, etc. Speed, direction, and height were pretty accurate. But considering the success rate, I suspect most bombardiers thought the same thing.

[@ABrit-bt6ce]

@@princeofcupspoc9073 617 had some Norden bomb sights iirc they were used to effect on Tirpitz, the guestimate for wind and so on that day was made by flying "Weather Planes" ahead of the formation. Laser designator and seeker heads is one thing I would take back to help. :)

[@deepcoolclear]

This is still complicated in 2020 so ingenious for its time

[@SuperScottCrawford]

So much is. Crazy the stuff they came up with back in the olden days.

[@dirtywashedupsparkle]

Despite Malcolm Gladwell's insinuations, this just shows how complicated a problem it is to calculate an accurate hit on something, especially in the days of WWII. Norden's device may have been affected by factors they hadn't accounted for such as the weather, the altitude and speed of the plane in use, etc but they had already taken a lot into account before that.

[@normfreilinger5655]

Amazing ! Mechanical computer .

[@markbuterbuagh4971]

My dad designed the mounting configuration for the Norten Gunsite for the B24 for Navy use to drop bomb's on sub's.

[@SuperScottCrawford]

Your name is similar to Mark Mothersbaugh, the lead singer of Devo.

[@kaptainkaos1202]

@@SuperScottCrawford and also the creator of music for the Rugrats show.

[@SuperScottCrawford]

@@kaptainkaos1202 Along with quite a few movie soundtracks. M&M is becoming the next Danny Elfman. Not that he had to.

[@Topcat1952]

I see now why laser guided bombs are probably easier to deliver to the target.

[@sciencecompliance235]

And even more complex instruments than this bombsight.

[@DavidFMayerPhD]

Despite this marvelous technology (for the time), overall accuracy was around ONE PERCENT. In other words, when attacking a point target, 99% of the bombs MISSED. Clearly, improvements in accuracy paid great dividends.

[@pter7531]

Well, they always hit something ...

[@jimbienkowski7857]

it's all well and good in the video, but circumstances changed when you're 20,000 feet up in -30 temps in an unpressurized airplane with fighter planes buzzing around and guys with cannons trying to kill you. Oh, and trying to keep formation and not collide or hit the plane below you with your bombs.

[@mclare9817]

I also was somewhat dismayed at WW2 accuracy stats... But then this is where the realty of a given situation affects Theory.

[@DavidFMayerPhD]

@@jimbienkowski7857 I am NOT being critical of Allied air forces. It was the technology of the time. No guided bombs. No GPS. No computers. Allied airmen did a magnificent job with the tools that they were given.

[@jimbienkowski7857]

Never took it that way. My point is that in many cases things that work well in tests sometimes work not so well faced with actual use in the real world. Want to make a modern super accurate missile or bomb ineffective? If you're an insurgent with a 23 mm AA gun on a truck, just force civilians to be all around it. Brutal but simple. That wouldn't have worked in WW2. There's always something the other side comes up with to counter your threat

[@normfreilinger5655]

So the smoke screen layed out by the enemy on the ground helps determine wind speed and direction !!??

[@mdjawaideqbal2941]

No, that's what ingenious about this device. The device determines wind speed AND direction when you keep the target centered in the scope. The concept is: the aircraft is suspended in the wind and is moved about by the wind. So if you can use a fixed reference on the ground, you can determine the wind speed. I am not the best explainer but just tried to give you the zest of it. Search for BIF (bombardier information file). It has great details on norden bombsight and will clear all your doubts.

[@phantomcruizer]

This is a very informative video. Would be nice to learn how WWll submarine's fire control worked. Thanks.

[@yetanother9127]

It was actually quite similar to this in some respects. The firing solution is the gyro angle, that is, the angle to which the torpedo turns after launch in order to intersect the target's course at the right time to score a hit, much like how the Norden bombsight releases the bombs when the sight has reached a certain angle. However, there is also the problem that, unlike enemy hangars or factories on the ground, a submarine's targets tend to also be moving, and torpedoes are slow enough that they're pretty much guaranteed to miss if you just fire them straight at the target. For an accurate firing solution, you need the target's bearing, range, course angle, and speed. Bearing is easy enough; just turn the periscope to line up with the target, and take note of the angle to port or starboard that the periscope is pointing. Range can be calculated using an instrument called a stadimeter inside the periscope; basically, it measures the angle from the top of the target ship to the waterline, and compares it to the target ship's known height in your target recognition handbook. (Enemy ship's heights aren't always known with certainty, so there may be a bit of guesswork involved.) Course angle (also known as angle-on-bow) is tricky; you can estimate it using the pictures in your target recognition handbook, but it can also be calculated using a kind of circular slide rule called an "attack disk" whose operation is beyond the scope of my knowledge. It's basically the angle from the target's bow to the submarine, which allows you to determine the direction the target is moving relative to your sub. Speed can be calculated by keeping your periscope lined up with the target, and timing how long it takes for the target to travel a certain number of degrees, then comparing it to the known range and course angle using a bit of trigonometry. Once you've got all these values, they can be entered into a type of mechanical computer called a TDC (Torpedo Data Computer). American TDCs were the most advanced, since they had the ability to give a constantly-updated predicted firing solution as the target moves, whereas TDCs of other countries only spat out one-time firing solutions and had to be re-figured if the target ship moved too much before firing. The TDC combined all the above data with additional known variables such as torpedo speed, sub's heading, sub's speed, fore vs. aft launches (subs had torpedo tubes pointing in both directions), and spread angle for salvo shots. The result was the angle that the torpedo had to turn left or right in order to hit the target, which was input into each torpedo's steering gear using a kind of spindle-socket arrangement inside the tube. All this becomes much, much easier when you introduce sonar to the equation; the first ping gives you the bearing and range instantly (that being its purpose), and the speed and course angle can be calculated geometrically by taking multiple pings.

[@I_Cunt_Spell]

A lot of trigonometry. And I mean A LOT!

[@rpbajb]

Before the Torpedo Data Computer was invented, submariners calculated the fire control problem using a type of slide rule called an "is-was". During the attack the crew would input where the target "was" to find where the target "is", in order to know where and when to fire the torpedo at the proper angle. It required the Skipper to keep a mental picture of the entire changing tactical situation. Not an easy thing to do. The TDC was a huge improvement.

[@hatuletoh]

"Hi! I'm you're new bombedier! My name's Billy, but for some reason...everyone calls me 'dead meat'."

[@HouseholdDog]

Like trig class with flak.

[@steveskouson9620]

I only have one issue. The digital clock rectangle blocks the view of important details. Wish we could toggle it on and off somehow. steve

[@danield679]

I think that’s his way of making a watermark on his video that he has cleaned up from the original film. I’m not sure mind, but think this is the case. If you buy his version then I doubt the clock will be there

[@PeriscopeFilm]

Here's the issue: Tens of thousands of films like this one were destroyed and many others are at risk. Our company preserves these precious bits of history one film at a time. How do we afford to do that? By selling them as stock footage to documentary filmmakers and broadcasters. If we did not have a counter, we could not afford to post films like this on online, and no films would be preserved. It's that simple. So we ask you to bear with the watermark and timecodes. So, in the past we tried many different systems including placing our timer at the bottom corner of our videos. What happened? Unscrupulous KZbin users downloaded our vids, blew them up so the timer was not visible, and re-posted them as their own content. We had to use content control to have the videos removed and shut down these channels. It's hard enough work preserving these films and posting them, without having to deal with these kind of issues.

[@davidgreen5099]

@@PeriscopeFilm seems fair to me. Thanks.

[@Animalwon]

Periscope Films - I don't fault you for marking your videos in this way. Considering those unscrupulous youtubers are downloafing your cointent, too bad you could insert some code into the video youtubers wouldn't see, then at a flick of a switch you could eliminate all their illegal content, at once.

[@danielallison1925]

@@PeriscopeFilm Now we know where to direct our anger. Thank you for posting the films for free.

[@geoben1810]

When you take everything into account, it did contribute, at a bloody cost in men and equipment, to ending the war in the U.S.'s favor.

[@mode1charlie170]

A brilliant mechanism....off to wikipedia to learn more...

[@thethirdman225]

Brilliant technology but almost useless in practice.

[@chlova05]

Came here to understand this machine while reading the Bomber Mafia

[@rtod4]

I remember a Hogan's Heroes episode that featured the Norden

[@billbright1755]

An object in motion tends to stay in motion until acted upon by an external force. Calculating the various types of such forces is the job of the bombardment engineer. May you always be elsewhere when the Americans bomb.

[@thethirdman225]

No matter which side you're on.

[@davidworsley7969]

The main problem I think is the visibility over the target-Industrial areas in Europe at that time was very poor for most of the time-Clear skis were rare..

[@Robb1977]

In Europe it was visibility issues, and in the pacific it was wind sheer. A tool leagues ahead of its time for low altidue bombing... and hampered by the unpredictability of high altitude bombing. I wonder how much of its secrecy was for morale. Making the Americans assume they had a secret weapon might make the axis think the same way. If a bombardier went through so much trouble to disable his sights then they had to be amazing.... considering how much of the war effort was dedicated to diversion I wonder if thats why they maintained its secrecy for so long.

[@yetanother9127]

@@Robb1977 The Germans were actually aware of the Norden Bombsight as early as 1938 in spite of the secrecy, but they didn't really think of it as a huge innovation, considering their own computing bombsights (BZG2 and Lotfernrohr 3) to be equal to the task. The Norden's real innovations, the autopilot and stabilization systems, were later copied in the design of the Lotfernrohr 7 bombsight.

[@Robb1977]

@@yetanother9127 they were aware of it, but I still wonder if America was keeping the concept shrouded in mystery to make the germans wonder "did we get the real one or was it a dud?" Basically the secret was out but you could still pretend it wasn't. Considering all the false documentation, intentionally intercepted messages, and other things sent to confuse the german war effort, I wouldn't be surprised if they kept hyping up the Norden system to make the germans and Japanese waste valuable time, effort, and money into something that effectively didn't exist, or that they already knew. Considering the Norden was good, but not good in its role, I was just wondering if the USA overhyping it was merely propaganda or intentional misdirection. Sort of like the fake invasion plans (which caused paranoia in the nazi high command) that kept washing up in Spain.

[@thethirdman225]

The main problem was finding the target in any weather.

[@davidworsley7969]

@@thethirdman225 I don't think so-Navigation was very good but seeing a target and hitting it -That's the problem.

[@reddevilparatrooper]

Respect to these Bombardiers. These are like aerial riflemen to bomb the enemy. The only difference is they have a bigger shot group than an infantryman in combat shooting at a German, Japanese, or Italian soldiers in actual combat. These Bombardiers with their aim and the bombs they drop are more lethal than an Infantryman and much more devastating than the artilleryman behind his gun. Kill the enemy until there is peace.

[@martyzielinski2469]

reddevilparatrooper --And you know that peace can only be won........when you’ve blown em all to kingdom come! Where have I heard that before?

[@wpatrickw2012]

Was this film classified during World War 2?

[@PeriscopeFilm]

Yes. These training films were "restricted".

[@trafficsignal101]

That must have been "Top Secret" back then!

[@lenyfreeman3807]

It was. I read that when they had to bail out, they'd throw the bomb sight out.

[@astronautindisguise]

It was, every bombardier of a B-17 was required to keep watch over they’re bombsight if it was left in the aircraft for any reason. The only other people who were allowed to interact with the bombsight on a grounded B-17 were the bombsight technicians who were specifically train to handle and maintain them. They even kept them locked is a specific armory on base as if they were any other weapon.

[@robertshoemaker6204]

God Bless American Ingenuity!!!!

[@mytech6779]

And that is how you exceed 20% of your payload on target, maybe even 40%.

[@TheFulcrum2000]

If you look it up even with this sighting method less then 20% of the bombs dropped would hit inside a 1,000 ft (300 m) radius circle around the target point.

[@yetanother9127]

​@@TheFulcrum2000 The actual numbers are more like 50% inside 75 feet from 4,000 feet altitude (under ideal non-combat conditions; much less under real conditions). The "20% inside 1,000 feet" figure is for high-altitude bombing, which was outside the Norden's capabilities. (At the time, it was outside _every_ bombsight's capabilities.) In any case, while the accuracy of the Norden bombsight was very good below 20,000 feet (which is what it was designed and tested for), it wasn't anything spectacular or unheard of compared to the other computing gunsights then available; its real innovations were the autopilot and stabilization systems.

[@allgood6760]

This is like how I play Pool.. get your aim right and then boom! 👍

[@HeathInClearLake]

Would love to see a Norden simulator

[@rags417]

I was waiting for the narrator to include tips on adjusting for barometric pressure and temperature, but it looks like that was beyond the sight's capability. One interesting insight - German attempts to mask their cities with smoke probably hurt more than it helped - nothing helps sighting like knowing exactly the ground wind speed and direction !

[@dukecraig2402]

That wasn't beyond the sights input, and the Germans lighting off smoke pots to obscure targets most certainly did affect bomb accuracy just as the dirt and debris thrown into the air above the target from the first bomber box had an affect on bomb accuracy for the following boxes, first box bomb accuracy average was 83% bombs on target, by the 5th box it was down around 25% bombs on target average for that reason, just to get your head wrapped around that, every 500 lb general purpose bomb displaced and threw into the air above the target enough dirt to fill 13 dump trucks, each B17 on a deep penetration mission dropped twelve 500 lb general purpose bombs which equals 156 dump trucks worth of dirt in the air above the target per B17, sixteen bombers in a box equals 2,496 dump trucks worth of dirt thrown into the air above the target that the 2nd bomber box had to sight through, every following box add that much more, there's USAAF reports from the war and after on bombing accuracy and what affected it, on the subject of dirt and debris from bombs that following boxes had to sight through they have a series of photographs from a bomb run taken on a day with 0/10 cloud cover (meaning absolutely none), the first picture taken from through the bomb bay of a B17 in the first box shows everything on the ground clear as a bell, the next photograph is taken through the bomb bay of the lead bomber of the 2nd box which clearly shows the target becoming obscured, by the 5th box not only can you not see the target but you also can't see any kind of reference points anywhere in the area, everything is totally obscured leaving the lead bombardiers in every box from that point on with only the ability to aim at the center of all the dirt and debris that's in the air above the target, that's why by the 5th box accuracy had degraded from 83% to 25%. Bombardiers didn't need indications from the ground for wind speed and direction, there was an instrument that the navigator had access to that measured it that he conveyed the information to the bombardier from. Despite hack aviation historians claiming otherwise the Norden bombsight was incredibly accurate and was the most accurate bomb sighting system in the world not only during WW2 but for years after, it was still in use during the Vietnam War. The problem with claiming that the Norden bombsight was inaccurate like all the supposed authorities on the USAAF's WW2 bombing campaign do is that they include results that are beyond the control of the Norden bombsight, like the fact that 65% of the bombs dropped by the 8th Air Force weren't aimed using the Norden bombsight, instead they were aimed using the H2X ground scanning radar system especially during the winter months when overcast skies prevented optical aiming, needless to say it was far less accurate than optical sighting but for whatever reason all those supposed authorities on the subject just want to blame every bomb that missed it's target on the Norden bombsight, it's obvious that they ignore factors like the 65% of bombs not even being aimed with the Norden bombsight and others like lead navigators flying entire formations to the wrong target resulting in them getting bombed instead of the intended target and them working it into the math as a "zero bombs on target" factor which of course would affect the average if you do the math that way, even if the bombardiers absolutely plastered what they were actually aiming at, but that's human error and has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not the Norden bombsight was accurate, the people who make the claim that it wasn't are either too lazy to do all the research, like with the 65% of the bombs actually being aimed using the H2X system which leads me to believe that in some cases those supposed authorities on the subject don't even know about the use of the H2X system, or they're just biased in the first place and will do or say anything just to bash the USAAF's bombing campaign in WW2, most likely to attempt making their own country's bombing campaign look better than it actually was. In a nutshell the basis they use to claim the Norden bombsight was inaccurate would be the same thing as claiming that the M1 rifle is inaccurate based on a post WW2 report that showed that for every enemy soldier killed by an M1 rifle 387 shots had been fired by them, then combine that with another post WW2 report that shows the average distance between infantry engaging each other was 60 yards, therefore that means that the M1 rifle is only capable of hitting a man sized target at 60 yards once out of every 387 shots, well any of us who own M1 rifles will tell you that's nonsense, an out of the rack service grade M1 will consistently shoot 2½" ten shot groups at 100 yards, but their mathematical gymnastics show they're only capable of hitting a man sized target at 60 yards once out of every 387 shots and "they've got the official records to prove it". Using the logic they do to claim the Norden bombsight was inaccurate doesn't speak to it's actual accuracy, it only speaks to the conditions under which it was used, which is still nonsense since they like including results from the 65% of the time it wasn't even used. An example of how accurate the Norden bombsight truly was can be seen with the results from the Enola Gay, it released it's bomb traveling at over 300 MPH from an altitude of 31,000 ft, that's almost 6 miles above the earth's surface going faster than a Formula 1 car can go, it had to be released 3 miles before it was over the target and took 45 seconds to fall until it detonated, and it detonated over a spot that was just 800 feet from it's aiming point, and that was in the 1940's which was the dawn of strategic bombing, nobody else in the world aside from the USAAF could do that at the time and until the advent of laser and GPS guided precision bombing the fact is bombing accuracy really didn't improve much beyond that.

[@Steve1734]

Despite the propoganda, the Norden never solved the problems of wind blowing in different directions and at different speeds and heights as the bombs fell from high altitude from which the Americans insisted on flying. They were paranoid about enemy fighters but official stats show, 80% of American bomber losses were from flak. In 1945, the Norden, which could only input one level of cross wind was replaced with the British Sperry which could have three variables and could be radar guided. The British used Mosquito's as target markers and they also measured the wind at 5, 10 and 15,000 feet over the target and radioed it back. So their bombing accuracy was infinitely better. The other factor was that the British flew in at night at as low as 100ft on a random dogleg course and often had a bomb run that came from the east. Whereas the Americans flew straight in on a fixed course at 20,000 feet in a fixed box of bombers wuith the lead bomber navigating. So they could not make course corrections easily. They were sitting targets. The Germans put up a box of radar guided flak in a corresponding box through which the Americans had to fly. It was carnage. But they would not change.

[@NikovK]

Would they have still been 80% if they attacked at lower altitudes? At high altitude, only the very heavy AA guns can reach the bombers. Lower altitude, more flak from the medium or light guns, plus the fighters. Germany was terrified of the B-29 because they couldn't reach that altitude, and were tremendously relieved to learn the B-29 was going to the Pacific.

[@martyzielinski2469]

Technik Meister -maybe the high altitude helps explain WHY ONLY 20% of losses were the result of fighters.....

[@patrickmcshane7658]

Frontal assault?

[@stevek8829]

American bomber altered course frequently to make it harder for flack. The flack gunners had to shoot miles ahead of the bombers to allow for the altitude. The only time the bombers had to maintain course was on final bomb run. Your claim that the British bombers flew at 100 feet is interesting.

[@patrickeh696]

LMAO! Sperry was a US company and produced the Sperry sight which PREDATED the Norden bomb sight. NOT A BRITISH PRODUCT

[@kh884488]

It's kind of amazing to think that Louis Zamporini likely watched this exact training film.

[@rowmagnvs]

Now, look here, see

[@davidkelly5899]

Absolute bravery of aircrew. Flying exploding coffins.

[@reallyhappenings5597]

"Major, I don't know what the hell you're talking bout..."

[@tobygoodguy4032]

Hard to believe that Captain Fred Derry knew how to use the site and yet when he got out his skill set was relegated to a soda jerk. I'd like to know if today's barista would even understand the math.

[@paulborys8147]

From the movie "Best Years Of Our Lives"

[@burtvhulberthyhbn7583]

The difficulty is knowing air speed and ground speed, altitude and drift.

[@thethirdman225]

The difficulty was not the sight but making sure you bombed the right target.

[@andyoncam1]

There is an interesting video here on youtube ( kzbin.info/www/bejne/i2enZqWOl7J1gdE ) that goes into some depth as to how useless the Nordon actually was. It mentions the spurious 'secrecy' surrounding the bomb sight. It was well known in official circles inc the USAAF, that Germany and Japan had gained access to one and had decided it wasnt all that accurate.

[@keithammleter3824]

The link you provided is to Flight Dojo's video. Don't take any notice of it. He's confused technical accuracy with operational accuracy and made many other serious errors. Technical accuracy is what an aiming system can do under specified conditions. Operation accuracy is what people actually achieve under operational conditions. The technical accuracy of the Norden was excellent. But, doing all that's needed on an actual run when the enemy is shooting at you, the target is obscured by smoke, and/or the enemy has erected decoy target is something else. It's a bit like trying to make a precise measurement with a vernier caliper. The technical accuracy is 0.01 mm. But could you always get that accuracy while on a lurching truck while I am yelling right in your ear?

[@andyoncam1]

@@keithammleter3824 I bow to your greater knowledge on the subject.

[@murphman66]

does the toggler actually take over the control of the plane on a bombing run or does the bombing sight just just communicate with the piilot?

[@markusdaxamouli5196]

Love these snappy talking Narrators..and that accent..reminds me of a Gangster ya see, none of that funny buisness.

[@A-G-F-]

Its the Mid Attlantic accent

[@SquillyMon]

I know right...that tone and accent. However in this instance there's not much funny going on when you are literally dropping bombs on people.

[@jamesanderton344]

There’s a war on Mac! Unless you want to see Tojo marching up Pennsylvania Avenue, you’d better get on the ball!

[@chepito2443]

Aww clever your on here also

[@alexwilliamson1486]

A great sight if you were dropping bombs on a lovely bombing range in the USA...clear skies and no clouds, no 350mph single seat German fighters hitting you with 20/30mm explosive cannon shells...and no flak, bursting salvos ahead of you so you fly right into it...

[@jamespaulow5229]

I am.

[@ramal5708]

The only piece of technology that the German intelligence has recognized in WWII

[@Antares2]

It's kind of interesting that they made this incredibly complex optical and mechanical device to aim bombs... and the proceed to do carpet bombings with thousands of planes covering vast areas. Big wide bomber formations where all planes dropped at the same time in a big overlapping pattern of long lines of bomb impacts. And not just for revenge-bombing cities, they did this even when bombing specific targets like factories in the Ruhr and such. Seems kinda pointless to use a super complicated, super expensive and super secret multigyro telescope when a more basic sight would probably be just fine considering the "shotgun" style of bombing they did. And no matter how precisely you account for drift in the particular wind layer your plane is in, it says nothing about wind layers below you that can make the bomb miss by a LOT. It's a fascinating piece of kit, but I am not sure it was such a big game changer as the propaganda would have you believe.

[@ziggy2shus624]

Generally in a bombing flight only the lead plane bombardier would use the bomb site. The lead plane would drop its bombs and the other planes would then drop their bombs. In a flight of about 30 planes there would be a significant lag between the first plane dropping its bombs and the last plane. So, a lot of the bombs went here, there and everywhere. When the Philippines where over run by the Japanese in early 1942 they acquired the Norden bombsights from B-17s.

[@stretcherbearer1350]

Guess it was just get rid of the bombs as near to target as you could if the plane with the Norden got shot down.

[@ziggy2shus624]

@@stretcherbearer1350 All the planes had the Norden bomb site, but the standard procedure was the lead plane would drop its bombs and all the other planes would then drop theirs.

[@stretcherbearer1350]

@@ziggy2shus624 Thank's Ziggy, kind'a thought that might be the case but wasn't sure.

[@wonniewarrior]

What about the movement or rotation of the earth itself as the plane flies ? I understand the earth rotation is factored into artillery ballistics.

[@robertbilling6266]

The bomb is in flight for a relatively short time, and the earth doesn't have time to turn significantly. Good point, and significant at longer ranges.

[@CaptainDangeax]

the wind turns at the same rate the earth. Correction done. You may check it by yourself though, throwing a cobble in a profound enough pit. No wind, you'll se the stone hit the side of the pit.

[@theoriginalrabbithole]

The Sperry was a far superior bombsight but backroom deals secured the contract for Norden even though that bombsite NEVER worked as well as it's reputation and secrecy implied and numerous U.S. servicemen were needlessly killed attempting daytime precision bombing runs because that famous Norden bombsite never delivered the hits it promised. LeMay switched over to mass carpet bombing towards the war's end just to decrease the amount of bombs wasted missing the target. There's other YT videos on this.

[@toddcooper2563]

The brains behind the Norden Bombsight was astonishing, considering they didn't have the aid of modern computers. Imagine if those same people had access to today's technology; the feats they could accomplish! Today, we depend on the genius minds of yesterday, when they had to figure things out by the seat of their pants.

[@gobblox38]

They used what equates to a mechanical computer. Those same people using modern technology (assuming they've been properly trained) would likely have similar results to modern users.

[@thethirdman225]

@@gobblox38 *_"Imagine if those same people had access to today's technology; the feats they could accomplish!"_* The Norden bombsight might have been an example of near-perfect engineering but as a contributor to the war effort, it wasn't that good. The difficulty over Europe wasn't hitting the target. It was finding the target in the first place. Today's computers would make no difference to that. These days we use things like GPS, which obviates the need for a bombsight at all.

[@tyroniousyrownshoolacez2347]

No wonder 1 of every 25 bombs hit the designated target in the European theatre. Fact.

[@PointyTailofSatan]

Funny thing is that the sight turned out to be no more accurate in real use than older and simpler bombsights, despite the greater sophistication of the Norden. So the accuracy of the Norden was more mythical than factual.

[@granskare]

did the norden hit the target accurately?

[@htroberts]

Pre-war demonstrations had CEPs (the size of a circle centered on the target that circumscribes half of the dropped bombs) of 35-75' from altitudes of 4,000 to 20,000', compared to CEP of 1200' for predecessor sights. I've not seen published estimates for accuracy under combat conditions, but I'm sure they were much worse. Norden sights continued to be used in the Korean and Vietnam wars.

[@thethirdman225]

In practice, no. For a start, it couldn't see through clouds. On those occasions, the USAAF used H2X - a radar bombing system based on the British H2S - for area bombing instead. Secondly, bombsights weren't the biggest problem. Finding the target was. The RAF wasn't the only air force to bomb the wrong city.

[@Mtlmshr]

Confusing for sure!

[@EnergeticWaves]

Remember kids, if you look like a movie star when they have a war you can make movies about war stuff for the people that are going to be shot at.

[@gowdsake7103]

Expensive, overcomplicated and quite honestly no better than any other sight of the time and not even close to the sperry

[@DrumToTheBassWoop]

If maths was taught in military scenarios, a lot more boys would be interested In it I reckon. 😎

[@bertcanepa5651]

Used the Norden sight in areal photo squadron, B-24's.....VJ-61 '52-'54 NAS Miramar San Diego CA. Coupled with old rheostat rigged auto pilot.......

[@ganooggonunderwood4480]

Need to know wind speed on the different attitude. Can have even different directions.... That's why bombing not so exactly

[@susic1819]

And to think there were pretty much no electronics and no computers involved with the aiming

[@thomasfrengkyadi88]

Come here after read bomber Mafia by Malcolm

[@HondoTrailside]

Wasn't this thing a failure because: 1) It was based on the false promise that accurate bombing would be effective as a principle tactic; 2) Pursuing "1" in Europe led to the highest rate of casualties in any US force. And while all casualties are tragic, you were killing off 10s of thousands of people able enough to master this stuff, and physically and mentally strong enough to do the job. That isn't a criticism of the brilliance of the invention, but people get carried away with shinny toys, often with tragic results.

[@schizy]

The axis powers would have paid dearly for this information in 1942-3

[@wood6393]

@me hee The first intact one they acquired was on March 3rd, 1944. A/C #42-38017, a B-17 named "Lulu".

[@yetanother9127]

The Germans actually got the plans for it in 1938--look up the Duquesne spy ring. They considered it to be similar enough to their existing mechanical bombsights to not be worth copying, though they did implement parts of it--the autopilot linkage and stabilization systems--into their Lotfernrohr 7 bombsight.

[@ThisOLmaan]

yeah i dont think id been ablt to be an Air Bomber can follow, a Tanker Yes id be down to Tank

[@bboobb1122334455]

I had always heard these sights were “the shit”. Seems now the word is they “were shit”.

[@jpschlecht6007]

“On your mission” or the companies mission

[@Shibagaesski]

So planes been drifting since bombing

[@epiendless1128]

9:25 - The target looks a bit too much like the British flag for my liking.

[@unclestuka8543]

What do you expect, its an American bombsight ! all UK vehicles in Iraq had large Union Jacks on them, and got whacked.

[@clintmyers1583]

the bombsight cost MORE than the entire Atomic bomb program Money very well spent

[@kaylaandjimbryant8258]

closer to one third to one half. iirc, it was 1.5 billion 1940 dollars. the manhattan project was closer to 3.5 to 4 billion dollars. it was a huge priority project, but manhattan got more money.

[@jaggerjards7236]

@clint myers - nah - it didn't work in combat conditions. I've posted a Ted Talk link kzbin.info/www/bejne/fqHMi4esobyraMk

[@edwardhogan1877]

Why so expensive?

[@BackyardBeeKeepingNuevo]

Now if the hypotenuse is opposite the adjacent....Oh f’k it Bombs Away!

[@thethirdman225]

A piece of perfect technology that was almost useless.

[@stevenhoman2253]

It wasn't very secret. The Luftwaffe ran trials, and decided they didn't need it.

[@ABrit-bt6ce]

Germany decided a second world war was a good idea. We didn't need it. :)

[@yetanother9127]

It was _supposed_ to be a state secret, but the plans got passed to the Germans in 1938. They deemed it to be not a significant enough improvement over their existing mechanical bombsights to justify rushing it into production, which is fair enough. The Norden's real innovations were nothing to do with the sight itself, and everything to do with the autopilot and stabilization systems, which the Germans did eventually adopt in the form of the Lotfernrohr 7 bombsight.

[@sbf6558m]

youtube's early days...

[@azi6268]

Anyone came here after reading "unbroken" ?

[@timdegraw1784]

I love that they only hired full deaf-mute actors to do this film with...

[@asherfagan4472]

Dose any1 no how much there worth I have 1 in Australia

[@mencken8]

This bombsight may have represented the state of the art in WWII, but the hype about it was mostly that: high altitude precision bombing then was very ineffective. Arthur Harris, the head of British bomber command, realized that area bombing was the answer, and that is when the bomber streams of the 8th Air Force and the RAF began to have an impact.

[@thethirdman225]

The problem was not bombsights. The problem early in the war was finding the target. The British estimated that before the advent of systems like Gee, only one bomb in a hundred got within five miles of the intended aiming point. But Gee got them to the city. It didn't guarantee that they would be over the target. The Americans believed they could bomb by day, enabling simpler navigation but the simple fact was that from a base in England, there was no way of knowing what the weather was like over the target, much less whether it could even be found. When the target was socked in, the Americans relied on H2X, based on the H2S system invented by the British. This was a radar bombing system that gave an oblique picture of the target area. From there on, it was blind bombing, which, in fact, was only as accurate as area bombing anyway. Harris was not the one who "realised" that area bombing was the way to go. He was a devotee of Trenchard and area bombing was always going to be the strategy. Since this was also espoused by Giulio Douhet and Billy Mitchell in the 1920s, it was hardly limited to the RAF. In fact, the Germans were adherents of Douhet too. A precis of this nonsense was that with enough bombers and enough bombs, the enemy could not prevent their population being attacked and after a time law and order would break down and the government would be obliged to sue for peace. Early in the war, Sir Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt, who was AOC of Bomber Command, expressed serious concerns about bombing targets where civilian casualties might result. Harris had no such concerns. Neither did a lot of the British public. By 1945, Douhet and Mitchell, as well as the principal exponent of their hypothesis - Harris - had been thoroughly discredited. Precision bombing in WWII was a fantasy.

[@reallyhappenings5597]

Well, I guess I'd be a gunner!

[@gobblox38]

You only have to remember radians of lead based on the approach vector of your target.

[@princeofcupspoc9073]

1:20 500 feet? You'd be so lucky. High level precision bombing was a total sham. That's why they turned to carpet fire bombing by the end of the war. 500 feet huh. You'd be lucking to get within twice that. I'm not saying it wasn't a good bomb sight. It was a GREAT bombsite, under controlled test conditions. In terms of being effective in WWII? Not a chance.

[@yetanother9127]

It was a good deal better than what came before, even if it didn't live up to the initial projections. No plan survives contact with the enemy, and all that. Under 20,000 feet (which is what it was originally designed and tested for), it worked great.

[@thethirdman225]

@@yetanother9127 *_"It was a good deal better than what came before, even if it didn't live up to the initial projections."_* Better is as better does. The problem in WWII wasn't hitting the target. It was finding the target in the first place. The British weren't the only air force to bomb the wrong city.

[@SOffenbach]

X will never equal Y.