The Biggest Lie of WWII? The Myth of the Norden Bombsight

I remember a comment from a WWII historian: “when flying at such altitudes, with strong winds changing direction and speed with altitude, you were lucky if your bombs at least hit the ground”

I grew up coming of age in the mid-seventies, and studied the "norden bombsite" extensively, in the late sixties, and early seventies, marveling at the incredible accuracy supposedly achieved. I served as a marine, two decades, working in avionics, communications, navigation, and long questioned how said bombsite could be "that accurate". I find it incredible I'm finding out my misgivings as a teen, were entirely warranted only as I turn sixty five.

Dad was a Norden bombsight technician 7th Air Force, 11th bomb group, 98th Squadron, heavy. Gray Geese. Island hopping pacific. I have his toolkit, or what's left of it. He got in trouble for returning 5 at the end of the war instead of the 4 he was issued. He made one from parts, and they said it was impossible. He never spoke about them much.

I visited the battleship Alabama a while back and the complexity of the mechanical computers and ranger finders was eye opening…WW2 technology was surprisingly more advanced than most of us realize. No fancy microchips or circuits, just crazy math using gears and dials could accurately send shells 20 miles to a target.

My father was a B-24 tail gunner in the 450th Bomb Group based in Italy. He flew 35 bombing missions over Europe. He said at low level a B-24 could hit an individual target, like a train, with excellent accuracy, but at high altitude they were lucky to hit a target the size of a factory with any bombs at all. Since Dad was always looking at where the bombers just came from, he was in the perfect place to evaluate bombing effectiveness. He said one time his bomb group pulverized the target so thoroughly they received a Presidential Unit Citation for that mission. He also admitted that hitting the target from high altitude was pretty rare and due mostly to luck.

When I was a senior in high school word came out that the air force had dumped thousands of Norden bomb sights into the army/navy surplus market. My high school physics teacher sent a friend of mine and I on a mission to acquire a sight. The objective was to acquire the internal gears and lenses for use in physics experiments. We spent a day visiting every army/navy store in Detroit and it's suburbs. We were unsuccessful as the word was out and the sights were sold the minute they had been put on the shelf. Despite the lack of success we had a great day skipping school to rumage through old military equipment.

When I was a kid we had a friend who retired as LT Colonel in 1964. He flew B24 bombers in WWII, Spotter planes in Korea, and cargo planes in early Vietnam years. In the late 1980’s a local air museum contacted him looking for WWII memorabilia. He asked me and a friend to help him drag a wooden crate out of his attic which contained a complete Norden Bomb Sight. Along with other boxes full of flight gear and other items.

My dad was trained on the bombsight in 1944 and at 30,000 feet he realized that tens of thousands of Japanese civilians were burning below his B-29. He began to drink alcoholically in 1945. He drank until his death in 1996.

This shows that flak was a lot more useful than it appears. It forced bombers above the practical altitude of bombsights, and forced the bombers into evasive manoeuvres, further reducing their effectiveness.

Bill Myers, our high school principal, was a bombardier during the war, flying what he considered suicide missions over German held Europe during WWII. He said the Norden bombsight was ineffective, and their casualties were greater than the casualties of the kamikaze pilots because the kamikazes didn't have enough planes or fuel to fly. He mentioned the bomber crews lost 60% of their men; they were in his words suicide missions. Flying in formation at one altitude he thought was one of their mistakes, as the flak guns could be trained on a formation flying at a certain altitude.

I worked maintenance on Air Force analog computers back in the day. They were amazing machines, in their day, but their accuracy depended directly on the skill of the technician that “aligned” the electro-mechanical section. And I can tell you that many of my fellow Techs simply didn’t “get” analog computers, so their work was always less than the ideal. It’s also important to recognize that these were mechanical, so things like gear “slop” and precision in the bearings used to position shafts holding the gears was also a huge factor in accuracy. As for the winds, well, I’m also a former skydiver, and I can attest to the challenges of “hitting” a target from altitude. The layers of air over the earth often move in different directions. The only way skydivers can deal with that issue is to either drop a wind “indicator” streamer over the target and watch where it hits, or, to sit in the door and watch the changing aircraft drift during the climb to altitude. This job of getting the aircraft into the right position for a jump run was called “spotting”, and, in my experience, few were any good at it precisely because of the variables. Flying in to a target area with no opportunity to “observe” the differing wind directions would make hitting the target a very unpredictable exercise. Add to that the manufacturing and alignment variances in the bomb sight hardware and I find it very easy to believe the Norden’s accuracy was a result of propaganda. After all, how often do you really believe the government has ever been honest with you? Personally, I believe that’s why they invented the idea of classified information… so they could justify lying to everyone.

I beleived the whole ball of wax up to this very moment. I was alive for most of WWII, and some of my earliest memories were post WWII in Manila where my dad was stationed. We went to accompany him there in 1946 through 1947 after my brother was born. He was an airdale. Chief metal smith, later renamed structural mechanic. He worked on fighter jets during my entire memory. WWII and after, it was Corsairs, and later Demons (he was Demon Doctor, and I still the patch he gave me). I think he also worked on the Phantoms after the Demons. Of course fighters didn't have said bomb site, so he was probably clueless as well, and me even moreso. You really opened my eyes! Note: I am clueless what he worked on before Corsairs though. I wish he was still here so I could ask him.

My friend's grandpa was a Sperry engineer working on their bombsight under tight security. He later enlisted in the air corps and asked to be a bombsight mechanic. They denied his request because his grandfather was Italian 🤦‍♂️He was short so became a ball turret gunner instead. He had great stories.

Always thought there was a massive anomoly between the legend of the Norden and actual performance. I mean, if you had bombers capable of hitting something the size of a CAR, let alone a 'pickle barrel', then you could quite easily (assuming you didnt get shot down) destroy a marshalling yard/ball bearing factory/oil depot with just 1 bomber - single release, drop one bomb on each factory bay/oil tank etc., and watch the whole site evaporate. But no - they needed formations of up to 1000 bombers just to knock out ONE site..... and still missed regularly.

Wouldn’t exactly call it the biggest lie of ww2….

The myth is still being pushed in the latest WWII series, "Masters of the Air."

Precision bombsights could work well in ideal conditions. But ideal conditions weren’t nearly as common in Europe as in California. And it only works if you actually find the right city. Even at the end of the war, in daylight, bombers were attacking the wrong city. There was one notable mission in 1945 where the USAAF hit Prague instead of Nuremberg.

My dad was a trained WW2 bombardier flying a B-17 for 24 missions from D-Day to 12/24/1944. I asked him if he had used a Norden bomb-sight. He said he had. I asked: “Could you really put one of your bombs in a pickle-barrel?” He replied: “Hardly, we were lucky if we got a bomb within 5 miles of the target!” Further: “When the weather was great we seemed pretty accurate, on bad weather days our bombing was less accurate; to say the least.” My dad, a family doctor , was a fan of truthfulness. He’s in Heaven now. He wouldn’t ever talk about the War until the last four years of his life. I look forward to being with my mom and dad in Heaven in the near future. Thanks for your presentation!

My Grandmother worked as a lens grinder for Bell & Howell and produced lens used on the Norden Bombsite. She gave me a set of lenses all etched and signed by those working together in that department.

Gernany acquired one very early and concluded that is was at least as inaccurate as their own aiming tool. It was kept on a shelf somewhere as a souvenir.