Maury Markowitz
From the Great White North!
- Joined
- 27 February 2014
- Messages
- 187
- Reaction score
- 136
I just found that McFarland's America's Pursuit of Precision Bombing is available on archive.org. Previously I had only seen snippets in Google Books, and reading those always left me scratching my head, which I chalked up to a lack of context. But now I'm reading the early bits, which are what I'm mostly interested in, and... wow, just about everything he says is wrong.
It starts with this description of Scott's first bombsight of 1910. On page 9, he states "It depending on the ability of the pilot to maintain a constant speed and altitude... but ignored the effects of wind and aircraft occilation".
Huh. You see, in the paragraph directly above this statement, he describes how the device calculates the ground speed, which, of course, is used to account for the wind. When I read this, I concluded the author had no idea how any of this worked. And as to the "aircraft occilation" bit, Scott's sight famously used the bombs themselves as a massive pendulum to keep the sights, mounted on a large gimbal in the floor, level to the ground.
Ok, moving on, we get to page 14/15 where he talks about Wimperis' drift sight. He notes that "In the US Army, the Wimpreris was known as the Mark I... or the Mark III... in Navy use." While I don't really know much about the Mark III, the images on the NASM show a wind vector bar (small cylinder under the bar on the left) and the altitude scale as the vertical, which makes this a Course Setting Bomb Sight, not a drift sight. The only bit in common is that Wimperis designed both, which I suspect is the source of confusion in this case. This may be due to a difference between Bombsight, Mark III and Pilot Directing Bombsight, Mark III, but lacking further info that seems unlikely.
Then, on page 17, "like other WWI bomb-aiming... the Michelin did not compensate for wind-caused drift". Well, of course, that is precisely what the Course Setting Bombsight did, which is why it was called the "most important bombsight of WWI", a fact that McFarland appears unfamiliar with despite talking about the CSBS on page 19.
Bah! Humbug!
It starts with this description of Scott's first bombsight of 1910. On page 9, he states "It depending on the ability of the pilot to maintain a constant speed and altitude... but ignored the effects of wind and aircraft occilation".
Huh. You see, in the paragraph directly above this statement, he describes how the device calculates the ground speed, which, of course, is used to account for the wind. When I read this, I concluded the author had no idea how any of this worked. And as to the "aircraft occilation" bit, Scott's sight famously used the bombs themselves as a massive pendulum to keep the sights, mounted on a large gimbal in the floor, level to the ground.
Ok, moving on, we get to page 14/15 where he talks about Wimperis' drift sight. He notes that "In the US Army, the Wimpreris was known as the Mark I... or the Mark III... in Navy use." While I don't really know much about the Mark III, the images on the NASM show a wind vector bar (small cylinder under the bar on the left) and the altitude scale as the vertical, which makes this a Course Setting Bomb Sight, not a drift sight. The only bit in common is that Wimperis designed both, which I suspect is the source of confusion in this case. This may be due to a difference between Bombsight, Mark III and Pilot Directing Bombsight, Mark III, but lacking further info that seems unlikely.
Then, on page 17, "like other WWI bomb-aiming... the Michelin did not compensate for wind-caused drift". Well, of course, that is precisely what the Course Setting Bombsight did, which is why it was called the "most important bombsight of WWI", a fact that McFarland appears unfamiliar with despite talking about the CSBS on page 19.
Bah! Humbug!
