Originally Posted by
megan
As for accuracy even the famed Norden bomb sight had issues, so I think going out tail first would have little detrimental effect.
The actual performance of the Norden in combat was good some of the time, but rarely great, and often terrible. Several studies revealed that as few as 5 percent of Eighth Air Force bombs fell within 1,000 feet of the target and the average error for 500-pound bombs dropped in Europe was a whopping 1,673 feet. There are examples of many hundreds of bombs aimed at a single small target with only one or two bombs reaching their mark. Some gross errors were even measured in miles.
I alluded to this in an earlier post,there were not that many Norden Bomb Sights available anyway - they were expensive and difficult to manufacture,so Formation Leads/Deputy Leads had Norden Sights and the other Aircraft 'Toggled' their bombs when the Lead Bombardier 'Dropped'.So therefore the Bombing Accuracy would be (at best) the same as the size of the Squadron Formations and of course relying on the navigation/accuracy of the Lead Crews.