Originally Posted by
Thomas coupling
My conclusion . . . Ultimately, though it was a
PR 'stunt' by the hierarchy in the RAF to remain "engaged" in the action.
I think the mood of the country at the time was
engagement. Had the RAF not offered support then it would have appeared to be disengaged.
From a strategic perspective it achieved the square root of nothing
You have the right to draw that conclusion.
Why did the plan require the bombs to straddle the runway at almost 70 degrees? Surely a more acute angle to the runway direction would have resulted in a greater hit rate?
Look at my post 119 again. I made assumptions of width of 150 feet (adjacent) and bomb spacing of 200 feet (hypotenuse) which gave a maximum cut angle of 45 degrees to ensure at least one hit. Eyeballing the photo above I would guess the angle at nearer 30 degrees. That is calculated as I said on the actual width of the runway and bomb interval in the stick.
Bomb spacing is determined by the release interval with 0.18 seconds being too short for the system, and 0.30 or 0.45 being more likely and the groundspeed of the aircraft. At the medium level bombing heights I guessed at 600 feet per second.
PS:
My sqn considered how it could become engaged. Deployment was ruled out not from a lack of a suitable base but because the distance between airfield friendly to UK was too great and we could not get there. The other option was out the box and we didn't fancy the idea of a limited number of one-way missions (I kid you not it was considered -
briefly)