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Old 17th Aug 2016, 07:58
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philbky
 
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Depends on what is meant by accuracy. If talking about hitting a particular area then the accuracy was greater than hitting a given specific building or group of buildings etc. The German guidance systems were initially in advance of anything Britain had. By 1942 British methods were in the ascendency due mainly to the decision to take the bombing campaign to the German industrial heartland and the determination of "Bomber" Harris at a time when German raids on Britain had passed their peak.

Both sides had times where targets were missed, sometimes with a large margin of error. The Luftwaffe bombing of Dublin when Liverpool was the target springs to mind and both sides had methods of misleading raiders into dropping bombs on empty countryside.

To effectively hit a small, defined, target took a great deal of training and not a small amount of luck. That is why area bombing was carried out by both sides. The British raids on the dams, Amiens prison, the Tirpitz and the u-boat pens at St Nazaire, where tightly defined targets and aim points were specified, took far more specialised training than that given to crews on the regular bombing sorties over towns and cities.

Later in the war the Allies found that smaller aircraft in small numbers, such as fighter bombers, were effective in destroying specific items such as trains, bridges and less well defended buildings without the need to area bomb with large numbers of heavy bombers and this use became an important tool in the run up to and after D-day.
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