Скачать или смотреть B-17 Bombardiers Had to Destroy This Device Before Saving Themselves

Discover the extraordinary story of the Norden bombsight, an 11-pound analog computer that cost $8,000 to manufacture—more than an average American home—and doubled B-17 bomber crew survival rates from 8 missions to 16 by enabling accurate first-pass bombing that reduced time exposed to German flak and fighters. This meticulously researched account reveals how bombardiers swore blood oaths never to let this device fall into enemy hands, carried thermite grenades to destroy it before capture, and how armed guards escorted each of the 50,000 units produced between aircraft and vault in a security operation that treated the bombsight as America's most valuable military secret. From Carl Norden's obsessive engineering that created a mechanical device capable of calculating altitude, airspeed, wind drift, and Earth's rotation to release bombs accurately from 26,000 feet, to Lieutenant Robert Morgan's testimony that the Memphis Belle's Norden "helped us get in and get out" of German airspace faster, to post-war analysis showing that while only 20% of bombs fell within 1,000 feet of aim points this was revolutionary compared to earlier methods measured in miles, the Norden bombsight represented a $400 million investment that genuinely protected bomber crews through technological superiority and proved that precision could save lives even when combat accuracy fell short of test-range promises.

#B17 #WW2 #history #bombardier