Oleg Maddox's Room #1

[Igo kyu]

Originally Posted by proton45

You could be right...but wasn't wind direction (drift) one of the settings on the "Norden bombsight"? I think that the "Jet Stream" was a big issue when they tried to drop bombs over Japan...

That sounds probable. I don't know about the Norden bomb sight, but the aircraft flies in the air, so the windspeed affects the speed or track of the aircraft over the ground, you'd need to allow for that. The only time wind would affect the flight of a bomb other than in that way would be if there was significant wind shear, so the wind at altitude was in a different direction or strength than nearer the ground. It's the latter that I think is probably negligible most of the time.

I don't remember (my memory is terrible) about the jetstream being a problem over Japan. Incendiaries, which were used against Japan, would be much more affected by wind than big iron cased explosive bombs.