[Milsurplus] Norden Bomb Sight

[Brooke Clarke]

Hi:

There was a (marketing) rule that the Norden could not be left unguarded.  So it was common to remove it from the 
aircraft and store it in a vault.  I've seen B&W photos of a hall with a number of vaults used for that.
In my opinion a design flaw was that the gyro ran on DC.  That means there were carbon brushes inside the sealed case, 
i.e. carbon particles loose that could get into the bearings.  Note that pretty much all electrical powered gyros use AC 
motors and do not have brushes.

Carpet bombing is the term used when a bomb sight is not used.  As far as I know that's how B-52s are used with iron bombs.

There is quite a bit of modern technology applied to extreme distance bench rest shooting and it's very difficult.  I 
don't think they knew during W.W.II what we know today.  So even if everything worked as they designed it, I don't think 
it could ever work, i.e. hit a moving ship tens of miles away.
https://www.prc68.com/I/FNFAL.shtml#Bal

Note:  As far as I can tell riffling makes the bullet into a gyroscope.  At short ranges that improves accuracy because 
any rotational imbalance is averaged.  But when the barrel is elevated it causes a big problem in that the bullet 
centerline stays parallel to the barrel centerline rather than staying tangent to the flight path like an arrow.  With 
high barrel elevation angles this can result in the bullet being almost at right angles to the trajectory.  Gerald Bull 
understood this and his very accurate long range guns used smooth bores.  Riffling was introduced to keep the bullet in 
the barrel for more time to allow more black powder to burn.  This increased the muzzle velocity and range, which in 
those days was not very far so the barrel was horizontal.  Links on this in the above ballistics article.

I'm reading"Aircraft Versus Submarine in two world wars" by Alfred Price.  The Germans considered centimeter radar and 
discarded the idea because they felt that it would bounce off aircraft and never come back.  So were very surprised when 
an example of the H2S (stinky) cm radar was found.  In the book "Radar Man, a personal history of stealth" by Ed Lovick 
he explains how a flat surface that's many times a wavelength in size works like a mirror.  What the Germans did not get 
is the rounded edges have some part that at right angles to the radar antenna and do show up.  AN equivalent of the 
Radar Cross Section of modern stealth aircraft is comparable to a ball bearing.

-- 
Have Fun,

Brooke Clarke
https://www.PRC68.com
https://www.end2partygovernment.com/2012Issues.html
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