God yes, all the time. Navigation was more of an art than a science back then. And you have to imagine you’re flying quite high to avoid flak, while looking out for targets that might be obscured by cloud cover and where the lights were turned off so as not to present a clear target for said bombers.
Basically, the crew dropping the bombs might be ‘reasonably certain’ they’re hitting the right target, but a few miles here or there can make a lot of difference. You think you’re looking at A, while you’re really flying over B.
I live in the Netherlands, right on the German border. A local village here was bombed by accident on february 15th 1945, because the bomber crew mistook it for a German industrial complex just over the border. They dropped 35 bombs. They luckily ‘only’ killed 2 and injured 7. There’s a yearly memorial.
It’s terrible that it happened, but honestly… you really can’t blame the crew for it.
Yes, Nijmegen got hit almost as bad as Rotterdam (the worst bombing by the germans) and that was also because of allied forces thinking they were flying over germany. It was the 80 year memorial a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, more than a few people died in Nijmegen.
They used to “move” towns by a few km by stringing up lights that matched the pattern of the town’s streetlamps in empty fields a few km away, and then having the actual city blacked out. From 30k feet up, they’d see matching light patterns and assume they were over the target.
The daylight bombing raids were a bit more accurate. You may think that being able to match a map to terrain features sounds relatively easy in a plane that’s flying relatively slowly along a predictable route. But if it’s at all overcast it’s much harder. Then add in flak or enemy fighters distracting you and pulling you away from your maps, and suddenly it’s a lot harder.
But, under ideal conditions, with the Norden bomb sight, the bombers could be surprisingly accurate. The bomb sight adjusted for ground speed, changing winds, and included a primitive auto-pilot and actually steered the plane, and AFAIK it auto-released the bombs at the right time. Hitting the right cluster of buildings from a height of 30k feet with a gravity bomb is fairly impressive. But, under combat conditions that was pretty rare.
God yes, all the time. Navigation was more of an art than a science back then. And you have to imagine you’re flying quite high to avoid flak, while looking out for targets that might be obscured by cloud cover and where the lights were turned off so as not to present a clear target for said bombers.
Basically, the crew dropping the bombs might be ‘reasonably certain’ they’re hitting the right target, but a few miles here or there can make a lot of difference. You think you’re looking at A, while you’re really flying over B.
I live in the Netherlands, right on the German border. A local village here was bombed by accident on february 15th 1945, because the bomber crew mistook it for a German industrial complex just over the border. They dropped 35 bombs. They luckily ‘only’ killed 2 and injured 7. There’s a yearly memorial.
It’s terrible that it happened, but honestly… you really can’t blame the crew for it.
Yes, Nijmegen got hit almost as bad as Rotterdam (the worst bombing by the germans) and that was also because of allied forces thinking they were flying over germany. It was the 80 year memorial a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, more than a few people died in Nijmegen.
Especially with night bombing campaigns.
They used to “move” towns by a few km by stringing up lights that matched the pattern of the town’s streetlamps in empty fields a few km away, and then having the actual city blacked out. From 30k feet up, they’d see matching light patterns and assume they were over the target.
The daylight bombing raids were a bit more accurate. You may think that being able to match a map to terrain features sounds relatively easy in a plane that’s flying relatively slowly along a predictable route. But if it’s at all overcast it’s much harder. Then add in flak or enemy fighters distracting you and pulling you away from your maps, and suddenly it’s a lot harder.
But, under ideal conditions, with the Norden bomb sight, the bombers could be surprisingly accurate. The bomb sight adjusted for ground speed, changing winds, and included a primitive auto-pilot and actually steered the plane, and AFAIK it auto-released the bombs at the right time. Hitting the right cluster of buildings from a height of 30k feet with a gravity bomb is fairly impressive. But, under combat conditions that was pretty rare.