Subject: How accurate was B-26 bombing?
From: (BUFDRVR)
Date: 2/29/04 2:13 PM Pacific Standard Time

Can we see some of your strike photos?


Sure old man.

To be fair, these two are actually the result of two 2-ships, but my
formation
hit it first.

Befo http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/990526-O-9999M-003.jpg

After:
http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/990526-O-9999M-004.jpg

This mission was very interesting...to say the least:
http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/b990514i.jpg

The rest of my strikes to make "news" were JDAM strikes. The one thing you
will
notice is that mil dispersion pretty much ensures a few of your weapons are
going to miss by a good distance, despite what you say. If you look at the
Batajanica images, we threw a few M-117s out "in the weeds". We had
anticiapated this because some of the weapons were in pretty bad shape.
Unlike
you, we realized that sending a loader back to get us some new weapons would
have interfered with the "hustle & bustle" of flightline ops, so we pressed
on.


The runway was shutdown for the remainder of the conflict, although Eagle
pilots flying around probably aided in shutting down flight ops there as much
as our weapons did.

Were you trying to make a point with your question?


BUFDRVR


YTHe point I was triyng to make was that we flew misison swith dumb bimbs that
were sometimes as accurate as mision flown today with smart bombs. I showed
youy the strike photos and you still say it never happened. Your hits look good
and as you say you are getting a very large dispersion, How many planes in how
tight a formation? Looks a bit loose. What was the intervelometer interval? We
tucked in wingtip to wing tip on the run. See the Wurzburg hits. Also see
"FLAK" and "ONE WENT DOWN" to gewt an idea what things were like in the air
while we were on our bomb runs. One more thing. I note that there was a hole in
the bomb pattern that left one bullding standing Someone out of formation or a
delay in a release?
Thanks for posting the hits. I love looking at strike photos and live for tight
patterns. Got any more? Post some more and I won't call you names anymore.
(grin)


Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer