Issue 7.14
For short it was called PFF. The Royal Air Force(RAF) developed the concept of PFF. Great Britain invented radar before the beginning of World War Two and were the first to use it for war advantage. We all have read about how the English used radar to warn of aerial attacks by the Luftwaffe during the battle of Britain. Hitler and Herman Goering thought they could bring Britain to her knees by bombing population centers but bombing London and Coventry just made the Brits more resolved to not give up.
The RAF shortly developed radar to aid in accuracy of bombing. They designated one Lancaster squadron to be trained to use this new concept in bombing. When a target was designated to be bombed, and since the RAF bombed at night, this squadron was the first out at night. Their job was to find the target with radar and drop flares to guide the oncoming fleet of single file bombers to their target. Before PFF, it was estimated that the RAF put only one bomb in one hundred within one mile of the target. After PFF, the figure increased to one in ten bombs dropped within one mile of the target. That did not bother the Brits because from Churchill on down, they figured leveling German cities was payback for their leveled cities. Once again, leveling population centers did not shorten the war. When the flares were dropped on targets, the Germans put the flares out and fired new flares away from targets.
Americans used the British equipment and know how to bomb thru clouds and smoke in daylight bombing. At first the 8th Air Force stationed in England had one squadron specially trained to do this work. One of these B-17’s would lead each group of 36 bombers to the target and when this bomber dropped its bombs, the rest of the group dropped at the same time.
This system was found to have flaws in assembling formations, so each squadron had bombardiers trained to use this equipment and lead their squadron. These B-17’s and B-24’s were modified by removing the lower ball turret and replacing it with a radar dome. The lead bombardier would use this to enable the American bombers to be effective many more days of the month and with fewer recalls and fewer times of having to bomb targets of opportunity.
Each bombardier in each bomber had an intervolometer that enabled him to salvo all bombs at once or to space them as desired. This was set under direction of operations before takeoff.
The worst of American daylight bombing was far more effective than the best of RAF night time bombing. Of course the Americans paid for their bombing effectiveness with greater losses.
American loses were caused by our formations which were effective at bombing and effective defense against enemy fighters but were less effective against the thousands of concentrated
Cannon called FLAK from the ground.
One thing the Germans did not learn was to concentrate on shooting down the lead bomber of each American formation. If they had learned this and concentrated on lead bombers from the start, The Air war over Germany would certainly have turned out differently.
Sam Wyrouck can be contacted at 801-707-2666.