Airborne Attacks

Image: Martin Marauder ExCC; Wikimedia Commons

Radar itself was very useful, and coupled with the use of bombsights, it allowed for far more efficiency with airborne attacks. By factoring in air speed, altitude, and groundspeed, bombsights made it possible to fly planes at much higher altitudes and still drop bombs with far more accuracy than the previous tactic of area bombing. In his work World War II Technology that Changed Warfare - Radar and Bombsights, Sean Foley explains that prior to the development of the British Drift Sight MK 1A, the type of bombing performed was coined as “area bombing,” where attacking bombers would drop explosives on a general location with no specific target. (14) The use of the bombsight changed this by allowing bombardiers to more accurately target specific spots. Even so, many historians have doubt as to the effectiveness of bombsights, given that many of the countries and bombardiers involved had incredibly low expectations for the accuracy of the explosives. Also, many of the statements made by various state leaders show that even though precision bombing was theoretically possible there was still an emphasis on destroying cities in their entirety. (19-20) While bombsights may not have been as accurate as hoped for, this focus on increased precision influenced modern day technological progress, as can be seen with  guided missiles and computer target acquisition. Through cooperation with bombsight technology radar was turned into an offensive weapon, yet as an offensive weapon it did not truly increase the effectiveness of airborne bombing.