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el cid again -> RE: Accuracy all devices. (11/22/2014 3:23:31 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Symon
quote:
ORIGINAL: miv79
Thank you very much. And how is calculated precision bombs?
There is no game mechanism to calculate precision bombing. There is no such algorithm. Better to ask how big is your winkie?
This brings a smile. I once studied the tech manual for the Norden Bombsight -
which is posted online somewhere. There were an astonishing number of variables:
it was a very complicated calculation. And, operationally, virtually worthless!
We found that high altitude bombing (we can "put a bomb in a pickle barrel" was
the exaggerated saying) was subject to wholly unpredictable cross winds - even
if you could see the target. Over Japan - you could not even see it 80-85% of the
time (depending on whose data you use). Which is why Gen Lemay developed (illegally
and against standing orders from JCS) a firebombing concept: you didn't have to
see the target if it was subjected to a firestorm! Japanese cities had many
buildings made of wood and paper. Start enough fires you get a weather system -
hot air rises - sucking in more cool air at low altitude - fanning the fire to
the point it will ignite anything that burns, even steel. It will not go out until
it runs out of fuel. The firebombing of Tokyo in April 1945 was the worst bomb raid
of all time - even by grossly understated measures you normally read. I met a
US demographer there in 1968 who tried to figure out realistic numbers: he started
with the population of the city before and after the raid, and then subtracted the
number of people who showed up in adjacent districts. [All the records were destroyed
and most of the people who would collect statistics were killed or disabled. Most
of the bodies were also destroyed - preventing counting.] There are great uncertainties
in the data, but it cannot be less than 250,000 and may be over a million - with the
mean in the 600-800 k range. Anyway - don't put too much stock in "accuracy" of bombing
from high altitude. The solution requires on board command guidance - a human pilot
or an autopilot that listens to a sensor or commands from somewhere else that is tracking
the bomb/missile - whatever it is.
If anyone cares about my "illegally" comment, look up FM 21-10 - possibly the best short material
on the matter even today. If you really want a full treatment, formally done in a scholarly
sense, ask the Library of Congress for a paper "Are US Nuclear Weapons Legal?" [The answer is
complex. Nothing outlaws nuclear weapons per se. But there is a grave risk their use
would violate legal requirements of the law of land warfare, and treaties like those
forbidding modification of the climate.]
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