The Norden Bombsight B-17 Bomber integration 

Glad it was helpful!

I’d have to agree, I’ve watched and read most everything I could find about the Nordens and this has been the most informative. Love this channel along with Gregs and 1 or 2 others (can’t think of the names at the moment). Like children, you don’t dare say out loud that one or the other is your favourite,,,,, but I’ve secretly started a go fund me page to get Greg a better microphone ;),,,, lol.

Hands up! 😂

100%! Definitely my two favorite WW2 aviation/technical data channels! Both are highly underrated/undersubscibed in my opinion... ESPECIALLY this incredible channel. 👍

Was about to post that too. The Lotfe 7 series were not direct copies of the Norden but had the same principle, but were much simpler to use. Ironically Israel used them on the 3 B-17s they had in the 1948 War of Independence

Also the Germans set great store by dive bombing, even the He177 was designed to be capable of that. Later the Germans developed guided bombs such as Fritz.

Also I want to say big thanks from Ukraine for all US people for help with weapons. God bless the USA.

Not correct. The Sperry was less accurate, and was more of a black box device. That is, if any any part failed, there was nothing the bombardier could do in-flight, and so the lives of a crew could be put at risk for nothing. The Norden's working was much more visible and accessible, and if part of it was not working, often the bombardier could work around the problem and still bomb with the same or some reduced accuracy. The Sperry had controls on both sides, so you needed both arms to work it. That was no good in turbulence, either natural turbulence or the plane shaking because of flak - bombardiers needed one hand free to hang on to something. The Norden had all variable settings on the right hand side, leaving the left hand free to hang on to something rigid. The Norden could run on any plane's battery - 12 volt, 24 V or 28 V. The Sperry needed 110 volt 400 Hz AC, which was initially only available on the largest bombers, and only available if an engine was running, complicating ground checkout. As it could run on low voltage DC, bombardiers could be trained and tested on the Norden in slightly modified light aircraft, freeing up costly heavy bombers for actual use against the enemy. In fact, the Norden was developed because the US military were not entirely happy with the older Sperry bombsight. The Norden proved to be easily adaptable as bomber speeds and altitudes increased beyond what was possible when the Sperry was developed. Despite its drawbacks, the USAAF in World War 2 actually used substantial numbers of the Sperry sight, and also another sight known as the Estoppey bombsight, mainly because the factories making the Norden couldn't make enough timely enough. USAAF experience was that the Norden was indeed the best of the three. The Norden however was indeed more prone to trouble and needed a lot of maintenance. Stipulated service interval was just 15 hours. Much has been made of the fact that achieved bombing accuracy in actual combat was a lot less than the technical accuracy of the Norden, however there were a lot of reasons that were not the fault of the Norden, eg German decoy & camouflage work, smoke or cloud obscuring the target, need to send many planes in tight formation to avoid high kill rate by enemy fighters.