How did pilots know when to release bombs on airplanes during World War2?

Question

Given that during this time computing technology wasn't advanced enough to calculate when to drop bombs accurately on a target, I recall hearing something about bomber pilots using a modified watch to deploy bombs. I was wondering is this true and if so what are these watches?

Answer 1

So far as I know, the most advanced means used for the accurate dropping of the payload of a bomber during World War II by the military aerial forces of nations such as Germany, Great Britain, and the United States were specially made 'bomb sights', such as the Norden Bomb Sight designed by technicians in the U.S.

In a sense, bomb sights were analog computers. Dials controlled internal gears that would adjust the optics according to a number of variables that the bombardier would 'feed into' the bomb sight. I confess that I'm not sure whether or not some (or most) bomb sights were electrically connected to the controls of the plane so that, for instance, the speed of the plane or the altitude would be automatically 'fed into' the bomb sight. Of course, if this wasn't the case, the bombardier could simply ask the pilot about current speed, altitude, etc... and manually 'feed' it into the bomb sight by adjusting the appropriate dials.

The pilots of a bomber would do their best to place their plane on a course that would take it directly over the intended target. Looking through the lens of the bomb sight, the bombardier would wait until the target was in his cross hairs, at which moment he would release the plane's payload. Bombardiers and their bomb sights were usually stationed in the 'nose' of the plane, that is, just below and in front of the the pilots' cockpit.

It should be noted that, in spite of their technological sophistication, Second World War bomb sights rarely produced the hope for results. For those commanders in the United States Army Air Corps (an independent U.S. Air Force wasn't established until after World War II) who subscribed to the notion that strategic bombing could win a war, a great deal of faith was placed in the Norden Bomb Sight to provide pinpoint accuracy. Studies demonstrated, however, that only a small fraction of the bombs the U.S.A.A.F. heavy bombers dropped actually fell within less than a mile of their target. The British, who began their strategic bombing offensive earlier in the war, abandoned the notion of knocking out strategic targets such as factories, railway yards, etc... Instead, they changed their tactics to night bombing (which made it more difficult for German fighters to combat the R.A.F.'s bombers) in which they simply dropped their payloads on cities, reasoning that even if factories weren't destroyed, factory workers would be killed (along with the rest of the population....)