The super-secret Norden bombsight (whose development had cost half as much as the Manhattan Project) required visual sighting of the target, impossible through clouds. In actual combat conditions, dodging flak and fighters, and with frequent cloud cover—none of which they had encountered in their bombing practice in Arizona—American bombardiers weren’t hitting165 what they were aiming at in their high-altitude “precision” bombing. Their actual bomb patterns on the ground and their effect on the civilian population of cities weren’t all that different from the British area bombing.
