They fashioned their new “philosophy” of warfare even before the Air Corps began secretly testing the invention that made it possible. This was the Norden bombsight, America’s most important secret weapon before the Manhattan Project. It was first developed in 1931 for sea-based naval aircraft by a reclusive Dutch engineer, Carl L. Norden. His wife teased him, calling him a “merchant of death,” but Norden claimed he was trying to save lives by making bombing more precise. Two years after the Navy began testing the bombsight, the Army ordered it for aircraft engaged in coastal defense,
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