The Bouncing Bomb Used In The Pacific

True rockets kind of went straight ahead, but they had much greater dispersion than guns. I am not an expert about rockets v ships, but I do know that the chance of hitting a tank sized target was about 0.5% one in 200. OK a ship is bigger than a tank,

A rocket has a similar effect to a 95 lb 6" shell. Aircraft bombs are 250lb, 500lb 1000lb and 2000lb. If the target is a small unarmoured ship then a single rocket hit might sink it. If it is bigger or armoured a Bomb or torpedo might be needed.

 

..what are chances of hitting or near miss with a bomb compared to rockets? ...I was thinking of ground targets such as troops/trains/ and tanks/etc --also, I'm thinking of glide or level bombing vs rockets ..sorry I didn't say that
...where did you get the .5% in 200 from?

 

21 Army Group ORS report No 3 Rocket Firing Typhoons in close support of Military Operations
The chances of hitting a Panther tank with an RP was 0.5% = 1 in 200
The chances of hitting a large building 10%

 

roger that..I'm surprised.......

 

Wouldn't it also depend on the concentration or dispersal of the targets? if they fired 200 rockets at a single Panther, they would likely score one hit, but where did the other 199 go? Wouldn't they be distributed around an area about 200 times the size of a Panther? And if there were other vehicles in that area, would they not be hit? Reports of the devastating effect of RPs commonly refer to situations like Falaise where there were masses of targets.

 

The P-47 looks cool firing...

 

The 0.5% was from a single RP striking a target the size of a Panther tank. If there were enough tanks lined up to create a target the a size of a large house the probability of hitting one of them would rise to around 10%. However, Falaise was the source of some falsehoods (Faiaisehoods?) about the effectiveness of RP. There were very high estimates of AFV casualties based on claims made by pilots. ORS teams checked as many tank hulks as they could in the Mortain, Falaise and advance to the Seine. Their findings did not make them popular with the air force. RPs were not tank killers. They were very effective against soft targets and created a big psychological effect on German infantry,. but they did not kill tanks very often.

Terry Copp published a collation of ORS studies about twenty years ago https://www.amazon.co.uk/MontgomeryS-Scientists-Operational-Research-Northwest/dp/0969795599

 

.....dang good call...if you are dive bombing a tank, odds are much greater [ hahahah ] that you will miss than dive bombing a ship
...if you are rocketing a ship, you will have a lot more hits.....especially attacking from astern or bow
...so what are the numbers in rockets/bombs vs ships or rockets/bombs vs tanks? etc...probably can't be analysed?