Norden Bombsight

Can someone enlighten me on how well the Norden bombsight actually worked? I saw one a couple years ago at an air force museum and the employee there who was talking to the visitors mentioned that it was very accurate. However, when I read about the raids over Germany, particularly the Schweinfurt raids, the bombs mostly missed their targets. In fact, daylight precision bombing as a whole mostly missed the mark, correct?

I suppose a lot of the inaccuracies over places like Schweinfurt are the result of enemy fighter interference during the bombing process? If so, even the most accurate bombsight would be of little use.

 

The Norden bombsight was fairly accurate as long as the data fed into it were correct. It was kind of a "gabage in-garbage out" type of thing since it was nothing more than a computer. The big problem was getting the winds aloft correct. Bombing from 25K feet meant that the bombs could fall through several different wind patterns. The same thing, only worse, happened when the B-29s tried to bomb Japan from high altitude. So sometimes the bombing was precise and other times it wasn't.

It was supposed to be super-secret, but German intelligence got hold of the plans pre-war. They didn't think it was significantly any better than their bombsights.

 

Thanks, makes sense.