There is a very old video of American P47s in Italy where they filmed a
mission which included bombing a bridge (it made a name for P47 called
hun hunter). Think 12 bombed it, 2 bombs each, still appeared intact at
the end, almost all missed it. They dropped from much higher than the
average on line. And online I would guess the average hit rate is about
80%. And whilst I frequently see bombs bounce and skip from a ground
target, I seldom remember seeing it happen on a bridge. Although its a
very good excuse for missing.
But the strength is not really modelled, its just a hit point number.
Does not matter where you hit - in fact you can just hit the ramp on
some to do it. Look at how much they threw at Remargen. And there was a
bridge in Korea? that the Americans threw a lot of effort to destroy to
no avail. And how much explosive did it take for engineers to blow one -
and thats being able to place it at specific weak points. That was why
combat box actually added bunkers around bridges that also needed
destroying on later missions, so could not kill it with one bomb (and
got complained at).
Thats 200-400 1000lb bombs, put that kind of strength on line and you
would get missions lasting a month (in particular bridge to far).
TTFN
Stickz
On 24/11/2019 13:28, 56RAF_phoenix wrote:
Shores, 2nd TAF, p. 7, /"... fighter-bombers, which required an average of between 100 and 200 tons of bombs and rockets to destroy a bridge, compared with 640 tons for level bombers."/
Since one bomb is pretty much the same as any other of the same weight, accuracy is the issue and 100-200 tons refers to total delivered with fighter-bomber accuracy.
Of course, some bridges would be metal girders, others stone or even wood. But is makes the amount we drop to destroy a bridge look nowhere near enough.
56RAF_phoenix
