Ballistics / bomb aimer expert needed

[sparkie]

When Newmarket High Street was bombed on 18th February 1941, the Dornier 17z dropped 10 bombs. All were very evenly spaced along the buildings lining the street except the gap between bomb 1 and bomb 2 was more than double that of the others. I wondered is anyone has an answer as to how that may have come about. Being a humble wireless erk I have no idea as to ballistics

[Fred J Crawley]

Hi, just a thought. Possible explanation is as simple as the bombardier adjusted the bombsight on approach and then the rest were dropped automatically after.

[Resmoroh]

Sparkie,
I don’t know much about bomb ballistics, but at one stage I did a lot of work on parachute ballistics.
The Do-17 cruised at about 190mph. If it dropped its bombs at that speed it would be covering 93 yards every second!
Now I don’t know what the Do-17 bomb release mechanism was, but I suspect it was electro-mechanical. Most techies will, I think, agree that all mechanical is OK, all electric is OK, but electro-mechanical did (does?) tend to throw a fault more often than the previous two!!!
Hasn’t answered your question, but it may give you an idea of the sort of figures we are dealing with?
HTH
Peter Davies