God yes, all the time. Navigation was more of an art than a science back then. And you have to imagine you’re flying quite high to avoid flak, while looking out for targets that might be obscured by cloud cover and where the lights were turned off so as not to present a clear target for said bombers.
Basically, the crew dropping the bombs might be ‘reasonably certain’ they’re hitting the right target, but a few miles here or there can make a lot of difference. You think you’re looking at A, while you’re really flying over B.
I live in the Netherlands, right on the German border. A local village here was bombed by accident on february 15th 1945, because the bomber crew mistook it for a German industrial complex just over the border. They dropped 35 bombs. They luckily ‘only’ killed 2 and injured 7. There’s a yearly memorial.
It’s terrible that it happened, but honestly… you really can’t blame the crew for it.
Navigating at night using nothing but maps, compass, altitude and speed indicator is pretty difficult. Especially when the hostile territory you are flying over is forcing everyone to keep their curtains closed and minimize light leaks.
Some cities would go dark and then a mile away have lanterns set up in the night over a large distance so planes would drop their bombs in a field instead of over the actual city, if I recall correctly.
I thought the first one was gonna be "precision bombing then," and the second was gonna be "precision bombing now" with a consumer drone being flown by Vasylyi dropping a hand grenade through the hatchway of a tank from 150 feet up.
been seeing lots of footage of them flying right into hatches of bmps and t90s. really makes me wonder why the orks aren't buttoned up / closing their hatches on exit more.
If you're abandoning a tank, there's a good chance you're worried about being sniped. Taking the time to close the hatch leaves you as a sitting duck, while doing it. They are likely jumping out and running to cover.
I noticed your sources are only as recent as 2018. Technology is finally reaching a stage where precision "bombing" is a thing. In 2022, the US killed an Al-Qaeda leader at his home with a modified hellfire missile that launched blades instead of blowing up (the "flying knife missile"). There was very little collateral damage and nobody else was killed.
The knife missile, a.k.a The Flying Ginsu, is one of those weapon systems that sounds like something from a Looney Tunes cartoon. Like dropping an ACME anvil on a baddie. Whenever I tell people about it, they tend to think I’m joking.
Even this is outdated by now. Precision bombing has become so precise that we can just bomb the part of an enemies brain that allows them to be mean and destroy it as sort of a non-leathal long-range lobotomy.