Idea for Radar Bomb Sight

[Piett 0]

Recently I've been flying quite a few missions in the Canberra B2 in the Falklands mod. The optical bomb sight for level-bombing works extremely well, and is an interestingly different challenge to the dive-bombing more common in Third Wire sims.

 

The way the bomb-sight works is ingeniously simple, too. As far as I can see, it's essentially just a radar altimeter. The trick is the calibration so that bombs hit where the crosshair shows for any current altitude. Of course, this will only work for a single airspeed, so this is taken care of by an on-speed indicator light which illuminates at the correct airspeed.

 

This got me to thinking - you could do the same for radar bombing, by superimposing a similar radar-altimeter-controlled crosshair over the radar screen, instead of over the cockpit glass for the visual bomb-sight. Note that this wouldn't be part of the radar symbology as such, but a separate cockpit instrument placed over the radar scope. Assuming it was correctly calibrated, you would then have to place the target return blip on the radar centre-line, make sure you were wings-level and on-speed, then drop the bomb when the crosshair was on the target blip. This would only work for a single range setting on the radar: maybe there could be a status light much like the one for airspeed which would illuminate when the correct range was selected (don't know if such a thing is supported).

 

Of course accuracy is going to be nowhere near as good as for visual bombing, but for area targets like clusters of buildings, or airfield runways, it's probably good enough. This could be useful for B-52s for instance, or particularly (what brought it to mind for me) Vulcan Black Buck raids on Stanley airfield in the Falklands. With a suitable mod to the Vulcan cockpit much like the Canberra's, pressing H could take you to the navigator radar's position with a suitable radar scope and cross-hair. Resolution is probably sufficient for at least as accurate a strike as the real missions managed.

 

I would have a shot at this myself, but have not the first idea about cockpit construction. Any cockpit modders out there find this idea interesting?