Ball bearings were a huge issue for Carl Norden when he was building his first prototypes. The bombsight was a mechanical computer made up of dozens of moving parts, each of which had to rotate precisely to the right position in order for the calculations of the bombsight to be accurate. So if he had ball bearings that were of unequal sizes, or weren’t completely smooth, the whole bombsight would be thrown off.
Historian Stephen McFarland explained how Norden addressed the issue: “[He] paid dozens of people to spend a day—or two or three—polishing a ball bearing. They would measure it every twenty seconds to make sure that it was absolutely round.”
The problem, McFarland says, was that when the war started, Norden suddenly had to make thousands of bombsights. Which meant he couldn’t have his ball bearings hand-polished anymore.
So Barth, his partner, who was the production guy, came up with a very interesting idea. He would come to a company and say, “I want you to produce hundreds of thousands of ball bearings.” He then paid people to measure each ball bearing. And when they found a perfect ball bearing or one that met tolerances, that would be the one that would go into the bombsight. And they might have to look through fifty, sixty, a hundred other ball bearings, and they would throw them out because it was much cheaper that way.
Ball bearings were crucial to everything in modern warfare. And where was the German ball-bearing industry located? It turns out nearly all of it was concentrated in a medieval Bavarian town called Schweinfurt. Five separate factories, operating around the clock, employing thousands of people, supplied the German war machine with millions of ball bearings a month.
Schweinfurt was a Bomber Mafia fantasy. In the words of Tami Biddle,
If you took out that target, it could have the potential to take down the entire German war economy. This is what the Americans were looking for, and they thought ball bearings might be that target.
It’s sort of like taking the key card out of a house of cards and having the whole thing collapse, or pulling on the thread of a spiderweb and having the whole thing unravel. That’s what the Americans thought they were going to do. Again, it’s very ambitious. It’s resting on assumptions that were unproven, but very hopeful.
The Army Air Force strategists drew up one of the most ingenious plans of the war: a raid in two parts. The main event would involve 230 B-17 bombers sent against the Schweinfurt ball-bearing factories.
But to make the main event possible, there was to be a diversion. Just before the B-17s left for Schweinfurt, another fleet of B-17s would take off for Regensburg, a small city southeast of Schweinfurt. The Germans made their Messerschmitt fighter plane there. The idea was that the Regensburg attack would draw off the German defenders—occupy them, distract them—leaving a clear path for the bomber group headed for Schweinfurt. The bombers heading for Regensburg would be bait.
And whom did they choose to command this crucial, treacherous second arm of the Schweinfurt raid? The best combat commander they could find: a young Army Air Forces colonel named Curtis Emerson LeMay.
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Curtis LeMay came from a poor neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio—the eldest of a large family that struggled financially. He put himself through engineering school at Ohio State, working night shifts at a foundry. He joined the Army out of college—and his ascent through the Air Corps was breathtaking. A captain by thirty-three, then a major, a colonel, a brigadier general, and by the age of thirty-seven a major general.
LeMay was a bulldog. He had an oversize square head, with hair parted triumphantly just a shade off the middle. He was a brilliant poker player. A crack shot. He had a mind that moved only forward, never sideways. He was rational and imperturbable and incapable of self-doubt.
Consider this transcript of an interview from 1943. LeMay is in England, heading up the 305th Bombardment Group. He’s just landed after taking his men on a bombing run.
Question: Colonel LeMay, how’d the trip go today?
LeMay: Well, it went pretty well, except it was rather dull compared to some that we’ve had. There weren’t any fighters out, and flak was just moderate and very inaccurate.
A film crew had come to interview his airmen after the mission. The rest of the men are laughing, excited. A film crew! A chance to shine. LeMay—short, barrel-chested, pugnacious—looks, expressionless, at the camera. That raid deep in enemy territory? It was rather dull.
Question: This formation that you put out for us last night—did you conform to that on your trip, then?
LeMay: Yes, we flew the same formation we’d imagined last night.