Sort of OT: WWII Bomber Question

'' am curious if bombers, when dropping their load, shot up a bit in altitude when suddenly becoming a few tons lighter, and if so, how this effected the box formation.... the planes were bouncing around already . . ''

That IS a really Good Question.......... I have Noooo Idea as to the Real Answer

But - I myself would think that the sudden Loss of Sooooo Much Weight would cause the Aircraft to momentarily Gain some Lift and cause it to Rise Up Slightly tn Altitude

However I Do Not Know if the Loss of the Bomb Load would cause the Plane to gain any Lift or Altitude at all in the Real World

... Carl .........

,,

Good pilots who are alert at the " Bombs away " signal from the bombardier would be able to handle too much altitude gain/loss by quickly responding at the controls and adjusting trim. I think most of the bouncing around you see from old war footage is from rough weather ( turbulence ) rather than just the bombs being released. There is one particular piece of footage ( I tried to find on the Internet ) which shows B-29's bouncing around quite a bit after bomb release, but from what I've read of the weather over Japan they were probably in a fierce headwind/turbulence situation. A few years ago I took a ride in a B-17 when the Collings foundation made a visit to Dallas, TX with their B-17 and B-24. It cost me $400. Gulp ! I was surprised at how the B-17 felt in the air. Instead of that large-heavy feel ... it almost had that light aircraft feel, similar to a ride in a much smaller Cessna 172. We were bouncing along in the air currents just like you would in a small plane. The lady next to me threw up in her husbands camera bag. Tee he. =] Just for the heck of it, check out these B-52's disgorging their loads of bombs. Holy smokes that's allot of TNT ! And they do rise a bit after bomb release:

on 12/21/2007 10:54 AM snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net said the following:

Yes, they did pitch up when dropping bombs, but the pilot would try to correct that. Besides, in the stack, there should not have been bombers under any other bombers. There is one famous clip of a silver B-24 getting his right wing knocked off because he drifted under another bomber that was dropping his load. They narrator never says that a bomb took the wing off, but you can see the bomb fall into the wing and continue through without exploding..

on 12/21/2007 3:22 PM willshak said the following:

Found the clip on youtube. This is a poor clip but the bomb falling can be faintly seen for a fraction of a second seen at the very beginning of the clip.

Most of the big bombers had autopilots and the autopilot was working when the Norden bombsight was engaged. Even so, autopilots in that era were not perfect, so there would have been SOME pitch oscillations, but maybe not as much as it would be otherwise.

Going a bit off-topic but related, when I worked at Honeywell they were working on the C-17 autopilot- they lost the contract, because they had a LOT of trouble. It was a very high tech autopilot. This surprised me- I thought surely an autopilot for a transport would be easy compared to those of fancy fighters (we were already doing the autopilot for the swept forward wing fighter- I think it was the X-29 or something). Then one of the guys explained, "can you imagine how the CG is shifting when you roll a light tank out the rear of the fuselage during a parachute drop or low-altitude extraction?"

Then I understood!