Bombing and Gunnery Training

We started off doing cross country navigation trips and at the end of the trip maybe two hours or an hour and a half you ended up either at a bombing range or a gunnery area and the bomb aimer would pick out the target and we would take so many runs from different directions and your bomb contact were plotted and you were marked on your efficiency as a crew. It wasn’t the bomb aimer that was being checked, it was the crew. Because you’re all involved in how that aircraft got to that position and those bombs got dropped. And then, of course, we would pick up a drogue ship and the gunners would have a chance at trying to shoot down the drogue, but not shoot down the throw pilot. So you would do a certain amount of training and then the navigator would take over again and take the aircraft back to your base.