Distinctly Montana Magazine

26 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • FA L L 2 0 2 4 I T IS 1943 AND SOMEWHERE OVER GERMANY B-17 bombar- diers are adjusting their Norden bombsights in preparation for their bombing run. The "Norden" was one of the Army Air Corps' top secrets, thought to have been so accurate that it could deliver a bomb into a pickle barrel. Though that claim, and the myth and secrecy that surrounded it, still endures, it was a popular fiction at the time, driven by propaganda and wartime patriotism. Bombardiers were required to sign oaths to protect the bombsight with their lives or activate a thermal grenade at- tached to it so that it would not fall into enemy hands. Truth is, the Norden bombsight was only marginally accurate despite the hype. Even the best bombardier was only able to achieve a six- teen percent accuracy midway through the war. For the bombsight itself, it was a synchronous, stabilized bomb-aiming device that contained over two thousand separate parts: dizzying arrays of mirrors, telescopes, gyros, gears, levers, and dials. It weighed in at over fifty pounds. Breathing pure ox- ygen and often in temperatures reaching forty below zero, bom- bardiers wore silk gloves so that their fingers would not freeze on the delicate aiming dials. At the beginning and end of each mission, armed guards would take the bombsight to a poured concrete and steel, dual-vault storage building that looked, for all the world, like a two-stall outhouse—but built for top secu- rity and surrounded by two rows of nine-foot-high barbed wire flanked by a guard booth. Two security airmen stood watch through the night. There are two parallel stories here. Tucked away in a glass display case in Lewistown's Central Montana Museum is the once-famous and top secret Norden Bombsight, one of the last remaining war relics of its kind left in the United States—a true World War Two time capsule. Then there is the Lewistown Satellite Air Base itself, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was an extension of the Great Falls Airbase along with smaller satellite bases in Glasgow and Cut Bank. Their mission was to train bombing crews prior to their de- ployment to the European theater of war. Lewistown's satellite base featured an airstrip nearly a mile long to accommodate B-17 bomb- ers. Training "targets" of whitewashed concentric circles made of local stones were scattered throughout central Montana in empty fields. The practice bombs, painted blue, were filled with sand, and equipped with spotting charges which flashed smoke and flame on impact so crews could observe their accuracy. What remains today in Lewistown is an astonishing collec- tion of World War Two structures in arrested states of decay but perfectly recognizable as relics of that era, down to the original paint, roofing, and window glass. All fourteen of them are snug- gled in amongst more modern buildings at the Lewistown Mu- nicipal Airport and easily dismissed as just another aging com- by MICHAEL J. OBER ewistown's ewistown's orgotten orgotten ir Base ir Base L F A

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