<p>Those B-17s, now sporting the US-built H2X system in a 'double-chin' nose geometry, also joined the 482nd and went on their first big practice mission against Wilhelmshaven on 3 November. Nine pathfinders using the H2X system, and two still equipped with the British H2S, led 539 attackers to the German port, an easily identifiable radar target. They dropped more than 1,400 tons of bombs, damaging the aiming point, and lost only seven heavies. Beginner's luck again, as events were to prove.
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<p>The early results of radar bombing encouraged the Eighth to go and bomb when they would otherwise have stayed grounded by target weather. In December, VIII Bomber Command off-loaded 13,142 tons of bombs, for the first time exceeding the monthly weight total of RAF Bomber Command.
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<p>Most of the bombing during the early winter of 1943 was done by H2S or H2X, and most of the attacks were directed against easily read radar targets, such as the port cities of Bremen, Wilhelmshaven and Kiel. Early radars were able to 'see' and present the sharp differences between land and water far better than they could distinguish different kinds of terrain, or define an inland city shape.
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<p>It was a temporary, probably inadvertent, abandonment of precision bombing, and a step into area bombing for the Eighth AF crews. In no way could the radar-directed drops have been called pinpoint bombing. The high explosives smashed docks and houses indiscriminately, rather than neatly tumbling a single shipyard into ruin. From 15 October through 15 December, a total of 151 combat boxes bombed those three ports. Only six managed to place their bombs with 1 mile (1.6 km) of the aiming point.
