Why precision-bombing promises failed against weather and moving ships

Did prewar American precision-bombing planners account for European weather and the difficulty of seeing targets?

They understood many of the limits, but precision was oversold; weather, dispersion, and moving ships made high-altitude accuracy far less dependable than the public claim.

The argument here is that precision claims made American bombing plans easier to defend, while a sophisticated Norden bombsight could not eliminate uncertainty in the bombs' trajectories. European weather and the difficulty of seeing the ground compounded the problem. Higher release altitudes also allowed ships time to move before impact, helping explain the attraction of dive bombing for naval targets. The discussion cites Army Air Forces trials against moving trains as a qualification: even a target confined to tracks could move unexpectedly. The difficulty was therefore broader than overlooking the simple fact that ships move.