In the 1920s an American inventor, Carl L. Norden, had developed a device that promised precision high-altitude bombing. The “Norden Bombsight” became America’s most important secret. By November 1937, German spies had stolen the complete plans. The theft was part of a large German espionage operation that would be known as the “Ritter Ring” for Colonel Nikolaus Ritter, who directed it from Hamburg. The Norden operation was carried out by Hermann Lang, a 36- year-old native of Germany, now a naturalized U.S. citizen living in a German-American neighborhood in Queens, New York. He worked as an assembly inspector at the Norden plant on Lafayette Street in downtown Manhattan.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/moynihan/appa5.html

But the Germans never needed it because their planes were intended for dive bombing....

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