If intelligence had a photo of the target, the pilots would study it, so they could recognize it and know exactly where they should put their bombs, then they might divide up who targeted what. The flight would also plan the mission so that the debris from one aircraft’s bombs would not obscure the target for those behind him. Usually first bombs were dropped downwind of the other aim point(s).

Maps and pictures were additionally used by the pilots to “go from big to little.” Let’s say they were hitting a power station, a small target that might be hidden by trees. First they would plan their ingress route, based on weather, enemy defenses, terrain, etc. Then they’d look for large visual reference points—a bend in the river, a rail line, a bridge. Once they had one or more of these, they’d start looking for other reference points, so they could walk their eyes onto the target. Thus, after the bend in the river comes a large triangular rice paddy, and then on the east corner of the paddy there is a small canal that runs north and south, with a patch of jungle just south, and then the power station is two football fields’ distance to the south of that on the east bank of the canal.

Many of the targets Horner’s people were tasked to hit required this type of planning: they were so insignificant that they couldn’t see them until just before they released their bombs at about 4,000 feet above the ground; and so they flew to where they knew the target was located, and when it appeared they had barely enough time to adjust their flight path. If they were good, it appeared under their pippers (the red dot in the gun sight) at the right altitude, airspeed, and dive angle for their bombs to hit the target. On the other hand, if they had a good target—such as a railyard full of boxcars—then advance planning didn’t matter, since they could find the target from fifty miles away, and when they rolled in there was so much target that their pippers would be on something worth bombing regardless of their dive angle, airspeed, and altitude of release.

The Frag would also provide tanker information—that is, it told the pilot his air refueling contact time and which tanker track he’d be flying to—e.g., “Shell 30 at Orange anchor.” And finally, the Frag would provide a Time on or over Target, which was the time the bombs were scheduled to hit the target (all the other aircraft involved in a mission—MiG CAP, RESCAP, radar surveillance aircraft, and later Wild Weasels and support jamming—planned their efforts based on a pilot making his TOT).