There are a couple of aspects to glazed bomber cockpits. Firstly the vast majority of bombers had glazing for the bomb aimer/bombardier's position to allow them to see and aim at their target. If there was no need for such visibility then the weight and complexity of glazed components was unnecessary and the space could be used for additional armament - see, for example, attacker variants of the Douglas Boston/Havoc/A-20 or North American B-25 Mitchell that had a solid nose rather than glazed. The limitations of visual bombing, particularly at night or in cloud, resulted in the increasing importance of radio navigation and aiming aids during the Second World War and even more so afterwards such that by the introduction of the Boeing B-52 the bombardier had become a Radar Navigator working on screens and instruments in a small, dark compartment (the "Black Hole") rather than a large glazed nose; likewise an RAF Avro Vulcan crew included a Navigator Radar rather than a bomb aimer, though a small panel allowed for visual aiming if required.

The Heinkel He 111 and Boeing B-29 were slightly unusual in also having the pilot(s) within the glazed nose area rather than having separate windscreens, an arrangement sometimes known as a 'stepless' cockpit. Early models of the He 111 actually had a more conventional cockpit, the design originating as both a civil airliner (with solid nose) as well as a bomber (with glazed nose) before changing to the more familiar arrangement in the He 111P and H variants, improving visibility and aerodynamic performance. There were positive and negative aspects to such designs; the Bristol Blenheim went from a stepless cockpit in the Mark I to a stepped cockpit in the Mark IV. The Mark IV extended the nose by three feet to give the navigator/bomb aimer more space and retained the stepless cockpit in prototype form, but the additional glazing in front of the pilot caused unacceptable levels of glare, reflections and distortion resulting in a conventional windscreen being fitted instead. A fun bit of trivia - a Blenheim Mark I has been restored to flying condition by combining the fuselage of a Mark IV with the nose of a Mark I that had been converted into an electric car.