Which one of us has never wondered what it would like to be a ball turret gunner?

I don't know what this experience costs...but it's surely worth it...

Man, does that beat video games or what????

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

One of my best friends was a gunnery instructor for B-24 gunners in WWII.
Passed away a few years ago. He was my first thought when I saw your twin 50s and the turret. RIP Wayne.

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In Omnia Paratus

That looks fun there, but not on a real plane and getting shot back at. My friend's dad was a tail gunner in WWII. He just didn't have time to worry about incoming fire, just did his job.

I WANT TO GO TO BOMBER CAMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just finished another book about the B-17's in WWII as I find the subject extremely interesting. What those guys did with the odds they were up against just can't be overstated.

It's my understanding that 10% losses per mission were considered acceptable by high command, and a crew had to complete 25 missions before they were retired.

By my calculations that means a crew had a 90% chance of surviving one mission, and 81% chance of surviving two. They hit the 50/50 chance by mission 7, and the odds of making it through 25 missions calculate out to 7%.

There's the story of Guy Gibson, leader of the Dam Busters.During a tour of the US, he was asked how many times had he been over Germany ?
"175 times."
The ball turret gunner was locked up for hours on end in a cramped compartment, worrying if his electric flight suit would hold up-20-30,000 feet, 20 below zero. And Heaven help him if one of the landing gears failed.

Looks like a blast! Can't imagine what the shooting session costs......

I just read "The Higher Call", a great book about Luftwaffe Ace Franz Stigler and B-17 Pilot Charlie Brown. The book states that during WWII the 8th Army Air Force had more Officers/enlisted killed in action than the entire Marine Corps in total did. I did a little research and it's true. The Marine Corps total KIA in WWII was 24,511....the 8th Army Air Force"s total KIA was over 26,000. Only 1 in 3 aircrew survived the war. WOW.

"The Higher Call" is a great book about two brave men who as enemies had a fateful meeting in the skys over Europe, and later became life long friends. I highly recommend it!



Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler

A sad footnote: Wing Commander Guy Gibson was killed in action, flying a Mosquito, in September of 1944...when he was 26 years old...

If memory serves me (and at my age, it might not!) the 8th Air Force flew its first bombing mission in the summer of 1942, and it wasn't until May of 1943 that crews were able to rotate home after completing 25 missions.

The odds truly were against them...

Cool, but I don't think they have one in my size.

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No baby we aint

Excellent point, and I sincerely apologize if I gave anyone the impression that I thought a ball turret gunner's job was fun.

At an airshow in Youngstown, Ohio, about 35 years ago, I spotted a gentleman with a B-17 baseball hat standing near the tail gunner's station on Texas Raiders, the Commemorative Air Force's restored Fortress.

I asked him how many missions he'd flown, and he told me he'd completed 14. Noting my quizzical look, he told me he'd been shot down on his 15th mission, over Hamburg.

He explained that after the bombing run, the bomb bay doors wouldn't close, so the flight engineer left the top turret and went into the bomb bay, without his parachute, to crank them closed manually.

While he was doing this, an 88mm round hit the Fort between the number 1 and number 2 engines, blowing off the left wing. The plane immediately and violently pitched over to the left, throwing the engineer out of the bomb bay, and began spinning toward the ground.

The gentleman told me how he struggled and fought like hell against the G-forces being generated to get his 'chute on, and then to get his escape hatch, just behind him on the left, open. When he finally did so, they were only about 1000 feet off the ground, and he pushed himself out.

He was captured immediately upon landing. The Germans took him to the crash site to identify the bodies of his dead crewmates; he was the only one who'd been able to bail out.

While I'm glad we have the opportunity to see things like this operational ball turret, you're quite right, Jeffrefrig...it wasn't fun to them, not at all...

Wonder in real life how much practice was allowed on the guvment dime?

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triggers dog-pile egomaniacs

Gibson’s accomplishements in seeing the Dam Busters mission through were extraordinary, but his end was a strange one and somewhat tragically unnecessary. He wasn’t trained on the Mosquito, he held a staff job as operational planner and wasn’t supposed to be flying, but appointed himself to fly a mission over Holland as Master Bomber anyway. His Mosquito went down, and he took his navigator with him.

Just for the record, the ball turret gunner was usually not in the turret during take-off and landing.

But there is at least one case, supposedly documented, where a jammed turret prevented the gunner from getting out before the aircraft had to make a belly landing since the main gears were also damaged. The gunner had to be sacrificed to save the others.

Reading the entry on him on Wikipedia, and reading the text of his Victoria's Cross citation, it's clear that he was a classic risk-taker, one of these guys who lived on the edge. He packed more adventure into 26 years than most of us could in three lifetimes!

I flew on the Collings Foundation's B-24 and also the B-17, which was the one that crashed last year killing 9 people if I recall. They would not let you enter the tail turret or belly turret but you could get a close look. When we were flying down the California coast from Palomar Airport in Carlsbad a small Cessna was pacing us. I pointed one of the (deactivated of course) Browning .50 cal machine guns from the open waist position and the Cessna pilot wagged his wings back and forth. I think he was enjoying it as much as I was. I'd sure like to let loose with the whole nine yards from that ball turret.
With today's ammo prices that has to be a rather expensive bit of fun.

Some years back I was at a fly in. There was a B17 there. An older gent was standing there looking at the ball turret. He was wearing a WWII vet cap. I spoke with him. He had been a belly gunner in WWII. Some good stories. He said on one mission the top gunner told him a ME 262 was going to be under them as it was going through the formation, at near 600mph in a dive. He said, "I put it on high speed and was pointing straight down and got off maybe 50 rounds at him." He added that he was "shooting at" the 262. What brave men.

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No baby we aint

I don’t think they come in my size.

What’s most amazing to me is where else can you shoot and write it off on your taxes??!!

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“Look life in its iron face”