An advantage not to be of small size. I do not see how they did it. I heard a story on the TV about a B-17 with a lot of damage they could not get their landing gear down and could not get the belly gunner out. So the pilots stayed up as long as they could without running out of fuel. Trying to get the belly turret to turn or get the main gear down. They had to land and kill the belly gunner.
Amazingly enough, ball turret gunners had the lowest casualty rate on B-17s (I realize this photo is from a B-24). We tend to think of them as incredibly exposed and vulnerable crammed into that little turret without room for a parachute, but the turret is a tiny target compared to the rest of the plane and the waist gunner or the navigator are just as vulnerable to 20mm-it’s not like aircraft aluminum is going to stop one of those rounds.
That said, I think it’s astonishing that they could get anybody at all to fly those missions over occupied Europe. The casualty rates were staggering (bad enough to invite comparisons to The Somme and Verdun) and the raids were usually ineffectual. It’s a tribute to the men of the American and British Empire’s air forces that we were able to eventually pound Nazi Germany’s industry and infrastructure into rubble.
An episode of Steven Spielberg's "amazing stories" entitled "the mission"was based on the ball-turret dilemma. The trapped gunner, a cartoonist, sketched the aircraft while his crewmates struggled to release him (to no avail) and just as the B-17 was about to belly-land he drew the extended main landing gear... Google Glenn Rojohn and Alan Magee for more B-17 ball-turret stories.
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An advantage not to be of small size. I do not see how they did it.
I heard a story on the TV about a B-17 with a lot of damage they could not get their landing gear down and could not get the belly gunner out. So the pilots stayed up as long as they could without running out of fuel. Trying to get the belly turret to turn or get the main gear down. They had to land and kill the belly gunner.
There was hardly room in one of those things for the stones you had to have to do that job. God Bless 'em.
Amazingly enough, ball turret gunners had the lowest casualty rate on B-17s (I realize this photo is from a B-24). We tend to think of them as incredibly exposed and vulnerable crammed into that little turret without room for a parachute, but the turret is a tiny target compared to the rest of the plane and the waist gunner or the navigator are just as vulnerable to 20mm-it’s not like aircraft aluminum is going to stop one of those rounds.
That said, I think it’s astonishing that they could get anybody at all to fly those missions over occupied Europe. The casualty rates were staggering (bad enough to invite comparisons to The Somme and Verdun) and the raids were usually ineffectual. It’s a tribute to the men of the American and British Empire’s air forces that we were able to eventually pound Nazi Germany’s industry and infrastructure into rubble.
An episode of Steven Spielberg's "amazing stories" entitled "the mission"was based on the ball-turret dilemma. The trapped gunner, a cartoonist, sketched the aircraft while his crewmates struggled to release him (to no avail) and just as the B-17 was about to belly-land he drew the extended main landing gear...
Google Glenn Rojohn and Alan Magee for more B-17 ball-turret stories.
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