Ball Turret Gunner Job

I was watching a show on the history channel this morning called suicide missions or something and it discussed the ball turret a feature of b 17 bombers which was basically a spherical enclosure that hung from the belly of the plane enclosing a gunner whose job it was to defend the plane from attacks from below. It is about the death of a gunner in a sperry ball turret on a world war ii american bomber aircraft. Ironically post war analysis of b 17 crew fatality records revealed that the ball turret gunner had the safest job on the plane with the pilot having the most dangerous.

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It was a manned turret as distinct from remote controlled turrets also in use.

Ball turret gunner job. Some of the most famous are the avro lancaster a four engined long range bomber designed and built in britain canada and australia. A ball turret was a spherical shaped altazimuth mount gun turret fitted to some american built aircraft during world war ii the name arose from the turret s spherical housing. When the raf first evaluated the b 17 they considered it impossible for a man to remain in the ball turret for an entire mission but 8th af ball turret gunners routinely. Being a ball turret gunner would have been a scary but exciting job.

From my mother s sleep i fell into the state and i hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. The death of the ball turret gunner is a five line poem by randall jarrell published in 1945. It was common knowledge among soldiers that the b 17 ball turret gunners had a very high casualty rate. If you ever wanted to know what it was like to be in one this video gives you some what of an idea.

The turret held the gunner two heavy machine guns ammunition and sights. Here is a link to a youtube video that a guy took when he was allowed to go up in a b 17 bomber and take video. How about the precarious position of the ball turret gunner and the mechanism was stuck and the landing gear was damaged infantrymen get a lot of credit but these iron willed men fought through many of the largest air battles the world has ever seen. A ball turret was a particular form of spherical form altazimuth mount movement manned aircraft gun turret accommodating the gunner with nearly all the needed equipment for defensive firepower except for the ammunition storage mounted either within or onto the spherical shell of the turret structure mounted on aircraft during world war ii the most common one was manufactured by the sperry.

The ball turret gunner not a job you would want. While anyone who flew on a b 17 bomber during world war ii had a pretty dangerous job the ball turret gunner was undoubtedly put in the most precarious position. This was mainly because german fighters would target the gunners first. Magee s friend don jenkins also a veteran of wwii said that being a b 17 gunner was not an easy job during wwii.

In ww2 world war 2 huge bomber aircraft were state of the art killing machines. The life of a ball turret gunner.