Inside Ball Turret Gunner
Gunner mason howe survives these harrowing missions while operating one of the plane s most innovative defenses.
Inside ball turret gunner. The turret held the gunner two heavy machine guns ammunition and sights. He felt a need to enlist in the army and defend his country. It was characteristic of jarrell to see the soldier as a sacrificed child and he relates this to maximum effect in. The ball turret gunner was one of the most dangerous assignments in world war ii.
If you had to write something in prose dealing with the complexity and emotion of big subjects like life death and war it would take you way more than 5 sentences to get it done. This turret is owned by vintage aircraft in stockton ca. The death of the ball turret gunner is a conceit or extended metaphor. Permanently fixed and unable to be retracted there was no hiding from enemy attack.
It was an enclosure that at any time could become an airman s. 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. Ball turret gunners on b 17 bombers were protected only by a glass bubble jutting out from the bowels of the plane. The death of the ball turret gunner is a fantastic example of what poetry is capable of.
Think of it this way. The gunner could enter the turret from inside the plane by having the turret rotated until the door opening faced the interior of the plane. He was considered a perfect fit for the b 17 s ball turret. The ball turret gun.
It was a manned turret as distinct from remote controlled turrets also in use. The space inside the turret was very small and cramped. 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. At the height of world war ii allied bombing missions often include hundreds of boeing b 17 flying fortresses that strike deep behind enemy lines.
Ingenuously mounted on a movable platform.