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Having a ball...in the turret!


Sabrejet
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VERY cool! One of my old collector mentors from back in the '70', was an old B-24 Flight Engineer & Crew Chief. He served with the 380th Bomb Group which was part of Kenney's 5th Air Force in the southwest Pacific. He told me that when they started to get the newer B-24's with a ball turrent, they were removed at a modification center in Australia. Fifth Air Force was more concerned about carrying more bombs and more gas, so the ball turrents were removed on a lot of their planes. In it's place he said there was an internal scraf ring, something like the type used in WW One on two seaters. A .50 Cal. was mounted on the ring to fire down thru the big round hole left by the removed ball turrent. He said some Libs even had the hole skinned over as attacks by Japanese fighters from below were rare. Many 5th Air Force Liberators operated at low level anyway, especially aginst shipping.

I've wondered if there is a warehouse somewhere in Australia with stacks of crated ball turrents!

The History and Traditions Museum at Lackland AFB used to have a sperry ball turrent on display (maybe they still do). When you stand there and look at it, you wonder just how you could get curled up and shoe-horned into the thing. It sure looked small!

Thanks for starting this thread and the neat videos!

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Thanks for that addition Lee. I photographed the ball turret in the first post at the American Air Museum in Duxford, It's actually displayed alongside a B-24. As you rightly say, when you get up close to it, it seems pretty small!

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Here is the ball from the MEMPHIS BELLE....the real one. She is being restored in Dayton. You used to be able to tour the restoration but the brains in Washington put an end to that. I took this picture 3 years ago.

Steve

post-5349-0-55319300-1379366394.jpg

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On the B-17 the ball turret was fixed but on the B-24 it was retractable. That's why there are all these apocryphal tales of shot-up B-17s belly-landing with gunners trapped in their ball turrets! :o

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When I lived in rural Pennsylvania during the 70's and 80's I was at the post office all the time.

 

The Postmaster and I became friends.

 

He was the ball turret gunner in a B-24.

 

Claimed he had three Japanese kills one of which was a harrowing experience.

 

He spotted an Oscar but his guns jammed after a short burst.

 

The Oscar came up to him and he could see the man's face.

 

He was working the the firing control so hard it took the skin off his thumbs.

 

This happened in the span of a couple of seconds or so.

 

All of a sudden the 50.'s let go and down went Oscar.

 

There are more details to the story but I don't remember them all.

 

Frank is still going in his early 90's.

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  • 5 weeks later...

Great thread Ian-I never realized how "prone" the gunner actually was. It would have to take a big pair of bollacks to go in one of those. Would like to know what the casuality rate for ball turret gunners was.

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I always like that diagram from the manual with the gunner lying there with all that room, his legs barely bent. I'm surprised they didn't draw him with room for a big old parachute on his back. In reality, the men were much more folded up with their feet directly to the sides of the flat round window.

 

One of my uncles was a B-17 Ball Turret Gunner, and despite the statistics that it was the safest position on the plane, he was the only one on his crew that didn't survive when they were shot down.

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On the B-17 the ball turret was fixed but on the B-24 it was retractable. That's why there are all these apocryphal tales of shot-up B-17s belly-landing with gunners trapped in their ball turrets! :o

 

The B24's turret was retractable because there was not enough ground clearance for the turret to be out on takeoff and landing.

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They even made it into space!! This is a screen shot from FLIGHT TO MARS an early 1950s scifi movie. It is a part of Spaceship MARS1. It is sort of hard to make out but it is a ball turret.

Steve

post-5349-0-54029900-1382147557.jpg

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  • 1 month later...

They weren't all shorty's S/Sgt Ed Silverstone was the ball turret gunner on Our Gal Sal 351st squadron of the 100th Bomb Group and he was 6ft tall! This meant he couldn't wear a chute of any kind in the ball so had to store it in the radio room! Have read a few accounts of gunners having to swap with other gunners because the ball turrett was too much for them in combat. Bob Gilbert of the 381st Bomb group started as a Waist gunner but swapped with his crews BTG.

 

Have had the honour and privilege to meet several 8th Air Force veterans at different reunions here in the UK and the majority of them were Ball turrett gunners must have been much safer than it looks! :)

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Here is the ball from the MEMPHIS BELLE....the real one. She is being restored in Dayton. You used to be able to tour the restoration but the brains in Washington put an end to that. I took this picture 3 years ago.

Steve

You can still view the restoration by taking the "Behind the Scenes Tour".

Behind the Scenes Tours are regularly scheduled, free guided tours of the museum's restoration area. Participants are shuttled to the restoration hangars, located about one mile from the main museum complex. Tours are offered every Friday (some exceptions) at 12:15 p.m. Advance registration is required. Sign up early as tours may fill up quickly! To register for tours through December 2013, please select a date from the list below and submit a registration form or call (937) 656-9436. Additional instructions are included on the form.

 

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