Here is a shot of a B-24 ball turret extended on the ground.
Posted on 05/25/2020 3:57:14 PM PDT by Retain Mike
The near certainty the United States would be drawn into WW II prompted creation of an autonomous Army Air Force. Until the war in Europe began, standard doctrine gave an air corps no mission beyond supporting the ground forces. Now air power advocates fought for the authority to prove the theory that bombers could win wars. The B-24 Liberator and B-17 Flying Fortress carried 10-13 .50cal machine guns for defense and the Norden bombsight for precision daylight attack. Under combat conditions peacetime accuracy was never realized and bombers suffered horrendous losses until the P-51 Mustang could escort them all the way to the target. Now granted a lot of the men ended up as prisoners of war, but one historian noted that Kamikaze squadrons had a lessor casualty rate until fighter escorts could accompany the missions. Completing 25 missions was so extraordinary in 1942 and 1943, that the aircraft and crew of the Memphis Belle returned to the United States to sell war bonds.
Even though all crew members had to contemplate a dismal fate, that of the ball turret gunner exceeded all others. The man operating the two machine guns on the belly of these aircraft is described by Gregory Freeman in his book The Forgotten 500.
“Nobody really wanted to be in a ball turret. This Plexiglas ball hanging from the bottom of the bomber was one of America’s latest innovations in air warfare. An ingenious piece of machinery built by the Sperry Corporation; the ball turret was a heavily armed bubble just big enough to hold a grown man – but only on the small side. It had room for the gunner and its two fifty-caliber machine guns – and little else. The extremely cramped quarters meant that the gunner was the only crew member on a bomber who did not wear a parachute during a mission. Provided the hoist worked, he was left sitting up in the main part of the plane, where he would have to go to get it and put it on before escaping with the rest of the crew. [Clare] Musgrove always told his students: ‘Stow your chute where you can find it in a hurry. You won’t have much time’.”
“The ball turret was not a place for the claustrophobic. It was a tiny space, though it had a great view of the scenery below – or the fighter plane coming up to kill you. The entire unit rotated around in a circle and also up and down, so that the gunner could fire on planes coming from any direction. Being suspended underneath the plane gave the gunner a sensation of flying free, and that often meant that the attacking fighter seemed to be going after him personally rather than trying to shoot down the bomber itself. Everyone on the plane was riding an adrenaline surge during a fighter attack, but none more so than the ball turret gunner who was furiously firing his fifty – caliber machine guns at the German plane trying to kill him in his little glass bubble.”
“The ball turret gunner sat curled up in a fetal position, swiveling the entire turret as he aimed the two guns. As he moved the turret quickly to find attacking planes and then follow them with his guns, the gunner could be in any position from lying on his back to standing on his feet. The gunner sat between the guns, his feet in stirrups positioned on either side of a thirteen-inch-diameter window in front, his knees up around his ears and very little room for moving anything but his hands. His flight suit provided the only padding for comfort.”
“An optical gunsight hung in front of his face, and a pedal under his left foot adjusted a reticule on the gunsight glass. When the target was framed in the sight, the gunner knew the range was correct and he let fly with the machine guns, pushing down one of the two firing buttons located on the wooden handles that controlled the movement of the ball. Shell casings were ejected through a port just below the gun barrels, pouring out as fast as the beads of sweat on the gunner’s face. The plane carried two 150 round belts of ammunition per gun for the ball turret and fed them down from boxes mounted on either side of the hoist.
The ball turret in the B-24, which Musgrove flew, could be electrically raised and lowered, unlike those on the B-17 bombers, which had to be manually cranked up into the fuselage. Musgrove thought this was a great improvement over the B-17 design, because no one wanted to be trapped in a ball turret. There was no way to exit the turret without raising it into the fuselage of the plane, so a turret that could not be retracted was a deathtrap for the gunner. Any system that made it faster and easier to retract the turret was welcomed by the gunners. They had all heard the stories of ball turret gunners who were trapped in their glass bubbles when battle damage prevented them being retracted into the fuselage. Not only was the gunner left out there with no protection, probably with his guns empty or inoperative, but he also faced the prospect of the big plane landing with him hanging from the belly.
“It was every ball turret gunner’s nightmare, and it became a horrifying reality for some. If the gunner was already dead in the turret and it could not be retracted into the plane, the crew sometimes would jettison the whole apparatus, because the plane was not designed to land with the ball turret hanging underneath. But if the gunner was alive, they would have to tell him that they had no choice but to put the plane down eventually. The ball turret gunner had a long time to contemplate his fate, maybe to say good-bye on the intercom to his crewmates, as the damaged plane limped back to the base or looked for a field in which to crash. All he could do was sit in the glass bubble like a helpless fetus in the womb, watching the ground come closer and closer. When the plane landed, the ball turret was often scraped off the belly, taking the gunner with it. This problem occurred with the B-24. There was sufficient clearance with the B-17 for the turret to be in the lowered position, if the plane could land with the wheels down.”
These bombers were mainly crewed by teenagers and men in their early twenties. Memorial Day ad Veterans Day provide an opportunity to contemplate the extraordinary hazards faced by some of these young men, become our fathers, grandfathers, or great-grandfathers.
Partial Bibliography:
The Forgotten 500 by Gregory Freeman
United States Army Air Forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Air_Forces#Army_Air_Forces_created
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress http://www.aviation-history.com/boeing/b17.html
Consolidated B-24 Liberator http://www.aviation-history.com/consolidated/b24.html
Norden bombsight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norden_bombsight
Images Sperry Ball Turret https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=sperry+ball+turret&qpvt=sperry+ball+turret&FORM=IGRE
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Ball_Turret_Gunner From my mother's sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
My most often contact with these men started about age twelve when my dad began taking me out golfing on the weekends. There was a man who used the first golf cart I ever saw, because as a brigade commander of the 41th Infantry in New Guinea he was debilitated by sickness. I remember one fairly good golfer who had kind of a weird back swing. I found out he was crippled while serving with the Big Red One in Sicily. My Economics professor in college served with one of the first UDT swimmers clearing barricades and mines in the surf zone before Pacific landings. I often ended up as a dishwasher at the country club and noticed the chef always limped as he moved around the kitchen. He saw my puzzled look, and said he got the limp from a wound received when he was with the Rangers at Pointe De Hoc. Those are just a few of the stories I remember among so many others I could tell or have forgotten.
I had a Great Uncle who paid the ultimate price in the War. I recall hearing that he was a Navigator on B-24’s.
When we were going through my dad’s effects a few years ago, we found a picture of some high ranking officers presenting his parents with the Silver Star.
Have no idea what he did to earn that high award
Great write-up.
There’s a good Amazing Stories episode about a stuck ball gunner too - See the episode “The Mission”
My late Father was a bombardier in a B-24 Liberator in the Pacific Theater. He said the plane was a cramped death trap and it wasn’t until the 1970s that he dared set foot in a plane of any kind.
You could not get me in one of those ball turrets. I think they picked little guys for that job.
I saw a program today about the bombers of WWII. It said tail gunners had the highest death rate.
The statistic that always amazes me is that more airmen from the 8th Air Force died in the war than the entire Marine Corps lost.
Thank you for this article.
I had an uncle that was a turret gunner.
He enlisted out of high school, fortunately for him and millions of others the war was over before he was deployed.
I have his favorite headspace gauge, dog tags and burial flag from his funeral sixty years later.
His older brother survived the Third Wave on Iwo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4bLpU5mf0
I can't watch it again. I was seriously horrified watching it as I was in the Air Force and can't imagine what it was like.
Here is a shot of a B-24 ball turret extended on the ground.
My uncle was a tail gunner in a B17. I got him to talk to me once for a while. He told me two things relative to your post. He said he saw a B17 ball turret get severed during a battle and the ball and gunner dropped out of the plane. They hang from the ceiling on a single point. The 2nd thing is he said he liked flying with B24s because they flew lower and got all the flak directed at them
GARP!
What's fascinating is the amount of training time necessary to qualify. Uncle invested a lot of time to get them ready. Film takes it from enlistment to first mission. Shows the difficulty in getting into the tiny space, basically wearing it.
Burgess Meredith plays Smith, the stuttering trainee. Ronald Reagan also stars. Well worth the time.
they should have had some kind of hatch on the upper sode of it that could be opened/broken in case of emergency
cotter pins or bolts that could have been removed
they’re just men they are phucking disposable, thats the godam mentality
There were not a lot of gunners who officially made "ace" - confirming kills was probably a difficult issue. I found this list on the internet (no idea how accurate it is):
Rank- Name- Kills- Unit- Airforce- Aircraft- Gun position
S/SGT Michael Arooth- 17- 527 BS 379 BG 8 AF- USAAF- B-17(Tail Gunner)
S/SGT Arthur J. Benko -16- 374 BS 308 BG 14AF- USAAF- B-24(Top Turret)
S/SGT Donald Crossley-12- 95 BG 8 AF- USAAF-B-17 (Tail Gunner)
S/SGT Benjamin F Warner- 9 – 99 BG 12 AF-USAAF- B-17 (Waist Gunner)
S/SGT John B Quinlan -8- 324 BS 91 BG 8 AF/20 AF-USAAF- B-17(5),B-29(3)(Tail Gunner)(Gunner on Memphis Belle)
T/SGT Thomas Dye -8- 51 BS 351 BG 8 AF -USAAF-B-17(Ball Turret)
S/SGT John D. Foley-7+8 prob- 22ND BG 5 AF- USAAF-B-26(Top Turret)
S/SGT John A. Murphy-6- 500 BS 345 BG 5 AF- USAAF- B-25(Top Turret)(all Zero’s)
T/SGT Weston (Wes) Loegering-5 -574 BS 391 BG 9 AF -USAAF-B-26 (Top Turret)
SFC Richard H Thomas-5- VPD 117- US Navy-PB4Y (B-24)(Front Turret)
ARM2 Paul Ganshirt-5- VD 3-US Navy-PB4Y(B-24)(Top Turret)
T/SGT Thomas Dye is the only ball turret gunner listed...
The Army Air Corps suffered immensely, look at the Marines for perspective, fact is some 26,000 Marines were killed in WW2, 36,000 plus Army Air Corp were killed, combat deaths recorded for our Air Corps were horrendous.
My father in law was a pilot in the 8th Air Force, flying both B-24’s and B-17’s. His crew was a lead crew because he had served as a flying instructor before he was assigned to an operational group, and his crew was fortunate to survive the war, every one of them including the ball turret gunner. My FIL became a command pilot which meant that he usually flew with other crews, including special crews that had aircraft was fitted with a ground radar which replaced the ball turret. That meant that his original ball turret gunner finished on other crews, but they remained friends for the rest of their lives.
With so many planes in a formation and so many guns on each plane, it really would be hard to tell.
The bridge my father’s battalion put across the Rhine was attacked by a German jet. An anti-aircraft battery asked the engineers to sign a statement that they had shot it down.
They saw it fly away just fine.
The B-24 was a difficult plane to ingress/egress on the ground, let alone in combat/battle damage conditions.
I saw some European combat footage, and I think it was a B-24 that was at the back in a lower formation. A bomber above let loose and a bomb struct the stabilizer, shearing it off. The plane immediately nosedived. I doubt anybody could have gotten out.
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