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
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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