Here is a shot of a B-24 ball turret extended on the ground.
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
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.
Incredible. Thanks for posting.
Thanks to all who have served, all who are serving and all who will serve in the future.
Some made it:
Uncle Bill - Omaha Beach 1st wave.
Uncle Frank - shot down in the Pacific, picked up by a carrier.
Uncle Al - Korea (army)
Uncle Cliff - Korea (army)
R.I.P. (all made it home) including...
Uncle Paul - Intel Turkey (still alive)
Mom’s brothers, the Warner Brothers
Uncle Loren - Merchant Marines (RIP) dad’s brother
Uncle John - Europe (army) (RIP) dad’s sister’s hubby
Some didn’t:
James Durham (Vietnam) highschool friend
John Foldvary (Vietnam) highschool friend
Rick Rushlow (Vietnam) neighborhood youth friend
Pat McNamara’s 2 older brothers (Vietnam). I coached youth baseball with him for 10 years. I never met his brothers.
Integrity beyond any person in government that I have ever met.
Back into another B17 and promoted to tail gunner... On it's 3rd mission it was shot down over Germany although he had the good fortune for his parachute to land in occupied France... Again, with the help of the frog underground, he got back to England in 3-weeks...
Back into another B17 and still a tail gunner... Third time a charm... 10-missions staying airborne... However on 10th mission he took a bunch of flack shrapnel in his legs and chest that was to end his flying days and give him slight a limp the rest of his life... Three weeks hospital and back to work in the division office for the remainder of the war...
Back in the day when men were men... Patch them up and send them back into the line...
My Dad joined the Marine Corps in Feb 1942, three times wounded (counting the malaria from the Canal) over four amphibious landings... Patch them up and send them back into the line...
The late Andy Rooney stood on the side of the airfield in WWII as a crippled B-17 made an emergency gear-up landing. The ball turret gunner was unable to get out before landing. This sad event stayed with Rooney his entire life almost haunting him.
T S Garp
I always liked the guy, but never knew that this common man had done a job like that.