In World War II, thousands of B-17 bombers flew over Nazi Germany, using millions of tons of bombs to reduce the German military industrial machine to rubble. In each bomber, a man sat in a glass bubble hung below the fuselage, his hands on the controls of an anti-aircraft gun designed to protect the planes from attacks from below.
?Flying the ball,? as the men who manned these exposed guns called it, was one of the most dangerous assignments of the war. But it was also essential to the survival of the bombers and?ultimately?the Allied victory. BALL TURRET GUNNERS uses extensive World War II combat footage and interviews with the men who performed this suicidal task to bring home the horror and danger that they experienced everyday. It is a portrait of danger that few will ever face, a harrowing glimpse into a deadly duty that was justified only by the dire circumstances of war.