Memorial Day: The Ball Turret Gunner

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, dominate Army doctrine gave the air corps no mission beyond supporting the ground forces. In opposition to this entrenched position, Giulio Douhet, an Italian general, and air power theorist, maintained air power could shatter civilian moral and elicit demands to surrender by destroying a country’s vital centers. Now air power advocates fought and won the Pentagon battle for the authority to prove the theory that bombers could win wars.

The instruments for this initiative were the B-24 Liberator and B-17 Flying Fortress bombers which carried 10-13 .50cal machine guns for defense and the Norden bombsight for precision daylight attack. Under combat conditions, peacetime bombing accuracy was never realized. The bombers also suffered horrendous losses until a more robust P-51 Mustang significantly reduced losses by escorting them all the way to and from 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 bombers throughout the mission. 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. During the war, the 8th Air Force based in England suffered more than 26,000 dead compared to the Marine Corps which incurred nearly 20,000 killed for all its campaigns in WW II.

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 and had to be raised for landing. The B-17 bombers had sufficient ground clearance if the landing gear functioned, but in an emergency the hand crank could reposition the turret from inside the aircraft fuselage and allow the gunner to exit, and hopefully in time to grab his parachute if he had to exit a stricken aircraft. 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 B-24 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. Musgrove said,

“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.

United States Army Air Forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Air_Forces#Army_Air_Forces_created

North American P-51 Mustang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_P-51_Mustang#P-51_introduction

Consolidated B-24 Liberator http://www.aviation-history.com/consolidated/b24.html

Ball turret https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_turret BOEING B-17 FLYING FORTRESS http://warbirdsresourcegroup.org/URG/b17fortress_sperry_ball_turret.html

Eighth Air Force Combat Losses (more than 26,000 dead) HTTP://PERSONAL.PSU.EDU/KBF107/LOSSES.HTML

United States Marine Corps Deaths WW II (nearly 20,000 killed) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Marine_Corps#World_War_II

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.

This essay reminds me of the extraordinary men I met growing up; men who seemed to consider their WW II service as a common rite of passage. My contact with these men started about age ten when my dad began taking me out golfing on the weekends. One day Don had his brother Ken with him at the golf course. That seemed no big thing until someone mentioned he was an ace with the Flying Tigers. Here in real life was the character I saw John Wayne play in the movie. Later 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. Here was one of the men portrayed in the Longest Day. I found out a friend of many years served with the 10th Mountain Infantry which landed in Italy in January 1945. He received two silver stars and was the only one of eight officers in his company to land in Italy and soldier through the102 days until the Germans surrendered. Those are just a few of the stories I remember among so many others I could tell or have forgotten.

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
Randall Jarrell

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 son and I checked out the B-24 Ball turret at the Pima Air Museum. He weighs about 135lbs, but looked too big for it.

The wind looks like it blew right thru the turret and the Hatch to get in/out is the seat back. It was simultaneously terrifying and miserable.

When I was stationed in Germany in 60-61, one of my fellow medics was an ex-tail gunner from WWII, that was discharged after the war but re-upped in the Army as a medic in Korea. What he saw there, he told me, was worse than WW II, but since his plane had never been seriously hit, it's hard to compare.

He had made E-6 but had so many mental {that he tried to solve by drinking} issues, that he had been busted back to E-2 several times.

He was a Spec 4 when I met him and was trying to stay in until 1966 for his 20 years.

On the way back to the States in 1962, he re-upped {again} for a $1,500 bonus to go to Viet Nam as a "technical advisor".

I have prayed for him and all Viet Nam Vets ever since.

Memorial Day is to remember those that gave their lives but there are many that gave more than their lives, including limbs and their sanity.

The ghosts of war are devastating, and some of these living vets have mental and physical agony that put them into a place worse than death.

I haven't had an American flag fly at my house since 01/01/2021 until today, but it will come down at dusk on 05/31/2021.

The American flags flew at my home for over 40 years until recent events.

SAD.

My dad was at varying times a ball turret, waist, and tail gunner on a B 17, L’l Nell, flying out of Fogia, Italy, in 1944. He made it through the war flying 17 combat missions...he didn’t talk about it much but did say how terrifying the flak was over Ploesti, Regensburg, and Schweinfurt...yes he flew over all three...he was a small but tough wiry little guy from rural TN...he passed a few years ago...I have his Air Combat Medal and continuing pride of his service...Godspeed to all veterans and especially to the families of those who didn’t make it back home...USA USA USA...God save us from the usurpers in power...

I remember that from HS English class in the early 1970s. The teacher compared it to abortion - which we didn't know anything about. It was 1-2 years before Roe v Wade.

Below is a blast from the past on TV by Steven Spielberg.

IMDB - 1985: Amazing Stories - The Mission

video - The Mission, 00:46:10 minutes

An uncle was a turret gunner he completed training about the time his USMC brother went in third-wave Iwo Jima.
He was en route for Europe when they put him on stand down.
He would not be needed.

My career Navy father survived the sinking of the Yorktown.

My wife’s father was a US Navy ship’s Doctor WWII and Korea, never graduated from college.
He was in the pre-war Navy V-12 program for med school.
Uncle Sam needed him and could not wait.

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