Was there really no way to save the ball turret gunner??

[Steve Nelson]

In the book MASTERS OF THE AIR, the author details a researched account of a belly gunner being crushed. Furthermore, on Andy Rooney's account...he claims he was there...why would he lie?

The account in "Masters of the Air" is simply a retelling of Rooney's account (the author says as much.) I've done a bit of looking around, and it seems that everyone who has tried to track down specifics of the incident has come up dry..the trail always comes back to Rooney. I don't want to call the man a liar, but there just doesn't seem to be any documentary evidence or corroborating witness accounts to back him up.

SN

[Taigh Ramey]

Taigh, you're really full of it. . . great information, that is! We need to find a way to digitize and download your brain's contents, along with a searchable index.

That's a good one. Yes, a searchable index would be quite helpful...to ME!

Last edited by Taigh Ramey on Tue Apr 30, 2013 4:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[Hamilton H-37500]

Some ball turret videos we shot at bomber camp and at the gunnery range are here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvuChgh4fGg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcPTnsAP9wU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=l4GS1PND7pA

Those are great, thanks so much for posting them. Watching a B-24 flight from underneath the aircraft is quite an amazing sight.

[alang]

At FHC there is a fellow named Art Unruh who was a B-17 waist and tail gunner with 50 missions to his credit. He says he never heard of an airman being trapped in a ball turret, he volunteers on Saturdays and has written a book "The Shadow Casters". There is a ball turret presently on display in the new hanger and from the stenciling on it, it was also used on B-24's and has a stencil about the parachute type.

[Taigh Ramey]

The ball turret for both the B-17 and the B-24 were essentially identical except for the upper hangar, additional parts of the mounting ring in the B-24 and the fire interruptor cams. This is why the later turrets carried stenciling and decals for both aircraft.

You can see some of that on a web page about our turret:

http://www.twinbeech.com/sperry_ball_turret.htm

I especially like the placard warning to be sure the wing tank drain valves are closed before firing the guns.

[Chris Brame]

The ball turret for both the B-17 and the B-24 were essentially identical except for the upper hangar, additional parts of the mounting ring in the B-24 and the fire interruptor cams. This is why the later turrets carried stenciling and decals for both aircraft.

I remember a docent at Planes of Fame years ago telling me that the ball turret in Picadilly Lily was from a B-24 - true? I guess it could be...

[Mike]

The ball turret currently fitted in the PoF B-17 is indeed from a B-24, but they have a 'flat-packed' B-17 one that will be rebuilt and installed in the aircraft in due course.

[Taigh Ramey]

The ball turret itself, carrier and ring gear are identical for both the B-17 and the B-24. The differences between the two were in how the turret ring gear was mounted or hung from the ceiling or overhead structure in the aircraft. Early on the B-17 hanger assemblies were essentially one piece and the B-24 hangar that used a shorter sawhorse type of hangar and sa hydraulic cylinder for retracting. Later B-17's changed over to the same sawhorse as used on the B-24 and had a welded up solid tube assembly instead of the retracting cylinder used on the B-24.

This may be confusing so I will try to use photos to explain:

In this shot from a manual showing the full turret is broken up into its major sub assemblies. What's labeled the turret ball structure and the trunnion ring support and azimuth ring gear are is the parts that are identical and are interchangeable between the B-17 and the B-24. As i mentioned there are stencils and placards on the later turrets for both B-17 and the B-24 as the factory didn't differentiate one turret for one specific aircraft. The differences came in the mounting.



The hangar tubing assembly and collector ring shown in the photo above are the later more common ones used in both the later B-14 and in most all of the B-24's.

This is the early B-17 hangar assembly. One piece welded with a real long slender slip ring, or collector assy (for power and interphone) built into the tube. This is early B-17 only.



The actual ring gear is identical between both aircraft but how it mounts is different. In the B-17 it is mounted through shock mounts and is fixed to the aircraft structure.

In the B-24 the ring gear is in a carrier assembly that is attached to the the trunnion ring support and has four large bushings that slide up and down in tubes to allow it to retract in the B-24.

Here is the ring carrier for the B-24 and you can see some of the bushings that the four tubes ride in.



Back to this image that shows the solid hangar tube and ring gear for the B-17.



In the B-24 instead of the tube they used a hydraulic cylinder to retract the whole turret, hangar, trunnion and ring carrier.



This post seems pretty muddled so I hope it helps to explain that the turrets are the same and only the mountings differ between the Flying Fortress and the Liberator. Sure there are other variations but this covers the basics and common installations.

[Stephan Wilkinson]

on Andy Rooney's account...he claims he was there...why would he lie?

I have Rooney's book, "My War," and a fair amount of it is obviously buehlchit, to anybody who knows anything about airplanes. (Rooney was a soldier, not an airman.) Rooney was quite frank about saying, "That's the way I remember it, so that's the way it is, whether you like it or not." He was an arrogant guy and not as good a reporter as he thought he was.

There are way too many B-17 references in the index for me to waste time looking up each one to see if he actually said he was there when it happened, but if he did write that, "That's the way he remembers it."

So no, he didn't "lie," Rooney just sometimes made up the facts...

[Jack Frost]

In Re: gunners and chest pack chutes.

Back in the dark ages, I grabbed gear for a guy who had spent alot of his WW II time flying B-24s at the Harlingen TX Gunnery training school. He said that when they had a load of first time flying gunner trainees he would coordinate with the instructor gunners in back to make sure no-one actually bailed out. He would fly the aircraft through some erratic manuvers and change engine power on and off for a short while the then ring the bailout bell twice which means to get yourself ready to bail out and line up by the bailout exits. The chest pack chutes were placed in wooden racks to be out of the way until needed.

He said that most of the trainees lined up without a chest pack on. After the gunnery practice and landing and they were all on the ramp together, he gave a short lecture on the importance of remembering everything before doing anything. He felt he had made his point by doing this exercise and occasionally tried it again with gunners about to graduate. They all lined up with chest-packs clipped on and ready to go. Might have saved a few lives by doing this.
Jack

[a29pilot]

on Andy Rooney's account...he claims he was there...why would he lie?

I have Rooney's book, "My War," and a fair amount of it is obviously buehlchit, to anybody who knows anything about airplanes. (Rooney was a soldier, not an airman.) Rooney was quite frank about saying, "That's the way I remember it, so that's the way it is, whether you like it or not." He was an arrogant guy and not as good a reporter as he thought he was.

There are way too many B-17 references in the index for me to waste time looking up each one to see if he actually said he was there when it happened, but if he did write that, "That's the way he remembers it."

So no, he didn't "lie," Rooney just sometimes made up the facts...

Humm...alright, I'll take your word for it. You never know what to believe anymore....

[Dan Johnson II]

You guys are a bit tough on old Andy Rooney. While this guy didn't die in a crushed ball turret, he was trapped and could only be released when they got on the ground. If the gear had failed, here's your example.

From the 91st BG History. Little Miss Mischief is well known enough.

[Taigh Ramey]

The cooling jacket on the left gun was blown away and check out the bent up gun barrel about 90 degrees! What force to do that kind of damage and yet the gunner survived. Thanks in part to the armored seat and thick bullet resistant glass that used to exist in the circular window frame. Is this incident why Little Miss Mischief received a new aft fuselage or was that from a belly landing?

As for the gunners dying in the ball turret I would think that more of those would be uncovered by reading the after action reports. I would like to see one for the two B-17's that collided and stuck together in the 100th BG.

Taigh

[Dan Johnson II]

Found a Rooney quote where he states the incident took place at Basingbourne, and involved the 91st BG. His reply was to criticism that he got the story wrong. He said he made some mistakes in "My War" but that story was not one of them.

Time to dig out the 91st BG history.

[mustangdriver]

I just got a veteran set up to fly on the B-17. He was a pilot in the 388th BG. He said that his ball turret gunner volunteered to fly on another B-17 on a day they were not going up. The plane was shot up and he was killed when they landed wheels up on him. I will find out more when I do the interview.