B-17 - WARNING - Do Not Enter The Ball Turret Wrong!! #mastersoftheair

What a scary position to be in. Sitting in that death trap and seeing the planes firing towards you would be frightening.

Interestingly, the air force conducted an extensive study after the war, and of all the B-17 gunner positions, the waist gunners suffered by far the most injuries/fatalities.

"When I died, they washed me out of the turret with a garden hose."

My uncle was a belly gunner. One one mission some flak came through the turret and felt some warm fluid running down his leg and he thought he was hit. Turned out it was hydraulic fluid. Lucky guy.

Yet the ballturret gunners had the least fatalities compared to the other gunner positions.

The ball turret actually had armor plating in the seat behind the gunner. Because they were curled up so small, they actually had one of the most armored positions of the entire crew; pretty much their entire back and legs were covered by it.

Imagine being suspended thousands of feet in the air in that thing while being shot at

My stepfather was a B-17 pilot and ball gunner took a 20 mm round through his knee and was out of the war. A couple missions later the plane suffered damage and was down for repairs. That one was tail number 910 the day of the mission they gave him 911. They flew to Austria and was hit by flack, and it caught the plane on fire. It exploded. Jack was the only survivor. Was captured and in a German Red Cross hospital for 6 months. Then off to a camp. In the 1980s he went to a reunion and he was looking through the names and saw the ball gunners name and he called his hotel room and the man answered and when he heard Jack’s voice, he passed out and his wife got on the phone and said who is this And he explained to her and Jack and they became friends again until that man died. He said he was told that there were no survivors in 20 years later, but ghost called him. Jack died in 2003. Remember that these were young men that many had never left their small towns. Jack recovered from his wound and went on to fly B-29 in the Korean conflict. His name was Major John Thomas Farrington. He was 23 on his 23rd mission when he was shot down he is now resting at Arlington national cemetery

Slight correction, the seat and backrest were made with .50 inch thick armor plate along with some smaller plates above the gunner position iirc. The guns themselves serves as armor for him.

The heavy bomber crews had horrendous casualty rates. The biggest problem was getting out of a plane going down. The RAF had 44.4% deaths. The USAF had lower death rates, but probably because despite the difficulties getting out in cramped spaces with many obstacles, wearing bulky warm clothing and a parachute strapped to the chest, the exits were easier to reach and jump from than the British bombers.

The Army analyzed casualties in the 8th Air Force (B-17s and B-24s) for June, July and August, 1944. Casualties are broken down by crew position, severity, cause (aircraft, flak, etc), body location, and time before return to service (if ever). The highest rate of attrition from enemy action has the tail gunner leading the pack, then bombardier, navigator, waist gunner(s), dorsal turret, radio operator, pilot then ball turret and co-pilot. Regardless of this, ALL of the men who flew the heavy bombers were made of some seriously strong stuff. Yes, they were all the Greatest Generation.

I'd bet getting OUT would be more difficult than getting in

Years ago I once knew a B-17 belly gunner who served in WWII over Europe. Oh the memories he could tell. A very special brave airman!!!

This turret turning animation 😂😂😂

"Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell 1945 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.

The ball turret wasn't the most dangerous part of the plane, it's just that casualties in it tended to be more immediately gruesome and visible than in other positions.

The ball turret gunner sat on an armored seat with an armored back plate and cover to the side by the maschine guns, which mad him actually one of the most protected crewmen on board.

its funny this is considered dangerous for the time when an acceptable loss rate for aircraft on each mission was up to 10%

Statistically the ball turret was one of the safest places to be in the aircraft because the turret was made of thicker aluminium and had a steel plate on the back. The turret also wasn’t actually shot at much, More popular targets were wings, cockpit and the tail around where the waist gunners were. The ball turret seems like an exceptionally dangerous position because of it’s unique drawbacks but realistically it wasn’t more dangerous than any other position.

I would recommend looking up the poem “Death of The Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell.