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Small-Brown-Dog — It took Balls
Published: 2014-07-21 15:32:23 +0000 UTC; Views: 3660; Favourites: 73; Downloads: 0
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Description
B17 Ball turret gunner making life uncomfortable for the attackers wingman.The Sperry ball turret was extrememly small in order to minimise drag on both the B17 and B24 and therefore only the smaller aircrew members were able to operate it. The gunner sat in a fetal postion operating 2 x .50 caliber machine guns with a reflector gunsight. There was no room for a parachute.
There is a short poem entilted Death of a Ball turret gunner which goes as follows:
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 is a 3D model I made some time ago in Modo - gunner details done in photoshop as I am not good with organic modeling.
Spent cartridge cases also modeled by me in Modo for this image.
Me 109 image placed in public domain from commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil…
Sky background from www.deviantart.com/art/Cloud-f…
Muzzle flashes from: www.deviantart.com/art/muzzle-…
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Comments: 12
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Have a friend whose father had been a ball gunner on a B-17 over Europe. He once spoke of losing a fellow gunner whose bomber was shot up, trapped in a ball turret that they couldn't either pull back up or drop out. This fellow was mortally wounded, and a chaplain was called to the tower to give last rites before the bomber pancaked down the strip.
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Can't imagine being that person or a crew member - makes me shudder.
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Yeah, besides the waist or tail gunner, they were the ones most shot up during the mission.
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Impressive and dramatic piece. I had read that poem before somewhere.
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I really could not have faced the ball turret myself. Not so bad in a B24 but a B17 ... no thanks.
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I met a guy at an air show who had been a ball turret gunner. Nice guy. I also used to know someone whose father was a B-17 commander with the 91st BG at Bassingbourn. Nice work.
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One of my high school teachers read that poem in class one day, it was in the 1970s so most guys around his age or my father's would have been veterans.
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You and I must be around the same vintage
Seems strange now that a kid in the 60's and 70's probably had parents involved in some way in the second world war and grand parents that were involved in the first world war. Not surprising someone suggested giving peace chance.
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