eBay: Consolidated B-32 Dominator

Same site.

While scrolling through YouTube, I came across the video above. I haven't watched it all the way through, because very shortly after it started I caught a glimpse of something I have never seen before. The rear dorsal turret is of a type I have never seen before, and I don't mean the plexiglass aerodynamic fairing either. As you can see from the screenshot below, it is clearly of a manned 4 x .50 cal. machinegun turret!



Now a little way in after this you see examples of waist gunners from other bomber, all the while talking about the Dominator (don't you hate when they do that) so at first I was thinking it may be a different aircraft, but it seems to matchup with the position of the turret in relation to the vertical stabilizer as well as the two small windows (one that can open as a hatch) in the close up I included below:



Anyway, I had to spread the word. Anyone have any additional information on this installation?

Nice Jim!

Where's the guy writing the book on the Dominator? He'll know...

Hi. I'm "the guy" on the B-32.

You actually have photos of two completely different turrets there.

The first turret photo is a test mount of the A-18 four-gun top turret. I think it was by Sperry but off the top of my head I don't recall. It was strictly a test. The aircraft was also fitted with the standard nose ball turrets and another 4-gun turret designated the A-19. The A-19 was truly an ugly turret (Emerson, I think), and the A-18's were hardly considered works of art. The A-18 was being tested as dorsal turrets, both front and back. The A-19 was a belly turret. All these turrets were in the standard locations where production Martin top turrets and the Sperry bottom ball turret were located. However, they were so heavy that it threw the CG too far back, enough so that even Emerson warned Consolidated about the A-19 being too heavy.

The bottom photo above is that of the standard B-32 top turret mount, the A-6F as I recall. That remarkably ugly fairing on the back of the turret was supposed to be "aerodynamic", and as long as the turret was pointed forward it mostly was. However, the minute you started to turn the turret(s) to either side they generated a great deal of disturbed airflow over the tail and rudder, making the aircraft difficult to control. That fairing also used up a lot of surface area leading to the vertical stab, adding to the rough air. If you take a look at side photos of the XB-32, you'll notice the fuselage behind the rear turret sloped deeply down to tail turret. This never changed on the production B-32's. Thus even the B-29 vertical tail experiment did not have sufficient clear air flowing over the vertical tail surfaces for good control - but it WAS better than the original twin tails. Thus you see the VERY tall tail assembly ( I believe this was configuration #3) on the B-32 which enabled them to move the rudder up on the tail and exposed the tail overall to a clean airflow. You can also see that slope on the side photo of #528 a bit earlier in this thread.

This same tail problem was the major cause of the crash of the Boeing 307 prototype. Because of that same downward slope of the tail (taken from the sharktail B-17's), the aircraft's bigger fuselage and low position of the rudder caused both directional stability problems and rudder lock. Thus production 307's were fitted with the B-17G tail whose much greater surface area and taller, bigger rudder got rid of that problem. This was not an uncommon problem with monoplanes in the 1930's. If you look at the tail on the original prototype of the Northop FT-1 vs the tail on the FT-2 you will notice a major change in the structure and position of the rudder.

I hope this answers your questions and a bit more.

Alan Griffith

Thanks Alan, just a clarification. I included the second picture, knowing it was the standard B-32 setup, only to confirm that the first picture was of a B-32 also. Sorry for the confusion.

Consolidated B-32 Dominator in flight - USA - WWII - World War 2 - Photograph | eBay

Consolidated XB-32 Dominator 386th Squadron - WWII - World War 2 - Photograph | eBay

*PHOTO* Consolidated B-32 Dominator Bombers in Service ~ Excellent | eBay

Good shots!

Niceoldguy58 said:

The amount of information available on the B-32 to anyone willing to do some serious research is quite astounding, and Nick and I have spent several years digging it up. That one photo of the remotely-operated 4-gun turrets doesn't even scratch the surface. There are also photos of the rearward-firing .50 caliber machine guns AND 20mm cannon in the rear inboard engine nacelles and the machine guns mounted in the leading edge of the wings outboard of the outer engines will all be in it - as will the tests on the A-18 and A-19 4-gun manned turrets that were experimentally mounted. I found over 200 photos of the A-18 alone in my research. Obviously not ALL of them will be in the book!

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What was wrong with the pressurization system? Wasn't that the thing that resulted in the most massive physical changes?

For instance, the original Emerson 128 nose turret was changed for a different one (I'm struggling to remember what its designation was but with no luck) because it was felt its replacement could more easily have the doomed .60 caliber machine guns mounted in it.

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I didn't know there was any problem with the 0.60.

Zipper730 said:

What was wrong with the pressurization system? Wasn't that the thing that resulted in the most massive physical changes?
I didn't know there was any problem with the 0.60.

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Very late response and I may be remembering wrong (Alan, please correct me if I am), but as far as I recall pressurization issues were not the reason that the aircraft's configuration was drastically changed. Per Wolf's book, the USAAF concluded that manned turrets were more effective than remote-controlled ones and wanted both the B-29 and B-32 to switch to them. Boeing successfully argued that this would add too much drag to their design and decrease its performance drastically given the manned turrets' larger size and less streamlined shape, Convair was for whatever reason not as convincing and was stuck with the manned turrets. These made pressurization impractical, so that system was ditched since it was essentially dead weight.