Story Of Heroism - The trapped belly turret gunner

[tyrodtom]

Some landing gears have a up lock that keeps the landing gear from dropping just due to gravity. Don't forget a B-17s landing gear is about 10 ft. away from the fuselage out under the inboard engines. You're not going to know if the landing gear will or will not come down until you try it, and you're not going to try it till you need it, because it would reduce your speed if it dropped early. With the hydraulic system inop, you wouldn't be able to get it back up. If the locks won't release, manual over ride on the gear, if they had it, would do no good.
The belly turret is armored, so breaking into it to get the gunner out, if possible, would take a lot of time. They could have very well been in a low fuel situation, almost out of fuel, and out of time.

 

[danjama]

Some landing gears have a up lock that keeps the landing gear from dropping just due to gravity. Don't forget a B-17s landing gear is about 10 ft. away from the fuselage out under the inboard engines. You're not going to know if the landing gear will or will not come down until you try it, and you're not going to try it till you need it, because it would reduce your speed if it dropped early. With the hydraulic system inop, you wouldn't be able to get it back up. If the locks won't release, manual over ride on the gear, if they had it, would do no good.
The belly turret is armored, so breaking into it to get the gunner out, if possible, would take a lot of time. They could have very well been in a low fuel situation, almost out of fuel, and out of time.

Very good points, that I hadn't considered. What an evil turn of events to be in that situation where all options are exhausted, and you are forced to kill your friend and comerade. Sobering thought.

 

[Ratsel]

Huh? German AAA/Flak/ or fighters killed him, not the B-17 pilot/crew. My guess is that they made heroic efforts to try and save their fellow crewman. Also, we can't say whether or not he had a parachute.. or even if he could open the door.

 

[TheMustangRider]

Torn between the decisions of sacrificing one man in return for the survival of the rest of the crew was an excruciating experience that more than one pilot was forced to endure during the war.

After being damaged by flak during the bomb run, Captain Douglas H. Buskey, pilot of a B-17 from the 379th BG found out that both bomb bay doors were unable to be closed and with one engine out and another damaged it was crucial for the crew to get them closed while still being in enemy territory.
After the pilot ordered someone to try and get the doors closed, the right waist gunner volunteered along with the flight engineer; he disconnected his oxygen system and hook on to a walk-around battle as he entered the bomb bay.
As the engineer was cranking the bomb bay doors closed, he noticed the waist gunner which was on the catwalk, got stuck between the bomb racks; the radio operator attempted to extricate the waist gunner but his oxygen bottle fell trough the partly opened doors and was forced to go back to his position and hook into the plane's oxygen system.
The left waist gunner came forward and tried unsuccessfully to rescue his friend which had by now fainted due to oxygen starvation, the radio operator came back, tried once more to save the waist gunner but to no avail and had to go back to his position for oxygen.
The radio operator informed the pilot that the waist gunner was still stuck in the bomb bay and unconscious, the B-17 would have to dive quickly to a lower altitude if he was to survive, the pilot with a faltering voice replied "If we leave the formation and try to go it alone to 10,000 ft or lower, we may not make it back to England; German fighters will jump us. It means losing one with the hope that the rest of us will get back".
As the Flying Fortress approached the airbase, a red flare was fired from the plane alerting ground personnel that a casualty was on board and priority was given to the pilot to land; as the pilot taxied the B-17 to its dispersal area, medics came aboard the stricken bomber, removed the body of the waist gunner and took him away.
As the body was being removed, the navigator Lt. Franklin L. Betz, which is the person recounting the experience, remembers: "At that moment I realized the hardening of a naive airman to combat in the crucible of war had begun".

When I read stories like this, I too realize that we will never be able to pay what that generation sacrificed for ours.

 

[stona]

According to Rooney the B-17 in question was flying on two engines (could they maintain altitude like that,even if they had lightened their load?) and flew a circuit around the aerodrome for several minutes whilst efforts continued to free the trapped gunner.
A lot of journalists don't allow inconvenient facts to get in the way of a good story but Rooney did not write this up at the time. It appeared later. Rooney will be well known to our U.S.coleagues,he was a contemporary of Pyle,Cronkite,Brokaw and the great Life photographer Margaret Bourke White. He was one of six journalists to fly with the 8th Air force on their first raid to Germany. He may be best known,latterly, for his contributions to "60 minutes", though he has won many awards for his writing. Not exactly a hack. I very much doubt that he made this story up.
Steve

 

[parsifal]

There are so many stories of heroism. I sont think i would have the guts to talk to that trapped gunner, or if I was the pilot, I dont think I could bring the ship in, knowing it will kill one of my crewman. I know......if I didnt 8 other men will die, and not bringing the bird in isnt going to help the gunner, but a decision like that isnt easy

 

[armadillomaster]

A truly hard decision to make, but one that may have saved many.

On both sides Axis and Allies during the war, there were many heroes.

 

[parsifal]

well, for me the story is pretty much confirmed. Stories like this just underline the terrible price paid in that war. I hope the guys involved in that tragedy rest easy now. It puts a lump in my throat just thinking about how that story would have played out

Bravo Zulu guys, enjoy your rest

 

[Monkeynuts12]

It turns out he actually survived.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq9mTbooWyw

 

[barney]

I know that this story was originally written by Andy Rooney who was a correspondent for "Stars and Stripes". He was at the airfield when the incident occurred.
Rooney recalled, "I was there when they came back from a raid deep in Germany, and one of the pilots radioed in that he was going to have to make an emergency landing. He had only two engines left and his hydraulic system was gone. He couldn't lower the wheels and there was something even worse. The ball turret gunner was trapped in the plastic bubble beneath the belly of the bomber.
Later I talked with the crewmen who survived that landing. Their friend in the ball turret had been calm, they said. They had talked to him. He knew what they had to do. He understood. The B-17 slammed down on its belly and onto the ball turret with their comrade trapped inside."
Awful,just awful. I know I have some more details somewhere which I'll post if I find them.
Steve

The gear on a B-17 is operated by a jack screw driven by an electric motor.

 

[stona]

Rooney was a journalist and a very fine one. He was not an aircraft technician. I quoted him recalling the incident many years later. For whatever reason the crew were unable to lower the gear.
Steve

 

[Kryten]

I have heard this story, was always a bit baffled how the mounting didn't fail and punch the ball up into the fuselage, the weak link here to me should have been the mounting, no doubt the ball would be badly damaged but its construction should have been more resliient than the mounts?

 

[FLYBOYJ]

I have heard this story, was always a bit baffled how the mounting didn't fail and punch the ball up into the fuselage, the weak link here to me should have been the mounting, no doubt the ball would be badly damaged but its construction should have been more resliient than the mounts?

It is. I've seen ball turrets (see page 1) and they are stronger than their mountings in the aircraft. To be honest I have issues in the way this story has always been presented. I don't believe anyone was killed in this situation from being "crushed." I believe if an individual was stuck inside a ball turret the forces from the crash would probably be the factor for killing the occupant, not the ball failing structurally. It would be like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel (somewhat). I've seen pics of ball turrets destroyed on the ground, usually because they were shot up in the air first by flack. My 2 cents....

 

[barney]

Rooney was a journalist and a very fine one. He was not an aircraft technician. I quoted him recalling the incident many years later. For whatever reason the crew were unable to lower the gear.
Steve

I'll excuse Rooney but it caught my attention because I knew the B-17, as well as the B-29, were known as electric birds. A Boeing design philosophy it seems. This from memory but I think the the only hydraulics on a B-17 were cowl flaps and brakes.

 

[Siegfried]

I'll excuse Rooney but it caught my attention because I knew the B-17, as well as the B-29, were known as electric birds. A Boeing design philosophy it seems. This from memory but I think the the only hydraulics on a B-17 were cowl flaps and brakes.

The RLM (Reichs Luftfahrts Ministerium) compelled Focke Wulf to make an 'all electric aircraft' on the FW 191, a contender for the Bomber B specification. It was considered a failure. Kurt Tank, the chief designer at Focke Wulf was trained as an electrical engineer and himself had no confidence in the system. It likely was just a badly designed or implimented system.

One great success in the USA was the development of a rotating electrical amplifier known as the amplidyne. This powered all US gun turrets: B-26, B-17, B-24 etc irrespective of whether it was Sperry, GE or whomever.

Earlier rotating amplifier was the Ward-Leonard system whereby an electric motor drove an DC electric generator. The field winding current was controled via say a variable resistor and this was then amplified by a factor of about 50 out of the DC generators brushes. It could then be applied to an DC motor to gain variable speed. The Germans used this system to point their Wurzburg Riesse radars however it was too sluggish for pointing fast moving guns themselves.

In the US the perfection of the amplidyne allowed amplification factors of 1000-100,000 instead of just 50. In addition the current rise was much faster. In a US gun turret the gunner opperated a large wire wound variable resistor called a rheostat which applied the current to the amplidyne.

The Sperry ball turret was cleary in need of replacement. It would easily have been possible for the US to use synchro's to transimt gun pointing information to a B-29 style belly gun and replace this miserably heavy and dangerous ball turret contraption early in the war. The US Navy had been aiming its guns remotely (RPC remote power control) for years.

The key complication of the GE system used in the B-29 was the computer which deflected the guns automatically to compensate for ballistics fall of, target rate, air speed and air density etc. However simply pointing the gun accuratly was trivial in engineering terms for US technology. The "belly gunner" could have been seated in the cabin and sighted via blisters on the side of the aircraft with a periscope for directly below. It was simply be a matter of a 5 gan switch for him to choose which gunsight he wanted to use.

The Germans did actually develop a technology of the 'magnetic amplifier' to a high degree to power their servo systems as well as electric servos and electric hydraulic servos which feature a rapid respone due to a winding to nullify self inductance. (used in V2 guidance fins) It was quite a good method and copied by the US for about a decade untill it was replaced as a technology by solid state electronics in the 1960s.

In general other combatents tended to use hydraulics to achieve the general response and power required.

 

[BryanC]

My father was a B-17 waist gunner with the 306 bomb group at the Shalveston base (near Wellingborough, north of London) and flew the 2and Schweinfurt raid, and others. He destinctly remembers the "Stars and Stripes guy" that was to fly a misson with them...and was amazed when that guy (Andy Rooney), became famous later (60 Minutes). My dad never talked about the war but I do remember him watching 60 minutes and saying..."hey...I remember that guy from the Stars and Stripes". I think the gruesome ball turret crushing incident happened many times...Rooney just reported one of them. Before he died in '10 I asked him about that story and his respons was "yeah....that happend alot"....

 

[Njaco]

Thanks for the info and welcome to the forum Bryan!

 

[parsifal]

I started this thread, and want to thank all the contributors. Its probably just about run its course but then, who knows. We all have our beliefs, our prejudices, our heroes. Courage and sacrifice should be honoured for those who had it, and what they had to give up. We need to always remeber and honour their courage they had in the face of adversity and danger. These men deserve our respect for things they did, and for which we can never repay

 

[drgondog]

I have heard the survival stories of a ball gunner inside on a crash landing in which the turret (and Gunner) were punched into the fuselage.

Also, if the pilot had been able to get one main wheel down, the a/c would have been far enough off the centerline to avoid a blow to the turret

The Spanner wrench was on the bulkhead wall on the B-17E, I don't recall if the position was changed for the F and G but they were carried on every standard operational flight. There have been several combat narratives in which the Ball Turret was among the first to be jettisoned when trying to lose weight.

 

[Gene McIlroy]

In response to Parsifal 8/12/2011 post. The trapped Ball Turrett Gunner was definitel, not from the crashed B-17 231613 which belly landed at Podington Field 4-19-1944. This crew had dropped their Ball Turrett, they were returning from an aborted run over France after having their hydraulic system hit by flak, the landing gear would not lower and could not be hand cranked down. My uncle was the Flight Engineer on this plane, He, the Ball Turrett gunner on this April 19th flight and a replacement bombardier were killed after a bombing run to Cottbus, Germany on May 29 1944. This info from reports by the crew.