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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.
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
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?
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.