This was difficult and excruciatingly slow when you’re the last person left on the plane and it’s losing altitude quickly. Sergeant Smith was a ball turret gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress on his first combat mission. And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. A ball-turret gunner, sits in his position on a B-17 "Flying Fortress" shortly before take off for a mission into Germany, 1943. Did you look up how a ball turret worked? He was 24, and was one of the ten-man crew of the B-17 bomber. The gunner was in the fetal position with his feet above his head (yes, there was one short guy on the crew). I believe it happened a number of times. Magee was 5-foot-7 and could barely fit into the small space inside the turret. Air gunners could and did shoot down fighter planes. 11 comments. This was war. Magee plunged almost 22,000 feet, falling unconscious before crashing into the roof of the St Nazaire railway station. His bomber was spinning mid-air and spiralling towards the ground. A few thousand planes are not going to be recalled for safety issues. Alan Magee received the Air Medal for meritorious service and the Purple Heart for his achievements in the war. It is about the death of a gunner in a Sperry ball turret on a World War II American bomber aircraft. Magee had no idea how to control the plane and saw a small opening,  which he quickly jumped through. Powered by Discourse, best viewed with JavaScript enabled. There isn’t a lot of time when the pilot orders abandon ship. 5 years ago. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. Three months before being shot down, the original crew assigned to the B-17F Snap! This thread brings remote turrets to mind. It looks like the gunners didn’t sit that far from their weapons, basically they had a small plexiglass bubble to look out of with the (complicated looking) gunsight mechanism to aim with. On the 23rd of September 1995 Alan E. Magee, accompanied by his wife Helen, returned to St Nazaire to take part in a ceremony sponsored by French citizens, dedicating a memorial to his seven fellow crewmen killed in the crash of Snap! 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I have no doubt that it happened more than once. How did the gunner see the bad guy? 86% Upvoted. Ranked among the luckiest people in the world, Alan E. Magee survived a free fall of almost four miles from a B-17 bomber during a bombing raid in WWII. Crushed ball turret gunner Sign in to follow this . Here’s an article on the B-29 superfortress’s remote gun turrets. A made-for-TV drama from the 1980's was built around that scenario, but it was by and large fictional. save. On the show World War 2 in HD The Air War... Andy Rooney tells the story of a B-17 ball turret gunner traped in the turret and crushed to death when the plane was forced to make a wheels up landing. The space inside the turret was very small and cramped. As the photo shows it in a field with tress, its possible the ball turrent smashed into something but the rest of the plane didn’t suffer much . The gunner could enter the turret from inside the plane by having the turret rotated until the door opening faced the interior of the plane. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. Source: 303rd BG  [Via]. This was mainly because German fighters would target the gunners first. The US 8th Air Force, which flew daylight missions over Europe, had a 19% death rate, if you survived being shot down, you had a 17% chance of become a POW. They were useful. Based on a little quick reading the gunsight was adjusted by turning a control so that an aiming circle matched the wingspan of the incoming fighter. To start with it would have been a B-24 ball turret which retracted for landing. Cascabel Cascabel New Members; 13 posts; Posted September 29, 2012. Contrary to an answer appearing below, there are no substantiated incidents of ball turret gunners being crushed on landing. Pop! Crackle! When he regained consciousness, as the Germans were taking him to hospital, he exclaimed, ‘Thank God I am alive.” Magee once told his friend that the Germans had great respect for those who survived miraculously. Battle damage to the radio operator’s compartment of Boeing B-17F-65-BO 42-29649. A glimmering of conscious awareness comes to him, if at all, only after the moment of death. Google “air gunner victory” for some cites. The ball turret gunner would be hunched, legs bent, with his feet in stirrups on each side of the 13 inch diameter armored glass panel. Magee had to jump out of it to escape certain death. The Sperry ball turret, meant for ventral defense needs on aircraft, was used on both the B-17 Flying Fortress and the B-24 Liberator as well as the United States Navy's Liberator, the PB4Y. He, as well as other bomber veterans, told me stories of incidents in which the ball turret gunner died because he couldn’t get out in time. We have so much respect for these outstanding men! no one knows… Crackle! By renfield, September 26, 2012 in MILITARY AIRCRAFT & AVIATION. best . The gunner entered the ball turret via a door at its rear, which also served as an emergency exit in case of trouble. The poem's speaker suggests that he slips from the protection of his mother's womb into "the State," where he finds himself in a ball turret (the round compartment on a bomber plane from which a gunner shoots). You keep the gunsight on the target and the computer (mechanical, I think) did the rest, automatically adjusting the guns to point at whatever the gunner was sighted on. [Via]. While it may seem cold that a crew would leave the ball turret gunner trapped, they had no choice. The ball turret gunner was crushed to death when a mechanical malfunction trapped him inside his plastic cage and a damaged electrical system made it impossible to lower the plane’s wheels. In total, there were 85 B-17s involved in the raid, along with some fighter planes escorting them. The ball turret gunner was on the underside of the plane and the gunner had to wait until the aircraft was airborne before opening the hatch to get into it. Still, it looks plausible to me as a way of death that the Air Force would prefer to list as “combat death”. People die. On the day Magee went on the mission of his lifetime, he left his parachute on the bomber’s deck because there was not much space inside the turret. Alan Magee decided to join the US Army after Japanese attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. His frame of 5-foot-1 was perfect for the assignment which is considered as one of the most dangerous during World War II. When his bomber came under fire from German anti-aircraft guns, he ran out of options. There has to be more details out there other than Andy Rooney’s accounts and anecdotal information. And even if it didn’t, as long as the (tricycle) gear extended and the pilot didn’t flare too much, he’d be fine. This is clearly something that wartime censors would have edited out. Who was this gunner? hide. Made of Plexiglas and about four feet in diameter, the ball turret was a sphere attached to the bottom of B-17s. With no USAAF documentation of such an event, we are left with having to choose between an uncorroborated memory and a lack of documentation. The gun turrets themselves were relatively nearby and they were also fairly low profile. The name Ronnie Kramer in some book is a fictitious name for a turrent gunner lost on landing, fictitious as the info is censored and it gives the story an appearance of fiction if he says “unknown gunner”. A courageous young World War II gunner and aspiring cartoonist, trapped in the belly gun of a B-17 aircraft with the landing gear destroyed, has only his imagination as … I’m sure there were bomber veterans who were haunted by leaving a ball turret gunner behind. Magee lived another 61 years after his fall during WWII and died of kidney failure and complications from a stroke. Followers 1. The space inside the turret was very small and cramped. With Kevin Costner, Casey Siemaszko, Kiefer Sutherland, J.J. Cohen. The US Army lost 75 airmen, along with 7 planes, while 47 planes were badly damaged. eg a rock outcrop could be hidden in the grass … The bomber was so badly damaged that, on landing, the airplane’s structure failed from battle damage and it broke in half. The ball turret had lost all power, so to get out he had to manually retract the ball using a hand crank. Crushed ball turret gunner. The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner . Donald L. Miller’s 2006 book Masters of the Air, NY Time review here and goodreads reviews here, repeats the Rooney story and also includes a photo (#29, credited to the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum, Savannah, Georgia) with this caption –. Magee’s friend, Don Jenkins, also a veteran of WWII, said that being a B-17 gunner was not an easy job during WWII. related question, did they have higher casualities than the rest of the crew on the plane? The gunner never entered the turret before take off. #41-24620 (PU-O), under Jacob W. Fredericks, from October 14, 1942. The American writer Randall Jarrell published "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" in 1945, the final year of World War II. S/Sgt. This thread is archived. The ball turret job can be exciting. My first thought is unbolting a radio-they were huge, my Father had one for his ham radio hobby-and two or three guys smashing the plexiglass with it. From this sphere a gunner, upside down, could track the enemy, revolving as he let fly with his machine guns. According to one of the participants, the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force called it an “urban myth.”. "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" is one of the earliest of post-modern elegies of a type that might well be termed "peculiar monodies." On 3rd January 1943, Magee got into a Flying Fortress bomber on his seventh bombing mission. Fun Fact: American poet Randall Jarrell wrote a five-line poem called “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” which was published in 1945. It was an enclosure that at any time could become an airman’s coffin. It was cramped and very loud when the guns began to fire. This is why ball-turret gunners were shorter in height compaired to other memebers of the crew. [Via]. So this undated photo shows what looks like a disintegrating turret, and the purported victim is still anonymous. From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State, The reason: First, the ball turret gunner did NOT enter the turret until the aircraft was approaching the point where fighter resistance was expected. Military | Technical Sergeant | Top Turret Gunner - engineer | 389th Bomb Group On a mission to Erkner Berlin on 8 Mar 1944, B-24J #42-99975 'The Latrine Rumor' made a forced landing near Wartena, Holland hitting a windmill that crushed the nose section. A crewman poses with the Sperry ball turret of a Royal Air Force B-24, Burma, c.1943-1945. I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. Ball Turret Gunner. I don’t know if the tales of a ball turret gunner being trapped while the plane actually landed on a runway are true or apocryphal, but the gunners definitely got trapped in those things and sometimes went down with the plane. Saved from ww2incolor.com. Saved by Julie Gault. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. 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