There were many terrifying jobs in history and World War II in particular, but few compared to this one.
A freezing metal sphere hanging from the belly of a bomber.
Cramped, claustrophobic, and often fatal.
This was the realm of the ball turret gunner.
There were plenty of positions during World War II that put a serviceman’s life at risk.
Arguably one of the worst was being the ball turret gunner on a bomber.
Small, tight, difficult to escape from, no armor plating, and with minimal visibility, the ball turret was the definition of danger.
What was the purpose of a ball turret? What were the dangers facing a ball turret gunner? Was that position effective? Hello, I’m Colin Heaton, former history professor, Army and Marine Corps veteran, and welcome to this episode of Forgotten History.
I’m fire.
Designed in the 1930s, the Balt turret was equipped on many US aircraft, including heavy bombers and reconnaissance aircraft during the war.
Eventually, it was abandoned in future aircraft designs, leaving the immense dangers it posed behind.
The ball turret was initially developed by two separate companies, Emerson Electric and the Sperry Corporation.
Development of the Emerson design was soon halted with Spar’s design being preferred by both the war department and the US Army Air Forces and US Navy.
The vententral ball turret was a hydraulically operated altism mount addition to the two main aircraft that housed it.
The Boeing B7 Flying Fortress and Consolidated B-24 Liberator.
The ball turret was mounted on the PB4Y1 Liberators operated by the US Navy as well as the B-24 successor, the consolidated B32 Dominator.
Suspended underneath a B7 Flying Fortress or a B24 Liberator.
This death trap rotated 360° and was armed with two 50 caliber machine guns.
Its job was to protect the bombers’s blind spot, the underbelly.
A lonely, vulnerable position with no easy way out if things went bad.
Along with the tail gunner, the ball turret gunner could report any incoming fighters approaching from the 6:00 position.
It was only 4 ft across, but carried serious firepower.
Two Browning 50 caliber machine guns with up to a,000 rounds per gun and belt fed into the weapons.
Adding the Sperry K4 optical gun site, it left little room to move around.
Given the cramped nature of the ball turret, the Browning’s handles were difficult to maneuver.
So, a pulley system was developed to allow for easier operation.
The gunner held two joysticks in either hand, one to pivot the ball turret and the other to trigger the firing mechanism for the Brownings.
Foot pedals on the floor controlled the gun sight between their legs and operated an intercom system, which served as the only form of communication between the ball turret gunner and the rest of the crew.
The smallest men were usually chosen for that position, but not always.
Gunners folded into a fetal position, knees tight to chest, back to the rear wall, feet mounted on the foot pedal triggers.
They often experienced missions lasting up to 10 hours and risked many debilitating factors.
Frozen limbs were not unusual, and there were no bathroom breaks.
Welcome to your office.
Getting in was an operation.
The gunner entered through a hatch in the aircraft floor, feet into stirrups, then lowered the turret so the guns pointed straight down.
Once in, they were effectively sealed off from the crew.
Communication was by a single intercom line, which was often the first thing to fail, often due to battle damage or just a technical malfunction.
The extreme cold also played a factor.
Electrically heated suits were mandatory for all crewmen because these aircraft were not pressurized and these were not always reliable.
And at 25,000 ft, the temperature was often -50 to -70° F.
If the turret lost power, the suit lost heat and the gunner froze.
Actor Clark Gable served as a gunner and videographer with the Eighth Air Force and he suffered severe frostbite on a mission.
Please see our video on Clark Gable.
Randall Gerald, a US Army Air Force’s veteran, immortalized the ball turret’s horror in a single chilling line.
Despite its dangers, the turret offered a clear view of the skies below, an ideal position, which allowed the ball turret gunner the best view to visually inspect battle damage underneath the bomber from flack or fighters.
Ball turret designs vary depending on the aircraft.
The B7’s conventional landing gear meant the implement featured a non- retractable mount, while the B24’s tricycle landing gear required the installation of a vertically retractable mount.
This kept the ball turret from hitting the ground during unstable takeoffs and landings.
Because it couldn’t fully retract up inside the fuselage, the turret would be crushed if the plane belly landed or ditched in the ocean.
It was a coffin during any crash landing if the gunner could not get out.
Ball turret gunners didn’t wear parachutes normally.
There simply wasn’t room.
Instead, their shoot was stored just outside the turret unless they couldn’t get out in time.
The turret would be lowered and raised via a combined electro-hydraulic system.
Once in flight, this system would be activated by the pilots remotely.
In an emergency, such a loss of power or battle damage, the waste gunners could retract the turret manually if there was time.
To escape a doomed plane, the gunner had to rotate the turret vertically, which was not possible if the electrical system failed.
If power was lost, manual cranks operated by the waste gunners were the only hope of rescue.
If the gunner got out, he would then have to crawl into the fuselage, find his parachute, strap in, then jump.
To negate the danger, some gunners wore a chest parachute, but this typically wasn’t the norm.
And all of this often occurred while the bomber was spiraling out of control when the centrifugal force could pin the crew in sight as it fell to Earth.
However, many ball turret gunners complained these methods and equipment did not always work well.
If the turret lost power, the electricity that fed the suit failed.
This would often make dangerous situations for the gunner where they would have to extricate themselves from the turret, climb up into the aircraft, or risk freezing to death.
Many times, gunners would need their crew members to help pull them out after landing since they had been semifrozen in the turret.
Oxygen was another issue.
A damaged line could suffocate the gunner.
Unless a crew mate noticed the turret wasn’t moving, the man inside might quietly die in his bubble.
Often the pilot, cuff pilot, or crew chief would periodically call the gunner, making sure he was responsive.
Since they could not physically talk to their counterparts, the ball turret gunner often needed callouts from his fellow crew members on the location of incoming aircraft from other locations.
While the gunner could see everything below and behind him, any aircraft attacking from elsewhere were unknown unless called out by the crew members.
Even though they might have been the first to see incoming fighters from below, they had to be careful and conserve ammunition.
Because they could not reload their guns in flight, the gunners would have to limit their shooting to short bursts and only if they could score a sure hit.
This position also presented a harrowing experience as many ball turret gunners could see the fate of downed friendly and enemy aircraft as well as count any friendly parachutes long after leaving the view of their comrades above.
Frozen urine was also a problem.
The relief tube in the tail would sometimes drain onto the turret then freeze.
One clever gunner fixed this problem by having his men urinate in cans and toss them overboard.
He even rigged a hose to relieve himself.
Necessity, as they say, is the mother of battlefield invention.
Surprisingly, for planes that returned to base undamaged, the ball turret was one of the safer positions alongside the pilot and co-pilot, unless it was a crash landing with a jammed turret.
Just 6% of ball turret gunners were killed, 6% wounded.
But here’s the catch in that statistic.
That data didn’t include the planes that didn’t return.
Because of this lengthy process of getting out of a doomed aircraft, the ball turret gunner was often the last man out, if he got out at all.
If the aircraft went down, the ball turret gunner often went with it.
That was because if the aircraft took damage that resulted in an uncontrollable spiral, skid, or any rapidly deteriorating flight characteristic, the gunner would need to first rotate the turret to vertical if able, unlock their hatch, disconnect from their only available oxygen supply, climb out, run to grab their parachute from the radio operator’s area, connect their parachute to their parachute harness, and then run for the nearest opening to get out of the plane.
That’s a lot to do when you’re going down.
By the end of the war, new aircraft abandoned the ball turret entirely as it was too dangerous.
With the emergence of better long-range fighter escort aircraft, bombers were being lost far less often from enemy fighters.
Toward the end of the Second World War, Ero’s ball turret became the preferred implement for two bombers operated by the US Navy.
The consolidated PB4Y1 Liberator and PB4Y2 Privateeer.
Unlike previous iterations, this ball turret served two purposes during low-level attacks on Japanese targets.
Fire suppression and strafing for anti-ubmarine warfare as well as defense against bow attacks.
But what did the enemy fighter pilots think? German and Japanese fighter pilots adapted their methods of attack due to the different tactics and updated versions of the heavy bombers.
The B17F did not have the forward firing chin turret, which allowed the more courageous and skilled enemy pilots to attack the aircraft head-on, as that was the position that offered the least defensive fire.
The arrival of the B17G and later models of the B-24 Liberator added an additional pair of 50 caliber machine guns to the nose to address the new tactic of frontal attacks adopted by the Germans.
Most Germans, for example, preferred to attack from the rear, coming in fast from altitude and hitting the aircraft, usually focusing upon the wing routts and engines.
This was because approaching from behind allowed the fighter pilot more time to aim and fire, ensuring more damage.
But the ball turret underneath was a deterrent to many Germans because the gunner in the ball turret also had time to line up his target.
According to Luftwaf, aa fighter pilot and ace Major Gorg Peter Ada where he cited his experience, quote, “Attacking a Boeing or a liberator from underneath was not advised.
The two machine guns in the ball turret had plenty of time to aim in and hit you.
I know.
I learned the hard way.
The attack from behind and high was better.
You could close in fast and only risked the top gunner and waste gunners on other bombers hitting you, which happened to me a few times.
Aegon Meyer and I developed the frontal attack method which was extremely hard to master and many of our pilots did not use it.
I would say the ball turret position stopped many of our pilots from making attacks from below until we had the ME262.
Then it did not really matter due to their closing speed, but even then I preferred not to do that.
Of his 76 aerial victories, Ader shot down 36 4ine B7s and B-24s, but he was in turn shot down 17 times and wounded 14 times.
Three of his injuries were severe.
The last time he was shot down put him out of the war.
Likewise, Major Anton Hackle also had his awakening moment.
He was shot down eight times and wounded four times.
And of his 192 victories, 34 were heavy bombers.
He stated, quote, “Yes, attacking from the underside was not advised.
You could fire and may injure or even kill the bottom gunner, but you took a great chance of being hit yourself.
I advised against it.
Leaving an aircraft at that altitude in that cold with all that metal flying around was not something I looked forward to.
But despite the ball turret gunner providing a deep sense of security for his crew and bomber, flack was probably the gunner’s greatest danger.
It was indiscriminate and often very heavy.
Bombers would fly through a wall of exploding shrapnel that tore into men and machines.
The ball turret was very exposed to flack burst underneath.
The US Army Air Force ball turret gunner had a dangerous job as did all the men on board the heavy bombers striking ever deeper into German held territory.
But the men slung underneath an aircraft isolated from his comrades faced a unique psychological and as well a physical danger unlike any others.
They were in fact very brave and if they survived they were very lucky men.
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