My father taught B17 ball turret gunnery stateside (Not sure but I think is was Vegas) in WWII. In order to escape in an emergency it was necessary to tediously hand crank the gear to get the turret to the bottom position to allow escape. My father figured out a way to pop the ratchet from the gear allowing the turret to quickly drop to the bottom position allowing a quick exit! He said they changed the training manual after that. Who knows the lives that may have saved. A story I'll always remember.

Die Bachem Ba 349 Natter war niemals ein Kamikatze Flugzeug.

Ki 84 veteran pilot Sergeant Mizunori Fukuda is credited with the shootdown of the 3rd wingman of Thomas McGuire on the mission that the 2nd place American Ace supposedly crashed while manuevering with drop tanks on against a Ki 43 over Mindoro in the Phillippines 01/07/1945. The official version has Fukuda showing up after McGuire crashed but an incindiary 20mm fragment was found in McGuire's P38 wreckage and no variant of the Oscar was ever equipped with the 20mm canon whereas the Ki84 always was. In addition there was a discrepancy in the two after action reports of the surviving American pilots and one of them, Missing Aircrew Report 11589 (MACR 11589) attributed McGuire's P38 as lost to "enemy aircraft". In addition Fukuda reportedly claimed, not just one but two P38s shot down that day. I'll leave it to the reader of this reply to draw their own conclusions or not.

Your video has many errors in the narration. The B 17 didn't have a retractable turret nor did it have "fitted with 250 caliber am 2 browning machine guns". Some turrets had the 2 ammo boxes fitted inside the turret. The turret was fitted with armor plates in some sections.

Many of the things you say are factually simply incorrect,your research into the subject leaves much to be desired! 😩😭

I know that sound from somewhere seriously

Jay Zeamer !! you owe respect !

Merci pour cette vidéo historique bien documentée et intéressante.

Had no idea it existed. That's almost as crazy as the 400mph DC 8 or whatever it was that Greg outlines lol. Very impressive radial engines and crap ton of boost.

The documentary I recently watched said that the ball-gunner has the lowest injury rate of any B-17 crew member, thanks to being seated in an armoured sphere. The waist gunners were most likely to be injured.

I would like to know more about the "Mutiny." What were the causes and what were the actual complaints? Did it lead to a change in policy? Also, what did Caldwell, do after the war? An interesting video on a little-known subject.

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner By Randall Jarrell From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Their mortality rate wasn't higher than the cockpit crew's

Cool

LOVING THE HISTORY...👍

I heard they captured two or three in Philippines And there were photos of them flying over Japan

Two things. First, onboard computer, 😂. Second, who the hell would value the opinion of some looser officer on the losing side about this aircraft?

Great video Thanks

Another B17 that you might like to check out is " Ol666" that did a mission from Port Morseby to Rebaul .

The USA sure was blessed with an incredibly talented and courageous military during ww2. It seems like there is no end to stories like this with all the branches of our military.

Mere boys, hardened by depression era hardships, were ready to step into war torn adulthood with courage and tenacity. Boys today have not suffered enough to fight for freedom.

Sterling Mountain

24 missions, a bomber commander, and only a 2nd LT? Doesn't sound right.

Awesome pilot.

Very interesting video.

the Germans also had a few salvaged & refurbished B-17s & actually used them.

Mac was ordered out by the president,but he did scree up after pearl was hit.but the way he commanded to defeat japan by island hooping saved american lives.

Interesting video, a little disconjointed at times but pretty good.

StuBo 2 was surely not a 2-seater. What should be the task for a second person in such a plane? It had a longer fuselage because it had an internal bomb bay. This concept had a lot of disadvantages of cause, but: It would have been small and a hard target for AA, it would be not as complicated and would not take much material to be produced compared to a larger, conventional plane. So it could have been produced in larger numbers. Designing a canopy with a better view to the outside would not be a problem. But I guess it was a task for the designers to create a plane with maximum protection against enemy fire.

The ball didnt retract in the B-17.

MacArthur should have been court-martialed after leaving the Philippines just like General Short and Admiral Kimmel were after Pearl Harbor.

Very Informative, did not know that

...LOVE THE HISTORY...GREAT VIDEO...😎👍

Real life inspiration for the B-Wing from Star Wars.

Always wondered why the ball turret was never made bigger?

I’m just glad that the Soviet Union didn’t get a look at the U.S. design’s of the B-52 an aircraft that has been the backbone of America’s bomber fleet since the early 1950’s and is still in service today, being upgraded to fly until its replacement is in service. 😲

Hello me Abdul haadi

This my relative Jimmy Ward VC - inspired me to learn to fly.

I thought pilots were the most killed

The information in this video is mostly false. The ball turret was the 2nd LEAST deady position in the B-17, and had the MOST protection against schrapnel. The story of the gunner being crush on landing is a debunked myth. It never happened.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Yet another reason when time is offered up in War *("Case Blue" no Stalingrad plan)* take the time. That Germany in 1942 could not understand this remains one of the great mysteries of WW2. Take the space given up to the Don in 1942 but this is how critical oil from everywhere least of all the Caucuses was/still is today. If Germany had bypassed Sevastopol and moved aggressively into the Kuban purely to secure the oil supplies there this would have given both jet aircraft already in production at this time both the time and fuel they neeed to take back control of the skies from both Allied and Soviet Air Power #no_more_pistons also from this Germany may have effected truly effective rocket artillery instead of just V-1 and V-2 which were wholly ineffective against the West.

The Miles M.52 never actually existed, it never developed beyond artist renderings and a wooden model.

I have an original photo of two Mavis flying boats at Rabaul.

Interesting video but the computer generated audio sucks!

The Air Staff has a history of cocking procurement up, e.g. The Mosquito, & later, TSR-2. There are many others, & they're the fools who thought the Swift was a good aeroplane.

My ex father in law, was a ball turret gunner. He said they could not wear a parachute. They kept the parachute next to the turret. His plane was hit and broke in half. He had to put his chute on while falling. He survived but had a bad scar on his face. God bless Jake Lemberg.

Interesting that design looks almost identical to early Tempest renderings in layout so the question arises, is the imagery in this video of the proposed FB-22 based on any available evidence of the proposal which would suggest Tempest was influenced by it, or was this video produced without any real idea of what the concept proposed and thus took those Tempest renderings as a base knowing that aircraft (as a fighter bomber) proposes longer range than a F-22 ( as a pure Air Superiority Fighter) and thus simply exploited those renderings as a potential redesign of the F-22 as a Bomber variant.

"as the turrets lack of catastrophic damage suggests the gunner survived,, you say as you show a picture where the turret is completeley caved in on itself... i dont think he made it out of that one

G'day 'Rabbit', you've obviously missed the two official studies (1944 & post-war) on the most vulnerable and potentially fatal positions on the crew positions in the B-17. In both studies, the opposite results were found. The most dangerous gunners' position on the B-17 was the Ball Turret closely followed by the Tail Gunner's spot. In fact, the most deadly gun positions were the Waist Gunners, followed by the Pilot/Co-Pilots' spots plus the Bomb Aimer's/Cheek Gunners. These official statistics are easily found via Google. Cheers, Bill H. ex-Airforce and Military Historian