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The ball turret gunner of a B-17 lives and dies in his own small world. He doesn't enter the airplane through the forward hatch, he enters the ball turret. He has no access to the rest of the plane. Since the ball turret is rather cramped, many gunners did not take their parachutes. If battle damage takes out the landing gear and the plane must belly land he knows what will happen to him. Some gunners shot themselves before the plane skidded in. Everybody knew all this. Every B-17 that took off on a mission had a ball turret gunner.

Ball turret gunners can enter the plane. The turret rotates to expose the entry door and you can climb out of it. This man was a Medal of Honor winning ball turret gunner for saving his plane and most of the crew. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maynard_Harrison_Smith

Ah, I stand corrected, partly. See below for all the things that have to go right in a damaged aircraft...

https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ref/AirGunnery/TURRETS5.html

They will have to over represent the Tuskegee Airmen to please their DEI overlords, I predict. They did a good job, and were good pilots, but they have always got credit for things they didn't do. They did lose planes during missions, even though it has been said over and over they never did. I'll be pleasantly surprised if "the message" doesn't get slammed in movie goers faces from time to time....

Which, if they follow their current model, means it will only ever be available on Apple TV. I've been wanting to see Greyhound which came out in 2020 but after four years Apple still hasn't released it to any other service, not even to rent or buy a la carte.

Bullshit!

Our country has a load of smart, brave, patriotic men that are cut from the same cloth as our Founders and the bravest of warriors that preceded them! Our country might be weak but that does NOT mean that everyone is weak!

We still have the best and bravest warriors in the world and they continue to bring honor to their fallen comrades!

Notwithstanding the great Flying Fortress, the B17, don't forget the brave young men who flew the deadly B26 Marauder.



L.W.

My wife and I spent a fantastic evening at a farmhouse in the Yorkshire countryside for a wedding. I drank all night long with the bride’s grandfather who, once he found out I was American, wanted to buy my Glenmorangie ALL NIGHT LONG. When I found out he flew Lancasters from the left seat and completed ALL + the number of required missions required I bought his Glenmorangie ALL night long. At 1 point I recall he had 10 shots lined up as did I and I called a halt to anymore….we finished those and started up again. I was ~30 years old at the time and he was 80….I was NOT new to the late-night hardcore drinking game and could always hold my own against others but that old guy was incredible! I had so much fun and we made some fantastic memories that night. I’m sure he’s long gone but I think of him often since he sorta completed the picture in my mind. I was raised, schooled, churched, scouts and everything else by men from the Greatest Generation but they were American and that’s the perspective I obviously carried so getting the chance to get to know a British hero from that war was an honor that “bookended” my experience with WWII veterans. He LOVED LOVED LOVED Americans and he couldn’t have been kinder….I’ll forever cherish that memory!

From what I gathered the odds won’t good in those things

Looks like Apple TV+ streaming programing is available now on other than Apple branded electronic devices and services on a subscription basis... at a fee, too, of course...

https://www.apple.com/apple-tv-app/

Not that normal people care anymore, but the 2024 Oscar nominations are out, and it looks like a good night for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.

Out of 23 possible categories, Nolan’s critical and financial blockbuster secured 13 nominations, including Best Picture, Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay, Director, Editing, Score, and Production Design.

Breitbart

Available on Amazon Prime - not free, $5.99 I think.

stars Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., and Florence Pugh.

If they are concentrating on the Eighth AF, they may not have any of the Tuskegee Airmen. My dad flew with the 843 Heavy Bombardment, starting out of Africa and moving into Italy as it was freed. His last station was Sterparone, with his group on one side of the PSP, and the Tuskegee folks on the other as I remember him saying. The 15th Air Force required count was 50 missions before you went home, not 25.. I do remember one afternoon at an airshow at Miramar, with dad and one of the Tuskegee airmen spending an hour just talking between themselves. They were nothing but heroes to me and i could only stand there in awe listening to them. It was the only time I heard my dad ever open up about his ime in the war.

Yes you are right maybe I should have said I don’t think we could find that many of them

My father-in-law was a member of the "Forgotten Fifteenth". Towards the end of the war so many airmen were killed that replacements were too few and far between that the mission count was raised from 25 to 50. Part of the reasoning was that the Nazi's were not able to put up as many fighters against the Allies by late in the war. If a mission exceeded a certain amount of time in the air, then it was called a double mission. My father-in-law flew 32 times and was credited with 51 missions. He made several raids on the Ploesti oil fields.

Speaking of the Oppenheimer movie, years ago I met a man by the name of Tom Ferebee. I shook his hand and we chatted briefly. He signed a photo for me. He seemed like a very nice and humble man. I also got to visit with his wife, Mary Ann, for a few minutes. She was charming and very personable. Now, you may be wondering, "Who the heck is Tom Ferebee?" Well...




Thomas Ferebee
"Thomas Wilson Ferebee (November 9, 1918 – March 16, 2000) was the bombardier aboard the B-29 Superfortress, Enola Gay, which dropped the atomic bomb "Little Boy" on Hiroshima in 1945."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Ferebee


Cheers! Bob F.

My uncle was a waste Gunner on a B-17 flying out of UK on missions to German targets in Europe. He caught a round from a Messerschmit 109 in his back. Ugly ass scar. Went all across his upper back. He would joke about it with my Dad. Told him he knew when it was gonna rain.

First it was required to complete 25 missions to be able to go home... 77% of the men who served over there in late 42 and early to mid 43, didn't complete their 25 missions to go home.... they were either killed in the air, shot down over occupied Europe or just lost it from stress and were grounded.

The base I went to school on, RAf Molesworth was home to the 303rd BG. Four of the original B 17s made it to 25 missions and actually thru 50 and 75 missions before being sent home to do War Bond Tours, with their crews. Most other groups weren't so lucky. ALL of their crews who were first sent over in late 42, DIDN'T finish their tours, and ALL were either killed or went down over occupied Europe. Each of the bases mentioned in the Movie or in the Book, were within a 15 to 20 mile radius of Huntingdon. My dad was stationed at RAF Alconbury, just outside of Huntingdon. Many of the bases were still there, held in reserve for NATO. Some like RAF Grafton Underwood and RAF Kimbolton, were gone and torn down in 1963 when we got to England in mid 1963. The war had been over for only 18 years.

Out of towns in the countryside, many groves of trees, you could find pillboxes left over from the war, built during the Battle of Britain, in case the Nazis had invaded England in 1940. The were still finding munitions of bombs that had been dropped in 1940 that had never exploded., ALL over Southern England.

There were many people in the town I lived in off base ( housing was a bear to find), that had lived there during the WAR. There were plenty of WW 1 veterans also all over the neighborhoods. Most of them really liked knowing Americans and having them as friends. A lot of men in their 40s at that time, had been in the RAF and were shot down over occupied Europe, and spent the war in PoW camps.. others I knew were captured at Dunkirk and survived. We could get them to talk about their experiences during WW2, they enjoyed relating it to kids who were interested.

The war was far removed for American kids. NOT so for English kids. There parents and grandparents had lived thru it.
There was plenty of remains all over England left over from the war. We had several factories in Eynesbury were we lived that had been bombed and destroyed during the Battle of Britain by the Luftwaffe. They were never rebuilt and the site still had the brick and stones they were made from, still stacked up after being cleaned up, but left on the property.

Since we lived off base, by law, my youngest brother had to go to the local English Elementary School. They start at 4 years old. The property was all asphalt and brick walls. The remainder of the paint put on the walls that were meant to turn color if the Germans had dropped Gas Bombs to kill the population. The walls from 63 to 66 were still painted from the war...to detect gas.

Everywhere we lived in the shadows of what had happened in England during WW 2. There were still many based left over from WW 2, all just locked up and that's it.. the Nissen Huts, Hangers, Runways, Hard Stands etc were still all there. Molesworth still had the remains of the B17 Junkyard where they would pull parts off of scrapped bombers. There were quite a few still out there in the early to mid 60s, left over from the war 20 years earlier.

as they got more B 17 and B 24s over in Europe, in late 1942, missions were safer, so it was changed from 25 missions to go home, to 50. Losses were still high tho. The 15th and 12th Air Forces operated out of the Mediterranean theatre. So did the 9th, but it was rotated back to England, for the Normandy invasion. The 9th was a Tactical AF where the 8th and 15th were Strategic AFs. Strategic, think Bombers. Tactical, think 2 engine bombers (B 25s and B 26s), and fighter bombers... P 47s. Stategic Bombers, 4 engined bombers.. B 17 & B 24s, and fighter escort P 51s, and night fighters P 61s and P70s, and American flown RAF Mosquitoes.

I can't even imagine hanging underneath a bomber in a little metal and plexiglass ball, 30,000 feet up looking down. The ball turret and tail gunners were isolated from the the rest of the crew aside from the intercoms. Waiting in lonely dread for the "Bandits" call to come loudly into their headphones, straining to see where it's coming from. Parts of the turrets had some armor. The waist gunners had nothing but thin aluminum sheeting between them and the sky or a bullet. Damn, I'd rather nave been a ground slogger.

A mess of messerschmitts!