B-17 Ball Turret Gunner – WWII’s Most Dangerous Job. Posted: May 15, 2025 | Last updated: May 15, 2025. Suspended beneath the bomber in a cramped, glass sphere—ball turret gunners faced ...

Simple History. B-17 Ball Turret Gunner (Dangerous Jobs in History) Posted: December 12, 2024 | Last updated: December 13, 2024. Flying a B-17 was a very risky job since they were huge, slow and ...

The ball turret, like this one on a B-17 in England in 1943, was designed small to reduce drag, so its gunner usually was the shortest man in the crew. Gunners on World War II bombers had only a ...

Jerry Duran, who served as a ball turret gunner during World War II, was recognized at a meeting of the Veterans Coffee Club on Thursday, Feb. 18, at the B-17 Alliance Restoration & Museum in Salem.

Letter: The ball turret gunner. ... This Plexiglas ball hanging from the bottom of the B-17 or B-24 was a heavily armed bubble just big enough to hold a small man and two 50-caliber machine guns.

Kuhl was a ball turret gunner. A ball turret was a Plexiglas sphere set into the belly of a B-17 or B-24 bomber. It carried two .50-caliber machine guns and one man, who was usually short and small.

Once the B-17 was in the air, the gunner would enter the turret by placing his feet in the heel rests on the front wall, hunker down in a fetal position, and then close the hatch.

He wound up as a turret gunner/engineer on a B-17 bomber, was shot down on his eighth mission and spent more than 16 months as a POW. Skip to Article. Set weather. Back To Main Menu Close.

World War II veteran Al Shaw points to a B-17 model that hangs from the ceiling in his Belle Fourche home. The model, which shows a translucent, bubble-like ball turret on the underside, is just ...

Mighty 8th's B-17 gets its ball-turret. ... the 93-year-old Army Air Corps veteran who flew 11 missions over France and Germany on an 8th Air Force B-17 crew admitted some benchmarks along the ...

On Veterans Day we remember from World War II the hazards faced by young men who became our fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers. For example, the 8th Air Force suffered more ...