1943 Consolidated B-24D Liberator USAAF 42-72843 24 Strawberry Bitch WWII Bomber by Chris Murkin
Via Flickr:
1943 Consolidated B-24D Liberator USAAF 42-72843 24 Strawberry Bitch WWII Bomber Photo Taken at USAF National Museum Wright-Patterson Base Dayton Ohio HAC_5787
Above: a Consolidated B-24D Liberator by the name of Strawberry Bitch. It flew combat missions from 1943-1944 over North Africa and was flown to the museum about 15 years later.
Below: a B-24 Ball Turret. These ball turrets would be mounted on the underside of the plane and have an entire man inside, squeezed into the fetal position. There's a particularly harrowing scene revolving around one in an episode of Masters of the Air. You'll be able to see the ball turret attached to the museum's B-17 that I'll post tomorrow.
In front of the ball turret is a poem written by Randall Jarrell, who served in the USAAF as a navigation trainer. The poem was published in 1945. It reads,
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
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.
Under the cut is a diagram showing how a man would be squeezed into one of these, as well as an explanatory note from the poet to go along with the poem.
A ball turret was a Plexiglas sphere set into the belly of a B-17, B-24, B-25, B-32 and inhabited by two .50 caliber machine guns and one man, a short small man. When this gunner tracked with his machine guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below, he revolved with the turret; hunched upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the fetus in the womb. The fighters which attacked him were armed with cannon firing explosive shells. The hose was a steam hose. (Source)
