An historically correct restoration and documentation of one important, yet sadly overlooked part of the entirety of the effort it took to win a World War. Thank you for sharing...
Another example of why the B-24 was better than the B-17. On the B-24 there were actual full-sized turrets with chairs for the nose, dorsal (behind the cockpit), underneath ventral ball turret (these were also fully retractable on B-24s unlike B-17 ball turrets), and tail. The B-17s had chin turrets below the nose that weren't anywhere as good as B-24s' nose turrets augmented by non-turreted machine guns out of holes on the side of the nose as well as seated dorsal turrets and an actual turret in the tail and not the "bicycle seat" non-turreted tail gun. Shocking how nobody ever talks about the actual turret comparisons on B-24s and B-17s in all the arguments about which one is better.
Looks like it'd be REAL HARD to extricate oneself from that contraption if your plane was hit and going down. My heart goes out to all those airmen who fought in that horrific war.
Imagine trying to shoehorn into that with the heavy sheepskin lined electric heated suits and boots and gloves they wore to keep from freezing in the 50 below zero temps at 25,000 feet where they flew. Oh yes, and he would have been wearing an oxygen mask and combat helmet too.
@@roadrashray9416 And no chute....I don't think there was a room for a chute for ANY manned turret position on any bomber...nose, tail, or ball. MAYBE the top.
dude , he's probably like ten feet away from his wife cooking dinner...what moron fires an antiaircraft gun in his backyard? are you american by any chance?
jawadad802 Its 50 cals. So dont try and make it sound crazier than it is with anti aircraft gun. And plenty of people shoot in their yards, just happens to be mostly Americans because they can actually own firearms. Stay mad
Aaron you cant fly near or above people, and you cant photograph or watch people who have an expectation of privacy. aka hovering in on area or place and watching people on their private property. cant fly in adverse weather conditions like wind and fog, and cannot take of or land on private property without permission.
@@2013Pyst Boi, you better go read up on the FAA site. you can't film people on their property. to be honest, all they have to do is call the police and claim you are a nuisance. you will be told to leave. did you not hear about a guy on TH-cam trying to film inside a guys house, because "muh veganism"? he got in deep shit.
A superb depiction of the B-24's nose turret. My stepfather was a flight engineer on B-24's in Italy, 7 missions. .He said the fuel transfer sys. was a nightmare by having to crawl through small passage ways ( like all bomber crews he was slight in stature) in the wings many times to fix their most complicated fuel transfer system. He admitted he did not like flying in these beast for many reasons, and was extremely edgy,scared on bombing missions like they all were. Their were 54,000 airmen killed in WW11. The old history channel before it turned to shit, had a lot about WW 11 operations, one with the inner wing of a B 24 separated(blown off ) by a bomber above miscalculating. These airmen were from the bravest.generations starting with WW 1, WW 11 then Korean war,then Vietnam. My biological father served 1940-46 in the Navy, Was in nearly every naval /air battle in the S.Pacific due serving on carriers and manning 20 mm and 40mm batteries. He's only talk about it when I and my brother when kids insisted hearing these terrible things he went through. After researching WW 11 KIA's,the Navy lost approx.37,000 men and marines about 27,000 to my surprise..1966 I was drafted, took another 1 yr for a special school then got a wake up call when deployed to Asia..
1.4 thousand people clicked on this video to see bullets flying even though the title says nothing about it firing. They have no appreciation for seeing a piece of history in a way they probably would never have a chance to see otherwise. But because they are childish, they gave the video a thumbs down.
The original shooters, out of necessity, we're skinny short men, probably boys until they saw German fighters head on. THEN they became men. Thank you for your service!
Fascinating! My grandfather was a nose gunner on a B24 Liberator during WWII for the 726th Bomb Squadron and I never had a chance to ask him about his experience mostly out of respect for his privacy and because I was a child when he was alive and wasn't fully aware of his wartime contribution. After reading the book Masters of the Air and watching the Apple TV series by the same name, I have a much better understanding of what these young men went through and marvel at the fact that my grand father even survived after completing 19 missions before the squadron was disbanded in 1944. Based on the odds of survival, my mother and therefore myself had a 1 in 5 chance of being born. Weird to think about.
Now THAT is cool. Seems like the hardest part would be reloading the guns. Not much room in there to move around belts and ammo cans. I wonder how that works? Maybe they just don't reload?
Sept. 26, 2018----Damn amazing bit of restoration and thanks for the video. HOWEVER, you forgot one thing for the turret: a coin slot to put my quarters into so as I'm in it, can make all the taca, taca, taca, taca noises I want for my one minute of play time. !-)
Sooooo cool! HUGE salute to the everyone who worked and fought to keep America free and safe in WWII, and a shout-out to the guys that restored this turret!
Very interesting and well made Video!! Really pleasure by watching it and learning more about the function of a turret! A good look inside!!👍Astonishing how loud it is while working! And while flying it even becomes more louder throug the engines! Greetings from germany🇩🇪🇺🇸🇩🇪🇺🇸
And I'd like to point out that by halfway through the video, he has the turret moving plenty fast. Certainly fast enough to track the average WWII fighter that isn't doing a high-speed flypast of your airplane at 20ft range....in which case you'd have about .10 of a second to track him anyway. The idea is to hit fighters doing that do OTHER bombers, and let the other bombers shoot down the ones flying past you. i'd also point out the slow-speed controlability. One of the big advances with these turrets, is not only could they move fast enough to track typical fighters while remaining smooth, and that they would always move at a predictable rate that didn't vary no matter what loads were places on the turret, but they _also_ had a very low minimum rate, and very fine and precise control. You could do very fine movements with it, unlike many earlier turrets that could only track at one or two speeds, and had a high minimum tracking speed, so you'd have to keep taking "bites" and trying to put a burst in when the target reached the new location. Like I said, amazingly advanced devices, very expensive, and no end of trouble in developing them. Whether they were actually worth all the trouble is still debated, but _most_ people agree it was best to give the men something to feel like they were fighting back with, even if the actual cost/benefit might suggest it was better to just not bother with them. When it comes to remote-control gunnery systems, its even harder to say.
At first i was expecting that the whole unit is moved by hydraulics, but hearing the startup at 1:15 of the rotary converters/amplidynes gave the answer :)
As a skydiver, I always wondered how the hell any of those crewmen got out of a falling, spinning, shot-down B-24...I think the pilots, co-pilots, nose gunners and bombardiers were supposed to exit from the nose wheel doors...IF they were opened...Good Lord!
As someone whos been inside a nose wheel door on a b-24 Its possible and it does go all the way through, but theres usually a nose wheel there in flight
I knew a man named Sandy who lived in Lebanon, NH. that was in one of these flying out of Italy. He got shot down twice and managed to get back to base both times, one of the times the Russians got him and because he was blue eyed with blonde hair at first they thought they had a Kraut!~. He said his unit saw some of the first ME-262 jets over Italy, some of the other planes started reporting planes without propellers and they were told they were nuts. Sandy said the Emerson turret was fast enough to track the jets and they shot some of them down. Sandy was a great guy, big man, I could listen to him all afternoon.
hard to say if that is true, taking account that the 262 can run at over 900km/h horizontally and can get transonic in dives, the descent pilots on them got able to shoot down 5 heavy bombers or more per pass, there are also reports of gunners saying that the komet was even impossable to see and it wasnt that fast, just more tiny
Sandy was a liar sadly, since "some" of them down would make him the biggest turret operator ever, and also probably claim the longest distance turret shot ever because... no 262s flew over Italy, just some Arado recon jets.
I think is this dude´s invention, i even saw people saying that the spitfire was able to overclimb the 262, or just saying that the mustang was faster than the me109
Most were shot down on takeoff and landing by fighters, when the jets were low and slow. He surely didn't shoot down "a number", actually I don't think there's a recorded shot down of a 262 from any bomber. Late in the war 262's attacked very fast from angles the turrets couldn't hit. Sandy was full of shit, or you are.
When I was a little boy my neighbor had this hanging from a tree limb. I was to young to ask him how he came about this. After he died my father told me he flew many missions over gemany. Well I guess I knew a hero. For a minute.
(Especulation): It is assumed that the gunners must shoot the planes heading directly towards them. For this nose turret, the planes will always attack from the same direction. For such a case, this turret doesn't need to move a great lot. I think.
What's with the graduations on the top glass? They're a bit faded so I'm guessing the glass is original,I assumed it would be used by the gunner to call out incoming fighter direction or just tell which way he was facing. They look to be read from inside but also goes up in a funny order, 60, 42, 30, 15.
+pistonar It depends on your movement from my wonderings, but don't forget, this is a relic, sudden movements can break it as you can see the gun elevation and depression has a chain to do so...
That control device looks like an XBox or PS2 controller! Unfortunately for the guys in stricken bombers, there were no respawns (except in Heaven maybe).
How many good men developed acute claustrophobia and sever deafness after sitting in one of these for a number of hours defending the aircraft from attacking 109's and zeros
Really great video of this turret...talk about confined position.....clearing a jam must have been quite complex.....although the turret moves side to side quite quickly.....gun elevation is very slow.....must have been quite terrifying to watch a plane comming at you with cannons blazing before you could engage....
Very nice! ...sadly, that Im sure that theres a few restrictions about firing guns like those on the backyard, but seeing it moving around, specially with somebody in full regalia, is always a welcome sight !
LOL, that's about the actual size for business class nowadays for airliner seats. So no one that doesn't get my comment tries to explain to me what you meant, I get it.
I don't know what the people who disliked this expected to see, but I'm glad they were disappointed. I'm always amazed when I see these mounted on planes that a grown man can fit into one; they look so small from the outside. I see people complaining that it's moving slowly: first, it's old and irreplaceable. Second, the hydraulic pump on a B-24 is powered by a 1,200hp radial engine. This appears to have a DC motor spinning an auxiliary pump, or something like that. It's not operating under full power. Even so, it's plenty fast enough to track a fighter moving past at anything more than point blank range. Stop and think about it, how fast do you actually have to move the muzzle of a gun to track a plane that's moving past 200yds away? They certainly could move faster in wartime, but it wasn't often needed (I mean the fastest he moves here, not the very slow speeds). But I really wish everyone could take a minute to read this amazing book about US aircraft armament in WW2 that I have. I think everyone had this idea (like I did) that a turret is just some hydraulic/electrical motors and controls to spin around and elevate the guns, but they are MUCH more complex. They are designed to always rotate/elevate at the same rate for the same control deflection, no matter what the airspeed, no matter whether the wind is blowing sideways on the gun barrel (which is a serious problem at 300mph, and a huge part of why they needed these turrets), or what G-loads the gun is under at the plane maneuvers. These things make it extremely difficult to shoot a flexible gun out of a plane, or even to use a primitive turret; the gun slows down as more of the barrel is exposed to the slipstream, or the rotation changes as the aircraft moves, throwing off tracking, etc. These were full of rheostats and amplidynes and hyrdraulic proportional valves and gyropscopes and rate monitors, etc. Lead-computing gunsights, power ammo assists, heating, ventilation systems. Each turret cost almost as much to make as a basic fighter plane! But I think most people have this notion (like I used to) that a turret is just a frameworks, some plexiglass, some motors and some guns, and that they could pretty much build one in their garage. Not the case at all (at least not as far as the advanced US and British and German turrets). There were also pretty basic ones in some planes, but they traded the problems of flexible guns for a completely different set of problems.
The controls on that thing looks flawed. I'm only assuming because of the way it looks but it looks like you need four arms to simultaneously shoot and rotate.
I’ve always wondered how frequently bomber gunners inadvertently hit friendliest. Even the most disciplined gunner would have to get caught up in tracking an enemy fighter and firing into air space of another bomber.
I agree that it would be really cool to mount this on a trailer, fit some real .50 M2/ANs to it, and take it to a machine gun meet somewhere. But I'm not stupid enough to dislike it just because of that. I also wonder if you can even find actual M2/AN machine guns any more? The M2/HB is easy enough to find, but the aircraft version hasn't been in use since the 1950s and was never as widely built as the infantry model. At least I assume the turrets use the same lightweight AN models as fighters use. I'll have to check. Sure, I assume one could fit an M2/HB in just the same, but they have a significantly lower rate of fire, so it wouldn't give you an accurate idea of what it was like to fire the guns from the turret. It would be pretty damn cool though....
There are some truly appalling gun camera videos of German fighters attacking B24s from the front. Shells bursting all over the B24 nose looked like hand grenades exploding. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of protection in this little plastic box. I have no words for the bravery of young men that served in such conditions, knowing full well that their chances of survival were marginal at best and that they were largely expected to be killed along with their friends sooner rather than later. On September 27th 1944, 35 B24s of 445th Bomber Group became separated from the main bomber stream heading for Kassel. 25 of the 35 were shot down, three crashed before making it to the channel. Two made it only as far as the emergency strip at Manston, one crashed in Norfolk having been waved-off landing. Only four B24s made it back to Tibenham.
An historically correct restoration and documentation of one important, yet sadly overlooked part of the entirety of the effort it took to win a World War.
Thank you for sharing...
Another example of why the B-24 was better than the B-17. On the B-24 there were actual full-sized turrets with chairs for the nose, dorsal (behind the cockpit), underneath ventral ball turret (these were also fully retractable on B-24s unlike B-17 ball turrets), and tail. The B-17s had chin turrets below the nose that weren't anywhere as good as B-24s' nose turrets augmented by non-turreted machine guns out of holes on the side of the nose as well as seated dorsal turrets and an actual turret in the tail and not the "bicycle seat" non-turreted tail gun. Shocking how nobody ever talks about the actual turret comparisons on B-24s and B-17s in all the arguments about which one is better.
They need an adult theme park with ability do this
Looks like it'd be REAL HARD to extricate oneself from that contraption if your plane was hit and going down. My heart goes out to all those airmen who fought in that horrific war.
Imagine trying to shoehorn into that with the heavy sheepskin lined electric heated suits and boots and gloves they wore to keep from freezing in the 50 below zero temps at 25,000 feet where they flew. Oh yes, and he would have been wearing an oxygen mask and
combat helmet too.
@@roadrashray9416 And no chute....I don't think there was a room for a chute for ANY manned turret position on any bomber...nose, tail, or ball. MAYBE the top.
This would be great for keeping the rabbits out of the garden
Stating the important facts here ...
*12 O'CLOCK LOW*
You mean out of the neighborhood...
Also keeps neighbors respectful.
Umm...no it wouldn't.
@@patricktalamantes5503 it will
Sounds like my vacuum cleaner. Next time I clean will be funner.
Ok
Thought the same thing.
lol
It's controlled by a dual hand controller. By moving your wrists up and down, and back and forth, the turret turns with the help of electric motors.
"You've got a hole in your left wing."
*slideshow
@Sir Fapituitus Yes. I think so
“We are losin”
If we don't do something fast, the enemy will win!
Gramercy!
9 minutes of moving the turret... fire the freaking gun!
Look at the description:
"B-24 Nose Turret with *fake* guns"
dude , he's probably like ten feet away from his wife cooking dinner...what moron fires an antiaircraft gun in his backyard? are you american by any chance?
Lol u salty
jawadad802 Its 50 cals. So dont try and make it sound crazier than it is with anti aircraft gun. And plenty of people shoot in their yards, just happens to be mostly Americans because they can actually own firearms. Stay mad
sam8404 the ones firing 50. cals in the backyard are...
Thanks for sharing! Excellent way to see how they operated.
Not gonna lie... Was hoping something was gonna go *bang*...
Nice now you can shoot down drones lol
The guns are fake but its a good idea
Aaron and breaking ffa laws is a big nono too. if you can see it or hear it, its too fucking low.
Aaron you cant fly near or above people, and you cant photograph or watch people who have an expectation of privacy. aka hovering in on area or place and watching people on their private property. cant fly in adverse weather conditions like wind and fog, and cannot take of or land on private property without permission.
@@2013Pyst Boi, you better go read up on the FAA site. you can't film people on their property. to be honest, all they have to do is call the police and claim you are a nuisance. you will be told to leave. did you not hear about a guy on TH-cam trying to film inside a guys house, because "muh veganism"? he got in deep shit.
@@2013Pyst if you sit in one spot over my property for an extended period of time, I'm gonna call the cops. sorry bud.
A superb depiction of the B-24's nose turret. My stepfather was a flight engineer on B-24's in Italy, 7 missions. .He said the fuel transfer sys. was a nightmare by having to crawl through small passage ways ( like all bomber crews he was slight in stature) in the wings many times to fix their most complicated fuel transfer system. He admitted he did not like flying in these beast for many reasons, and was extremely edgy,scared on bombing missions like they all were.
Their were 54,000 airmen killed in WW11. The old history channel before it turned to shit, had a lot about WW 11 operations, one with the inner wing of a B 24 separated(blown off ) by a bomber above miscalculating.
These airmen were from the bravest.generations starting with WW 1, WW 11 then Korean war,then Vietnam. My biological father served 1940-46 in the Navy, Was in nearly every naval /air battle in the S.Pacific due serving on carriers and manning 20 mm and 40mm batteries. He's only talk about it when I and my brother when kids insisted hearing these terrible things he went through. After researching WW 11 KIA's,the Navy lost approx.37,000 men and marines about 27,000 to my surprise..1966 I was drafted, took another 1 yr for a special school then got a wake up call when deployed to Asia..
1.4 thousand people clicked on this video to see bullets flying even though the title says nothing about it firing. They have no appreciation for seeing a piece of history in a way they probably would never have a chance to see otherwise. But because they are childish, they gave the video a thumbs down.
Dear Santa ...
Fascinating to see that old turret on the move again!
wow! are they gonna put it on a b-24 restoration?
The original shooters, out of necessity, we're skinny short men, probably boys until they saw German fighters head on. THEN they became men. Thank you for your service!
My dad was tall and skinny!
Twin 50's, electric/hydraulic- this is freaking amazing! I'm in love.....it would have been nice to hear a burst.
richgg2 a .50 cal round is about $3
Should be a ride at an Adventure Park!!!!!! I would pay to play!!
Do a Utube search. Someone has a fully operational ball-turret which they use at Big Sandy. Very noisy, very impressive.
Fascinating! My grandfather was a nose gunner on a B24 Liberator during WWII for the 726th Bomb Squadron and I never had a chance to ask him about his experience mostly out of respect for his privacy and because I was a child when he was alive and wasn't fully aware of his wartime contribution. After reading the book Masters of the Air and watching the Apple TV series by the same name, I have a much better understanding of what these young men went through and marvel at the fact that my grand father even survived after completing 19 missions before the squadron was disbanded in 1944. Based on the odds of survival, my mother and therefore myself had a 1 in 5 chance of being born. Weird to think about.
When my friends say I'm crazy about Ww2 then I ask them to come to my house then they see a god dam turret in my backyard
I could see the sparkle in your eyes as you climbed in. Fantastic !
Now THAT is cool. Seems like the hardest part would be reloading the guns. Not much room in there to move around belts and ammo cans. I wonder how that works? Maybe they just don't reload?
Yeah, I got that. That's why I said "...belts and ammo cans."
You know the belts are only so long right? Nothing lasts forever.
The guns would be reloaded on the airfield by the ground crews.
If it really need to reload then same question applies to all gun carrying air borne vehicles
wcresponder and that’s when you say “oh fuck, i just used my 20,000 bullets for no fucking reason.”
Do you know of any working ERCO nose turrets from the PB4Y variants ?
Sept. 26, 2018----Damn amazing bit of restoration and thanks for the video. HOWEVER, you forgot one thing for the turret: a coin slot to put my quarters into so as I'm in it, can make all the taca, taca, taca, taca noises I want for my one minute of play time. !-)
But see, it wasn't "play time".
Sooooo cool! HUGE salute to the everyone who worked and fought to keep America free and safe in WWII, and a shout-out to the guys that restored this turret!
Very interesting and well made Video!! Really pleasure by watching it and learning more about the function of a turret! A good look inside!!👍Astonishing how loud it is while working! And while flying it even becomes more louder throug the engines! Greetings from germany🇩🇪🇺🇸🇩🇪🇺🇸
"Now...where are those damn pigeons..."
This is great.i have never seen any videos showing the inside detail or movements.this was a well thought & engineered defense.
I thought he is actually going to shoot the guns.
Imagine doing that at 25,000 feet with the clouds and the continent of Europe passing beneath you.
Can’t get over how slow it is. Guess from watching movies I thought it was faster.
And I'd like to point out that by halfway through the video, he has the turret moving plenty fast. Certainly fast enough to track the average WWII fighter that isn't doing a high-speed flypast of your airplane at 20ft range....in which case you'd have about .10 of a second to track him anyway. The idea is to hit fighters doing that do OTHER bombers, and let the other bombers shoot down the ones flying past you.
i'd also point out the slow-speed controlability. One of the big advances with these turrets, is not only could they move fast enough to track typical fighters while remaining smooth, and that they would always move at a predictable rate that didn't vary no matter what loads were places on the turret, but they _also_ had a very low minimum rate, and very fine and precise control. You could do very fine movements with it, unlike many earlier turrets that could only track at one or two speeds, and had a high minimum tracking speed, so you'd have to keep taking "bites" and trying to put a burst in when the target reached the new location. Like I said, amazingly advanced devices, very expensive, and no end of trouble in developing them. Whether they were actually worth all the trouble is still debated, but _most_ people agree it was best to give the men something to feel like they were fighting back with, even if the actual cost/benefit might suggest it was better to just not bother with them. When it comes to remote-control gunnery systems, its even harder to say.
finally i see how it works
Wow this is awesome. Recommended 6 years later. Better later than never
PerlerNostalgia same
Imagine having this system at your mancave indoor as a Warthunder simulator.
At first i was expecting that the whole unit is moved by hydraulics, but hearing the startup at 1:15 of the rotary converters/amplidynes gave the answer :)
It's all gangsta until the neighbor's RC Me-262 comes out of the sun at 6 o'clock high
As a skydiver, I always wondered how the hell any of those crewmen got out of a falling, spinning, shot-down B-24...I think the pilots, co-pilots, nose gunners and bombardiers were supposed to exit from the nose wheel doors...IF they were opened...Good Lord!
a lot of them in the nose, didnt exit. that and the tail gunner.
As someone whos been inside a nose wheel door on a b-24
Its possible and it does go all the way through, but theres usually a nose wheel there in flight
Never knew they needed so much mechanical support inside the fuselage to operate the pivot & angle.
"Log of the Liberators" is an excellent reference.
So many ideas for a great theme park!
I feel bad for the poor farmer who flies over your field
Am l the only one who thought we'd see it firing?
I knew a man named Sandy who lived in Lebanon, NH. that was in one of these flying out of Italy. He got shot down twice and managed to get back to base both times, one of the times the Russians got him and because he was blue eyed with blonde hair at first they thought they had a Kraut!~. He said his unit saw some of the first ME-262 jets over Italy, some of the other planes started reporting planes without propellers and they were told they were nuts. Sandy said the Emerson turret was fast enough to track the jets and they shot some of them down. Sandy was a great guy, big man, I could listen to him all afternoon.
hard to say if that is true, taking account that the 262 can run at over 900km/h horizontally and can get transonic in dives, the descent pilots on them got able to shoot down 5 heavy bombers or more per pass, there are also reports of gunners saying that the komet was even impossable to see and it wasnt that fast, just more tiny
Sandy was a liar sadly, since "some" of them down would make him the biggest turret operator ever, and also probably claim the longest distance turret shot ever because... no 262s flew over Italy, just some Arado recon jets.
I think is this dude´s invention, i even saw people saying that the spitfire was able to overclimb the 262, or just saying that the mustang was faster than the me109
The red tailed P-51'S shot down a number of ME-262'S, all Sandy had too do in the front of his B-24 is have one get close enough.
Most were shot down on takeoff and landing by fighters, when the jets were low and slow. He surely didn't shoot down "a number", actually I don't think there's a recorded shot down of a 262 from any bomber. Late in the war 262's attacked very fast from angles the turrets couldn't hit.
Sandy was full of shit, or you are.
15 seconds into the vid and my Clostraphobia already kicks in. I bet a fart trapped in there forever.
Great restoration job and vid! Thanks!!!
Pure optical sight? Or analog computer assist aiming?
Would you reccomend this for EDC?
"Nazi fighters not included"
...and 20mm shells not included as well (thank God!).
Unctious 50 cal b24s had 2 browning m2 machine guns in the nose
German fighters*
That's like saying Democrat fighters or Green Party fighters. Are there politicians in those planes???
Jesus Christ people did I need to put up the "Irony in course" flashing sign?
@@decespugliatorenucleare3780 se offendi poi non ti lamentare se ti rispondono a modo
When I was a little boy my neighbor had this hanging from a tree limb. I was to young to ask him how he came about this. After he died my father told me he flew many missions over gemany. Well I guess I knew a hero. For a minute.
(Especulation): It is assumed that the gunners must shoot the planes heading directly towards them. For this nose turret, the planes will always attack from the same direction. For such a case, this turret doesn't need to move a great lot. I think.
I've been wondering, how do you control the movement of a turret?I know you don't crank it
What's with the graduations on the top glass? They're a bit faded so I'm guessing the glass is original,I assumed it would be used by the gunner to call out incoming fighter direction or just tell which way he was facing. They look to be read from inside but also goes up in a funny order, 60, 42, 30, 15.
Does the turret have fast and slow speeds or was that just for the video?
+pistonar It depends on your movement from my wonderings, but don't forget, this is a relic, sudden movements can break it as you can see the gun elevation and depression has a chain to do so...
The harder you would push, pull or turn the controls, the faster it would move
All I got for Christmas is pair of socks!
That control device looks like an XBox or PS2 controller! Unfortunately for the guys in stricken bombers, there were no respawns (except in Heaven maybe).
Do you believe in god? "No, the war took care of that."
Beyond awesome. Thank you for sharing.
I got to have one....
what are the etchings on the ceiling for ?
Is it possible to mount that thing on top of the roof of a car or back of a pickup truck?
How many good men developed acute claustrophobia and sever deafness after sitting in one of these for a number of hours defending the aircraft from attacking 109's and zeros
Need about 10 of these things for my property, but controlled from the safety of my bunker. For zombies or whoever.
You might want to look at E By for B 29 remote controlled turrets
Really great video of this turret...talk about confined position.....clearing a jam must have been quite complex.....although the turret moves side to side quite quickly.....gun elevation is very slow.....must have been quite terrifying to watch a plane comming at you with cannons blazing before you could engage....
Yeah, would love to have that in my backyard with some of the neighbors I have had over the years.
Very nice! ...sadly, that Im sure that theres a few restrictions about firing guns like those on the backyard, but seeing it moving around, specially with somebody in full regalia, is always a welcome sight !
Cant believe I waited for nothing.. guh!!!!
l stand corrected. it would be awesome to see live fireing though.great job on restoration.
Impressive- still leaves you to guess how ??? did you get out of that thing quickly (when the plane was on fire & out of control)?
Nicely made.
How do you reload?
This is the new American business class seat......
Better than the ball-turret economy seat
When you were in this seat.....you meant Business!!!!! Merica!!! God Bless All of the War Veterans.....
Hhahahaha
LOL, that's about the actual size for business class nowadays for airliner seats. So no one that doesn't get my comment tries to explain to me what you meant, I get it.
How prophetic. I'd take one today!
I thot some hardware was gonna be flying
this is.my favourite collection
I learned that the highest rate of casualty on the german airborne side was mostly from turret gunners and ball turret gunners... wow!
I don't know what the people who disliked this expected to see, but I'm glad they were disappointed. I'm always amazed when I see these mounted on planes that a grown man can fit into one; they look so small from the outside. I see people complaining that it's moving slowly: first, it's old and irreplaceable. Second, the hydraulic pump on a B-24 is powered by a 1,200hp radial engine. This appears to have a DC motor spinning an auxiliary pump, or something like that. It's not operating under full power. Even so, it's plenty fast enough to track a fighter moving past at anything more than point blank range. Stop and think about it, how fast do you actually have to move the muzzle of a gun to track a plane that's moving past 200yds away? They certainly could move faster in wartime, but it wasn't often needed (I mean the fastest he moves here, not the very slow speeds).
But I really wish everyone could take a minute to read this amazing book about US aircraft armament in WW2 that I have. I think everyone had this idea (like I did) that a turret is just some hydraulic/electrical motors and controls to spin around and elevate the guns, but they are MUCH more complex. They are designed to always rotate/elevate at the same rate for the same control deflection, no matter what the airspeed, no matter whether the wind is blowing sideways on the gun barrel (which is a serious problem at 300mph, and a huge part of why they needed these turrets), or what G-loads the gun is under at the plane maneuvers. These things make it extremely difficult to shoot a flexible gun out of a plane, or even to use a primitive turret; the gun slows down as more of the barrel is exposed to the slipstream, or the rotation changes as the aircraft moves, throwing off tracking, etc. These were full of rheostats and amplidynes and hyrdraulic proportional valves and gyropscopes and rate monitors, etc. Lead-computing gunsights, power ammo assists, heating, ventilation systems. Each turret cost almost as much to make as a basic fighter plane! But I think most people have this notion (like I used to) that a turret is just a frameworks, some plexiglass, some motors and some guns, and that they could pretty much build one in their garage. Not the case at all (at least not as far as the advanced US and British and German turrets). There were also pretty basic ones in some planes, but they traded the problems of flexible guns for a completely different set of problems.
Kel Harper helps if you 19-20yo
best home defense item you could buy at the moment
That is some really bizarre shit right there man
I got my legs numb from seeing this video
How did they reload when needed??
So make sure you don't drink too much coffee before going it, because washroom breaks were going to be few and far between.
The controls on that thing looks flawed. I'm only assuming because of the way it looks but it looks like you need four arms to simultaneously shoot and rotate.
Plot twist - he doesn't fire the guns
Altitude of probably 13 centimeters above surface:WE GO DARN BEES ON OUR LEFT SIDE!
I keep wondering: Is that an extremely big dude or is that pod claustrophobicly small ?...either way, DAMN !
I’ve always wondered how frequently bomber gunners inadvertently hit friendliest. Even the most disciplined gunner would have to get caught up in tracking an enemy fighter and firing into air space of another bomber.
Moves very fast :D
Wow, if you lived in Arizona you could take this to a range and fire it
I wonder how the weight of the nose turret affects the aircraft's trim?
How much did he sweat in that suit. Respect ✊
Well In the 1940's this was a high-teck innovation for A bomber
Tell dad, Red and the crew THANKS!!!!
@4:40. Is that the original Xbox Duke controller? Should have figured they were standard issue in the 40s.
I agree that it would be really cool to mount this on a trailer, fit some real .50 M2/ANs to it, and take it to a machine gun meet somewhere. But I'm not stupid enough to dislike it just because of that. I also wonder if you can even find actual M2/AN machine guns any more? The M2/HB is easy enough to find, but the aircraft version hasn't been in use since the 1950s and was never as widely built as the infantry model. At least I assume the turrets use the same lightweight AN models as fighters use. I'll have to check. Sure, I assume one could fit an M2/HB in just the same, but they have a significantly lower rate of fire, so it wouldn't give you an accurate idea of what it was like to fire the guns from the turret. It would be pretty damn cool though....
Seems like the 50 calibers move too slow even though the turret moves pretty fast.
The best part about it is that it doesn't shoot.
The guns are fake; it would be a nightmare to get real ones in there.
What do you do in case of mid flight leg cramp.
Suffer
There are some truly appalling gun camera videos of German fighters attacking B24s from the front. Shells bursting all over the B24 nose looked like hand grenades exploding.
There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of protection in this little plastic box. I have no words for the bravery of young men that served in such conditions, knowing full well that their chances of survival were marginal at best and that they were largely expected to be killed along with their friends sooner rather than later.
On September 27th 1944, 35 B24s of 445th Bomber Group became separated from the main bomber stream heading for Kassel. 25 of the 35 were shot down, three crashed before making it to the channel. Two made it only as far as the emergency strip at Manston, one crashed in Norfolk having been waved-off landing. Only four B24s made it back to Tibenham.
Way cool ... lot better then the ball turret!
Imagine having to take a dump in one of these!
Haw is the thing actuated?
Cabelas needs to carry these..,I could use one in the blind.