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Training B-17 Flying Fortress Gunners for Masters of the Air

I’ve had the pleasure of going up in a B-17 and movies and TV just don’t do justice to what it was like on a B-17. The space is unbelievably tight, even in the body where the tail gunners were, and the space from the cockpit back through the bomb racks is clearly designed for 145lb twenty-year-olds. For the Hun it was clearly a case of shooting fish in a barrel.

I foolishly popped my head out of the plane behind the top turret and watched this brilliant flash of silver and realized that my brand new, $600 pair of glasses were about to become the latest casualty to end up in a foreign field somewhere in occupied territory southwest of Dallas. 😣😣😣
 
This truly was the greatest generation. Modern life with all its gadgets to take make nearly everything easier has also stolen away our tenacity and grit. Hardship is wondering how long it going to take the repair guy to get your internet working again. The modern world has made us complacent, sometimes lazy, and socially isolated. I have stories from my Uncle, who served in WWII in the motor pool because he was deemed too old for front line duties. The other in the pool called him "pops" (he was 33). He wound up on the front lines anyway during the "battle of the bulge" and was kept there until he was wounded near the end of the war.... lots of hair raising stories (I will save those for another time). My grand father told of a time his dad stole him away from his mother at age 6 and he never saw her again. Took him and his bother over the Rockies in a model T (1918) and, at age 12, ran away to make his own way in life. Never saw his dad again after that. I shutter to think what people would be like if life became truly difficult again. It bring out the best in some... but I fear it would bring out the worst in most today.
 
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I remember an old "60 Minutes" episode from years ago where Andy Rooney was talking about "Bravery" during his time as a War Correspondent during WW2. He (Andy) never thought of himself as brave while comforting a gunner in a jammed belly turret when coming back from a mission. The B17 was shot-up so bad the landing gear couldn't lock.
Andy started to tearfully recount how that brave gunner knew he was going to die that day and that defined BRAVERY!

God Bless.
 
SimonRL said:
I’ve had the pleasure of going up in a B-17 and movies and TV just don’t do justice to what it was like on a B-17.
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Was that on the Collings' "Nine-o-Nine" ?

When the USS Iowa was in the Mothball Fleet, the B-17 pilots unexpectedly flew over her. I had told myself that I was not going to stick my camera out of the plane, and I was standing in the roof opening when I saw her.

I ended up sticking my camera out of the plane.

Two WWII icons in the same place. I will never forget it.
 
2bz2ranch said:
I remember an old "60 Minutes" episode from years ago where Andy Rooney was talking about "Bravery" during his time as a War Correspondent during WW2. He (Andy) never thought of himself as brave while comforting a gunner in a jammed belly turret when coming back from a mission. The B17 was shot-up so bad the landing gear couldn't lock.
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My dad flew B-24s in Europe, and was telling someone that he landed after a bomb run and counted over a hundred bullet holes in the side of his plane.

Any one of them could actually have been me.
 
Kibbey the Elder successfully completed single and multi-engine flight training but kept getting bumped as VE and then VJ day came. The need for pilots diminished, possibly lucky for me. He had done gunnery school but late entry (after June '44 in USAAF) put him behind the surrender curve. Ultimately he went to a Foggia, IT as MP with forces of occupation into '46.
 

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