Onboard arrows Bashny.Net

Today I want to tell you about those who are bravely hanging over the abyss, gaze and open to all bullets and thus fulfilled their duty - board arrows. From the post, you will learn about the "warm" and "Unbreakable" place in the body "Flying Fortress" B-17 - the lower turret. Imagine that you are bare ass hanging over the abyss, and then blowing very strong and cold wind with sleet and hail a hen's egg. Presented? So, add to its enchanting feels a great desire to return to her mother, angry at those who drew you to this event and of course the desire to live. Because by darting hornets bullets finger-thick, gnarled pieces of anti-aircraft guns grumbling somewhere out there in the blue haze of the earth, and that and look out of the nearest cloud emerges unaccounted you "Focker" and send you even higher than you managed to climb today.





What is - this "happy" lower turret?
So (schematically) looks like the shooter in firing position. Does not that feeling back disguised as that ghostly.



Loading the body arrow, and of course unloaded the same way. Once on the street, when the body.



A schematic arrangement of the turret on the body bomber.



Feed the body arrow, cartridge belts, and oxygen supply in the capsule shell is made of aircraft.





View from the workplace.



Of course, that had to be evacuated last.





Randall Jarrell's poem "Death of a tower shooter»
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.



The last line reads as
"When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose».
However, there is life and happy moments.
Anti-aircraft shell hit the "fortress" with aching named «Little Miss Mischief & quot; done a bunch of holes and troubles. Incredibly, after such "abgemahta" turret gunner was alive, having lost the little finger and getting frostbite (as it does in the body shell swept bomber at a height where there is no paradise.)



Result hit 20-mm projectile. Again, the arrow was only wounded.



Emergency landing on its belly. And then there were.
Postwar studies USAF showed that arrow ball turret had the lowest percentage of deaths and injuries crewmembers the B-17 and B- 24, and the pilots of the bombers highest. This is explained by the fact that the pilots "Luftwaffe" preferred to fire the cockpit and engine, and not to be substituted under double blow
12, 7 mm machine guns.



P / S



Now it is clear from Lucas drew inspiration?

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Source: alternathistory.org.ua