Military analysis
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.
- Randall Jarrell (1945)
Freeman Dyson the famous physicist (age 86), wrote an article about something that had been bothering him for 60 years. When he was age 19 in WWII he was hired as an RAF analyst . He talks about the some conclusions that he reached during the war, and his inability to do anything about them.
(1) One conclusion was about the ball turret gunner. This position which was a last ditch close in weapons system. It was the most dangerous position on the aircraft, while just being on the aircraft anywhere was incredibly dangerous. The man in these ball turrets frequently died from flak (see poem) and often on landing if the wheels were damaged was crushed to death on the landing (there was no hatch to the main plane). Not only was that particularly gruesome, but often he knew that the landing wheels didn't work and had to contemplate his own death and radio to his flight mates his final wishes.
Freeman Dyson did some analysis that said the rate of death for people in this position was so incredibly high that the RAF would be better off letting the position empty. Naturally no one in the military listened, because there was always the story of the ball turret gunner who bravely saved the life of every man on the plane by strafing the enemy aircraft at the last minute. Of course, if the landing mechanism was damaged he may still have paid with his life.
All our advice to the commander in chief [went] through the chief of our section, who was a career civil servant. His guiding principle was to tell the commander in chief things that the commander in chief liked to hear… To push the idea of ripping out gun turrets, against the official mythology of the gallant gunner defending his crew mates…was not the kind of suggestion the commander in chief liked to hear.
(2) The second conclusion that he drew was the experience had no effect on casualty rate. Like a super version of belief in betting systems this idea was extremely significant to the members of the RAF, as they scrambled to fly with the most experienced crew. The official mythology may have blinded them to some of the true dangers of air battles.
In particular, Schräge Musik, was the name given to installations of upward-firing cannon mounted in night fighters by the Luftwaffe and Japanese Imperial Navy during World War II. The techniques developed by the Germans in using these guns were so effective that training of the RAF crew was not a factor. Freeman Dyson blames himself (and others) for not developing an effective deterrent. Part of the blindness was the refusal to accept the fact that training did not matter.
(3) A third story is almost certainly anecdotal. When the planes landed there were sections of the plane covered with holes from gunfire. Many people reasoned that these were the places where extra armor should be added. One lone analyst (in the story it is Freeman Dyson) suggested that they cover the places that were undamaged. He reasoned that the planes that did not return were the ones that were hit in these places. Even though this last story doesn't make a lot of sense, I like it as a fable.
Does anyone have their own stories about coming up against the official mythology, military or otherwise?
Quote: WikipediaRoyal Air Force bomber command crews also suffered an extremely high casualty rate: 55,573 killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew (a 44.4% death rate), a further 8,403 were wounded in action and 9,838 became prisoners of war. This covered all Bomber Command operations including tactical support for ground operations and mining of sea lanes. A Bomber Command crew member had a worse chance of survival than an infantry officer in World War I.
It is illustrative that members of the Australian squadrons of Bomber Command equaled only two percent of Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) personnel, but the 4,050 killed represented 23% of the total number of RAAF personnel killed in action during World War II.
No. 460 Squadron RAAF, which had an aircrew establishment of about 200, experienced 1,018 combat deaths during 1942-45 and was therefore effectively wiped out five times over.
For an explosive device it was incredibly safe. Even if you knew how it worked and you were given hammers, screwdrivers, and a torch it would be difficult to get it to explode. The device functioned by dropping it into the water, and the pressure at 60' of depth would make it explode. The only way to make it explode without dropping it in the water was to pressurize it to a level equivalent to 60' of water depth.
The only problem was when you dropped it from a ship the shock wave would damage equipment in the water hanging from the ship (and sometimes do some minor damage to the ship itself). So a launcher was invented to toss it 30 or 40 yards from the ship to protect the equipment.
The procedure was considered safe and was done for decades. Unfortunately one civil servant told the men he was working with (one was supposed to me) that they should pull the arming pin before loading it in the launcher. He then left the room, and the men did as they were instructed and the air pressure (which was more than the equivalent of 60' of water depth caused the device to explode with the equivalence of a box of grenades. The two men (one was the father of two) were blown to smithereens.
In the post-mortem analysis it was seen that obviously the mistake was to pull the safety and arming device. The safety device was a simple metal wire attached to a small metal plate and could easily be pulled out by hand. Furthermore the board wondered why the explosive device needed to be put under pressure. It wasn't being rifled, and accuracy didn't matter. The whole purpose of the launcher was simply to toss the explosive device some distance from the ship. The only thing it had to hit was the ocean.
The launcher was redesigned to simply throw the explosive device into the ocean without pressurizing it first. That way even if someone was stupid enough to disable the safety device it still wouldn't explode.
News Article at time of the accident.
Quote: Seattle Times
March 11, 1992
2 Killed In Explosion On Ship -- Blast Off Grays Harbor
By Dee Norton, Vanessa Ho
Two crew members of a seismic-research vessel were killed this morning when a small explosive charge detonated on deck about 20 miles from Grays Harbor in the Pacific Ocean. The identity of those killed and their hometowns were not immediately available from the Coast Guard at Westport, Grays Harbor County.The 265-foot research vessel Amy Chouest was conducting seismic studies, which involve the use of submerged explosives, when the explosion occurred on deck at about 10:15 a.m., said Coast Guard Chief Cliff Kaldor.There were conflicting reports from Navy sources as to whether the ship was conducting research for the Navy.
The Navy guided-missile cruiser Lake Champlain was on the scene aiding the Amy Chouest, along with a Coast Guard helicopter from Astoria, Ore., and several Coast Guard surface vessels. The operating owner of the vessel is Edison Chouest Offshore Inc. of Galliano, La., said Edison spokesperson Mark Gisclair. The company had 16 crew members on board but none was injured, Gisclair said.
The Amy Chouest was chartered by the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, said lab spokesperson John Wilhelm. One person associated with the laboratory was aboard the ship but was not injured, said Ed Cochrane, assistant to the director.Reports from the ship indicated that no one else was injured. "They said it was not major damage and that they were able to hold the ship in its position" 13 miles due west of Willapa Bay, Kaldor said.
Kaldor said crew members aboard the Amy Chouest indicated the explosive charge was quite small, possibly on the order of a pound or two, and that only one charge detonated.
actually story #3 makes some sense to me, although I could believe it is apocryphal.
A considerable number of years ago Steven Spielberg did something [on TV I think] on the ball turret gunner's predicament. He has the gunner will into being new wheels, that look like cartoon wheels, for the landing. Too silly for words. I have some problems with Spielberg.
I would guess that in some cases the reaction of the doomed man was so horrifically awful the crew would have to rip off their earphones ... and still be haunted for the rest of their lives.
Bomber loss rates were high but very little was gained by the strategic bombing. Many studies showed that German war production increased after bombing raids. And the ball turret gunner was not much happier than the guy in the Sherman tank who could not open his escape hatch with the gun barrel in its usual position.
The famed Marianas Turkey Shoot broke the back of the Japanese air force but 90 percent of the kills were by only 11 percent of the attacking American pilots because most of the training the pilots received was useless.
Quote: odiousgambitA considerable number of years ago Steven Spielberg did something [on TV I think] on the ball turret gunner's predicament. He has the gunner will into being new wheels, that look like cartoon wheels, for the landing. Too silly for words. I have some problems with Spielberg.
That was on "Amazing Stories" if memory serves. It was an anthology show, like TZ, Night Gallery or Alfred Hitchcock Presents, that ran for a short time in the late 80s, produced by Spielberg (at that time and into the 90s Spielberg slapped his anme on as producer for an amazing number of shows, including Pinky & The Brain).
That ep itself was very good, until the ending spoiled it all.
Quote: Nareed
That was on "Amazing Stories" if memory serves. It was an anthology show, like TZ, Night Gallery or Alfred Hitchcock Presents, that ran for a short time in the late 80s, produced by Spielberg (at that time and into the 90s Spielberg slapped his anme on as producer for an amazing number of shows, including Pinky & The Brain).
That ep itself was very good, until the ending spoiled it all.
An Amazing Stories episode featuring a very young Kiefer Sutherland and a pre-Elliot Ness up and coming actor named Kevin Costner. Aired on 3 November 1985.
The ball turret gunner was made very famous by the poem I copied in my original post, which was published in 1945.
In hindsight I think I confused the different types of gunnery turrets in my original post. The ball turret gunner was on American planes. Freeman Dyson was British, working for the RAF. He was more concerned about the mid-upper turret. But Freeman drew the same conclusion that the gunner was very unlikely to save the lives of the crew of the plane and the position should be removed in favor of a sleeker faster aircraft. I distinctly remember him saying that at the very least when the plane went down it would only have a crew of 6 instead of 7. Since over 8000 planes crashed that alone would have justified his analysis. If the faster plane saved more planes that would have been icing on the cake.
The ball turrets on the B17s and B-24s did have entry into the plane, but the turret had to be rotated to a specific position to open it; that was frequently impossible due to damage or mechanical failure. I met a guy who flew as a ball turret gunner. He was shot down, parachuted to safety and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp. He said he was actually better off that way, although he didn't know it at the time. I remember his first name, Roy, and that he was from Berwick PA. I can't remember his last name.
I met quite a few of those guys over the years. Most of them have passed on now. The most fascinating thing is that they were such unremarkable people; some were bankers, some were salesmen, some were politicians, some were factory workers. You hear their stories and you wonder what kind of supermen they were, and that's the point; they were just guys.
Quote: pacomartinIn hindsight I think I confused the different types of gunnery turrets in my original post. The ball turret gunner was on American planes. Freeman Dyson was British, working for the RAF. He was more concerned about the mid-upper turret.
I wasn't going to bring this up, but maybe I should. There was a movie some years ago titled "Memphis Belle," about the first Army Air Core B-17 crew to complete a year-long tour of Europe alive, if memory serves. The movie is mostly of their last bombing run.
There's a scene where the bottom turret gets blown off and the gunner is still holding on to his seat belt. One of the crew opens a hatch inside the plane and gets him up.
Now, I wouldn't be surprised that Hollywood got it wrong (I'm more surprised when Hollywood gets it right), but was there really no hatch inside the plane? If memory serves, the Amazing Sotries ep had the additional problem that something blocked the inner hatch and they coulnd't get the gunner out before landing.
WWII was a brutal and bloody affair on all sides, and only the enemy the Allies were fighting justified the measures they had to take.
BTW I wish they'd make a movie about the Berlin Airlift.
Quote: Nareedthe Amazing Stories ep had the additional problem that something blocked the inner hatch and they coulnd't get the gunner out before landing.
The turret had to be rotated to a specific position, I think it was guns forward and completely up, for the hatches to line up (the opening in the plane and the hatch in the turret). In combat, the turret would often be damaged so that it couldn't rotate to that position.
edit: guns down, as detailed in the excellent link posted by konceptium.
As I said earlier, I was replaced by one of the two men who were killed in the accident in the Seattle Times article. The explosive signaling device was 800 grams of explosive (equivalent to 7 had grenades) and was designed to be activated by the pressure of being 60' underwater. The men who died were told to pull the safety wire before putting the explosive device into the launcher. On the 3rd launch one exploded on the deck. I would like to think I would have been smart enough to figure out that what I was told to do was wrong. But who knows? In generally with explosives you are supposed to follow Standard Operating Procedures.
Here is the analysis comment.In the post mortem the obvious conclusion was that someone made up procedures on the fly. That person did not die or get punished in any way. However, the next conclusion was there was no valid reason to pressurize the explosive device. The launcher was not aiming the explosive device in any manner, it was just trying to launch it clear of the ship so that the blast wouldn't damage any electronic sensor equipment. The launcher was replaced with more of a spring loaded catapult type launcher.
The conclusion seems obvious. Does anyone else have similar stories?
Quote: Seattle Times
March 11, 1992
2 Killed In Explosion On Ship -- Blast Off Grays Harbor
By Dee Norton, Vanessa Ho
Two crew members of a seismic-research vessel were killed this morning when a small explosive charge detonated on deck about 20 miles from Grays Harbor in the Pacific Ocean. The identity of those killed and their hometowns were not immediately available from the Coast Guard at Westport, Grays Harbor County.The 265-foot research vessel Amy Chouest was conducting seismic studies, which involve the use of submerged explosives, when the explosion occurred on deck at about 10:15 a.m., said Coast Guard Chief Cliff Kaldor.There were conflicting reports from Navy sources as to whether the ship was conducting research for the Navy.The Navy guided-missile cruiser Lake Champlain was on the scene aiding the Amy Chouest, along with a Coast Guard helicopter from Astoria, Ore., and several Coast Guard surface vessels. The operating owner of the vessel is Edison Chouest Offshore Inc. of Galliano, La., said Edison spokesperson Mark Gisclair. The company had 16 crew members on board but none was injured, Gisclair said.The Amy Chouest was chartered by the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, said lab spokesperson John Wilhelm. One person associated with the laboratory was aboard the ship but was not injured, said Ed Cochrane, assistant to the director.Reports from the ship indicated that no one else was injured. "They said it was not major damage and that they were able to hold the ship in its position" 13 miles due west of Willapa Bay, Kaldor said.Kaldor said crew members aboard the Amy Chouest indicated the explosive charge was quite small, possibly on the order of a pound or two, and that only one charge detonated.
Freeman Dyson's analysis group did not question the front or the rear gun turret (even though these men were often killed even if the plane didn't get shot down). It was the middle upper turret which was practically useless because the Nazi's never flew down to their target and most bombing runs were at night. The analysis said that this position simply provided another man to die when the planes were shot down.
In general though, it must have taken a lot for a young man to volunteer for such a suicidal position. The RAF lost more men on these bombing missions, then the USA lost in all of World War I.
Less than 4 months after the ship explosion in 1992, my lab had another accident although this accident had more to do with procedures than analysis. On a friday afternoon the techs were mixing an experimental batch of explosives when it started to go unstable. Within procedural guidelines they poured the material into a drying tray so that it would not be at critical mass. Then (within procedures) they broke up the material and put the pieces into a box. Then they broke procedures because the box was too big to fit into the emergency explosive magazine. Because they wanted to leave for the weekend, they put the box in the regular magazine. On Saturday afternoon the material became unstable again (because now it was one lump in a box) and exploded. Because it was in the regular magazine another 5000 lbs of explosive blew up in a sympathetic detonation. Because it was a weekend nobody was hurt, but it sent a mushroom cloud up over a Washington suburban neighborhood. The shock wave did blow out apartment buildings all over the neighborhood.
They pretty much closed the place down after the explosion. Now it is the headquarters for the food and drug administration.
Quote: pacomartinThe conclusion seems obvious. Does anyone else have similar stories?
Have you looked up the Maginot Line? It must rank up there with the biggest military blunders of all time.
BTW could it be the Nazis didn't attack British bombers because there was a turret gun there? Diving on a target isn't the worse way to get it, but maneuvering while diving is difficult.
I managed the Low Frequency Active Sonar for many decades. Have you heard of it?
It was a horrible tragedy.
I was told a somewhat clinical analysis of what happened. I don't mean to cause you any more pain, but I thought they would have explained what happened in the trial.
The SUS devices have two settings, one for 60' of ocean depth and one for 800' of ocean depth. They were dropping them off the side of the ship at the deep setting which is a very easy safe procedure. The ship went into less than 800' of ocean and the SUS's were hitting the bottom without exploding.
The civil servant (cs) on the ship changed procedures without really knowing what he was doing. He reset the devices to detonate at 60', but he brought out a launcher to throw the charges safely away from the ship. But the cs confused two different kinds of explosive devices (one required that you pull the safety wire, and the other you had to leave it in). Without any diagrams, your father wouldn't have known how the device worked, and was presumably following procedures.
With the safety wire pulled, the pressure from the launcher was equivalent to being at 60' of water depth, and the device exploded in the launcher on deck killing the two men.
I honestly do not remember the name of the civil servant. It was a long time ago.
Once again, I am sorry. I know that your father was not even guilty of being careless.
The Sherman tank had the same defect: a hatch that was often blocked by the turret gun.
One use for females in the war was to tow gunnery targets ... a telephone pole like object referred to as a boom well abaft the aircraft. One gunner was asked do you see the boom and he replied yes, because he saw the airplane. Wouldn't you know his first shot killed the woman flying the plane.
One hand grenade was designed to be similar to a baseball on the theory that all American soldiers could throw a baseball. A safety device made the ball have to travel a certain distance before being armed, lets say sixty feet. During a demonstration a soldier decided to show how safe these baseballs were by tossing in the air. He tossed it thirty feet up into the air and ofcourse when it came back down, it had travelled the requisite sixty feet. (Sort of like that guy who when the sport of Bunji Cord Jumping started bought 300 feet of Bunji cord for this 309 foot jump. When he got to 300 feet the cord had just started to stretch).
Bandleader Glenn Miller was in a small plane flying low over the channel when a high flying flight of Allied bombers flew overhead and dropped their unused ordnance in the middle of the Bomb Disposal Area that was not marked on the chart Miller's pilot had used.
Everyone knew the Germans would do an end run around the Maginot Line... everyone except the French General Staff.
The Japanese had schedule two years to put out the fires they expected to encounter in the Indonesian Oil Fields, it took them only two weeks because the officers tasked to set fire to the oil field didn't know the difference between a burning oil well and a burning storage tank that would consume itself in a day or so.
A paperpusher in Washington DC killed the notion of using a glacier in Alaska as a runway because the glacier was shorter than the bomber's minimum take-off run. Paperpusher never understood that a bomber going off the end of the glacier had plenty of altitude in which to fall and gain airspeed sufficient to climb. So America embarked on a campaign of Island Hopping in the Pacific.
British officials turned down a prewar offer from a German of bomb deactivation procedures and even failed to use the German inventor's patent application that was on file.
The USA entered WWtwo with torpedoes that had been fired twice during acceptance tests. In trying to learn why USA torpedoes were hitting enemy ships but not exploding, live torpedoes were fired at a Hawaiian cliff and then divers went down to retrieve the torpedo. Talk about courage!!
Well, so much for military approaches to any problem.
Quote: jburks1so why am i just finding this out almost 20 yrs later. i didnt get anything out of it.
I am not sure what parts you are just finding out.
Quote: jburks1That is was basically cold blooded murder.
I was told (verbally, not in writing) that the civil servant was one of the two operators (the other being one of the two contractors) for the first three launches. The civil servant left for the fourth test and was replaced by the other contractor. The fourth test was the fatal accident.
So the civil servant may have blown himself up except for pure luck. I do not think murder is anywhere near the correct phrase.
Once again, I should caution you that I was not one of the investigators. I was just close enough to hear the analysis.
