Awesome. I had the privilege of meeting a WWII vet (unbeknownst to me at the time) through my work and I visited him at his residence. Placed inconspicuously on a small table in a corner of the living room was a model B-17. I barely noticed it and had I not asked about it I would have never learned that this man served in WWII as a tail gunner. These modest and humble people were the greatest generation in my mind and always will be.
Thanks for the post, best internal view of the gun position I've seen. My father was with the 305th when they arrived in Chelveston, and this was his position for his first few missions. I have a Stars and Stripes article from Jan '43 that describes a mission in which my dad was forced out of his position by a cannon shell hitting the turret. The heat melted his O2 mask away, and ignited a fire in the ammo box, forcing him into the waist area...but before all that he was given credit for two kills, FW190's. He was pissed that they kept him in the hospital for two weeks, and upon his return he was next man up for the ball turret. About a month later on the mission that included the Writing 69th, his plane was shot down, all 10 bailed. Dad was in multiple Stalags, and was liberated from Stalag 17B...
Wow! Thankyou for the kind words. We are honored to have family members of 17 Vets watching our series. We also covered the Ball Turret in depth if you have not yet seen that. Thankyou for supporting the channel, we are proud to be able to contribute to keeping the memories alive your father was part of for younger generations.
Tail Gunner was probably the most effective position--from my readings from Luftwaffe pilots on attacking 'Heavies' at high altitudes, apparently FWs and MEs had a pretty slow SHOOT! The vid covered this!
A colleague of my older brother in California was for one flight the tail gunner of a B-17 over Europe. During that first (and only) mission over Germany, his B-17 was attacked from behind by a Messerschmitt Bf-109. He could see the pilot of that Bf-109 while it pumped 20 mm rounds in the tail of his B-17. While he was pointing and firing his Browning .50s at the Messerschmitt the whole section of the tail of the B-17 was shot to pieces... He miraculously survived, but vowed never to fly in that B-17 again. That was respected and he got a job as a ground crew mechanic...
Our pleasure. We are glad you watched the series. We are going to take a break from planes for a while but we have a whole lot of the Memphis Belle Restoration in the pipe line.
@@MilitaryArmamentsCompany Enjoyed your old armor series as well. I hope your break from planes is back to armor. Will be watching for the whole Belle restoration. Keep up the great work!
Thankyou for watching the series! Bockscar was definitely done! We got up close and in the bomb bay, we just could not get inside on this trip, however its on the to do list. We also covered Fat Man in depth. AC-130, Xb-70 and Robin Olds F4 is on our wish list for next time. We need to take a break from planes for a while and hit tanks and firearms, we still have lots of content left from the last trip however. Thanks for supporting the channel.
