this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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Maybe try a poem.
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
Holy fuck who wrote this?
I should have attributed, sorry.
Randall Jarrell, published in 1945.
Bomber ball turret gunners and tail gunners had the shortest life expectancy of any combat occupation in the war, as these were the first targets of incoming fighters. I found one site that said tail gunners' combat life expectancy was four missions.
Ball turrets couldn't reload in flight. The ball was too small for parachutes, and the mechanisms jammed or froze often. Typically they put small, young, single guys in them.
I think that was the inspiration for the B-17 scene from the animated movie Heavy Metal, which fucked me up as a kid.