"Fuddy Duddy" Question

[menards]

https://acesflyinghigh.files.wordpress. ... uddy-2.jpg

So "Fuddy Duddy" has a ball turret that can be seen externally, however the interior of the aircraft has the floor running right over the ball turret. Obviously, I am guessing that the ball turret is bolted in place and immovable. My question, is the ball turret an original unit? a dummy? a remake? How difficult would it be to restore the original look of the ball turret? even if it wasn't fully operational?

[WIXerGreg]

Zooming in on the picture its pretty clearly a dummy that someone has made and it's riveted to the belly. I looked at my pictures from the last time I saw the plane and can't tell for sure if the turret was real then or not, but it's been more than a decade. It seems like I would have noticed if the turret wasn't real at the time, but I don't know.

[bomberfan]

It's a dummy shell that is attached to the outside of the fuselage only. It's not an actual ball turret and couldn't be made to function. Restoring it to function would entail finding a turret and all of the fittings and structure and redoing the entire area. But to the casual observer, it looks the part.

[phil65]

Looks good to me...

Hopefully they will bring it to the N.E.

Phil

[JohnTerrell]

The faux ball turret goes back to/has been that way since the early days of being converted to look more like a wartime-configured Fortress (at least by the mid 1980's) - for instance, it had it added prior to the "Fuddy Duddy" markings, or gaining the chin turret and cheek windows/guns, etc.

Unfortunately it hasn't been flown since 2014, but is kept on display at the Lyon Air Museum.

Last edited by JohnTerrell on Tue Mar 12, 2019 10:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[Jerry O'Neill]

I seem to remember that it was one of the ball turrets that were cut in half and attached to the five B-17's for the film Tora! Tora! Tora!
It was easier to bolt them on for the film than cut a hole and have to go through that process.
As a side note, if anyone has watched Jeff Ethell's Roaring Glory Warbird series on the B-17, they used Fuddy Duddy for the subject aircraft, but if you notice, the aircraft inside has a complete ball turret and a complete top turret. Fuddy Duddy didn't have those. When were were filming the series, I made note that it didn't have them for the "re-enactment" scenes, but that right next door on the Geneseo ramp was Nine-O-Nine, which did have them. Top turret, radio room and waist scenes were all shot inside Nine-O-Nine, while the cockpit and bombardier scenes were shot in Fuddy Duddy.

[bomberfan]

I seem to remember that it was one of the ball turrets that were cut in half and attached to the five B-17's for the film Tora! Tora! Tora!
It was easier to bolt them on for the film than cut a hole and have to go through that process.
As a side note, if anyone has watched Jeff Ethell's Roaring Glory Warbird series on the B-17, they used Fuddy Duddy for the subject aircraft, but if you notice, the aircraft inside has a complete ball turret and a complete top turret. Fuddy Duddy didn't have those. When were were filming the series, I made note that it didn't have them for the "re-enactment" scenes, but that right next door on the Geneseo ramp was Nine-O-Nine, which did have them. Top turret, radio room and waist scenes were all shot inside Nine-O-Nine, while the cockpit and bombardier scenes were shot in Fuddy Duddy.

I noticed that too while watching this back in the 90s. I always wondered which B-17 they used, now I know!