Warbird Information Exchange

Through years of interest in vintage autos I have always heard that Tucker Aviation Company, a division of the more famous Tucker Corporation, the company that later built the controversial 1948 Tucker Sedan, had designed a turret that was later used in aircraft. The design started as part of of the Tucker Combat Car in 1938 and was later used in PT boats and modified to use 2 .50 guns. The company was later sold to Higgins. Apparently at some point the design was built on license for aircraft (according to some sources they were in B-17s and B-29s). Does anyone have any information about which company actually built the Tucker Turret? If it was in B-17s I suppose it would be Sperry but am curious if anyone knows which aircraft or which turret was the Tucker turret.

thanks, Ryan

Ryan--

Haven't got the info you seek...but am fascinated at the info you've provided in the course of asking the question! The "Tucker Turret" (along with the Tucker scout car) appears near the start of the 1989 George Lucas movie about Preston Tucker; I had always thought that was a piece of dramatic licence, as the jeep and turret in the movie looked, well, fictitious. Had no idea there really had been both the turret and the scout car, at least as designs.

I did know, though, that Tucker's aviation firm had designed a lightweight fighter--the unbuilt XP-57, which in layout was vaguely a kind of three-quarter-scale P-39 but with more square-cut lines. Would've been neat to have seen in the air. Wonder if anyone ever did an R/C model of it...

S.

Steve,

Believe it or not the odd looking vehicle in the movie is not far off from the way the original looked.


This is the actual Tucker Combat Car

The Tucker Combat Car was developed by Tucker and evaluated at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in 1938. It had a Packard 478 cu V-12 that produced an estimated 175hp. According to Tucker it could go 100 mph however the Army said it was only 74mph. It was armed with a 37mm anti-tank gun in the turret as well as two .50 cals and two .30 cals on semi-flexible mounts. It was nicknamed the "Tucker Tiger Tank" although it was more a scout car with armor up to 9/16 of and inch.

The Tucker Aviation Company was formed around 1940 and it began production of the turrets at the Ypsilanti, MI Tucker plant. Eventually Tucker Aviation Co. was purchased by Higgins Corporation, of "Higgins boat" landing craft fame. Higgins allowed Preston Tucker to VP but at some point Tucker got sidetracked on other projects and lost interest in the company. The combat car was last seen down at the Higgins facility but who knows what ever happened to it. While I have confirmed that they did build twin .50 cal PT boat turrets I am still curious if anyone has information about which aviation turret was designed by Tucker as there are several designs. I inquired at the Tucker Historical Society but never got a response.

Ryan

Looking at the turret on the combat car, it reminds me of the turrets used in the XB-19 (37mm and all!)

As for a possible B-29 connection, not to my knowledge. They did experiment with lots of strange turrets and armament configurations during the YB-29 phase (including ball turrets, John! ) but I've never heard of a Tucker turret being employed. As for the production turrets, I've never seen any B-29 turret/armament related part mfg. by Tucker, but that's not to say they dont exist. They could have produced components for the turrets, but again I've never seen any marked as such. You'll find that virtually everyone was contributing to the war effort in one way or another, I have a bunch of ammo chutes mfg. by a refrigerator company!

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Here's a link to an article, with a frontal view photo, in the February 1939 issue of Mechanix Illustrated:

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2006/03/ ... f-114-mph/

(Scroll all the way to the bottom for the article.) Only Preston Tucker would have thought to put whitewall tires and camouflaged wheel covers together!

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I hadn't seen that article, thank you for posting that. As far as I know the turrets were only made by Tucker Corporation for a period of time until Higgins purchased Tucker Aviation Co. As I understand it at that point they began to license the design to another company because Tucker could not keep up with the demand once the war started. So I am guessing they licensed it to Sperry, Bendix, Martin, or someone. That seems to be he missing link, who actually built them.

Ryan

I have to agree with Trevor...I don't know of any aircraft turrets or turret parts being manufactured by Tucker. Due to the high demand a lot of these turrets were licensed out to other manufacturers because one company typically couldn't keep up with orders. The Sperry Ball Turret was developed by the Sperry Corporation. Briggs Manufacturing located in Detriot and Emerson Electric located in St. Louis both made the turrets under license from Sperry (they did this for several other turrets as well). As far as I know Sperry never directly produced any of their ball turrets...at least I've never seen any parts made directly by Sperry (except for the gunsight).

And the ammo chutes?...probably made by Kelvinator.

John

Hello Ryan,

Here are a couple of photos of Tucker turrets that I came across at National Archives while doing research.

One appears to be a mock up while the other looks like a production model.

These must have been real early or just before WWII judging by the guns. The 50 cal guns have slotted cooling jackets and the early vertical style back plate.





The interesting thing was that the folder that the images came in was marked as "turret for Army flying boat". In the one image you can see a sign that states the turret was for a Navy contract.

I wonder if this turret was used on the bow of the Coronado. It certainly is not the one used on the Mariner.

Ryan, I talked to your Dad earlier today and he said that you had already left for the Military Vehicle show at Tower Park. I need to swing by Eagle to buy the seat from your Dad and get it shipped off to Gary. I might be driving the bomb truck and ball turret to the MV show on Saturday so I hope to see you there.

I have other Tucker turret shots from NARA so if you want I can show them to you at the show.

Thanks Ryan,
Taigh

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Thanks Taigh. Good seeing you at the show.

Ryan

[quote="Taigh Ramey"]Hello Ryan,

Here are a couple of photos of Tucker turrets that I came across at National Archives while doing research.

One appears to be a mock up while the other looks like a production model.

These must have been real early or just before WWII judging by the guns. The 50 cal guns have slotted cooling jackets and the early vertical style back plate.





The interesting thing was that the folder that the images came in was marked as "turret for Army flying boat". In the one image you can see a sign that states the turret was for a Navy contract.

I wonder if this turret was used on the bow of the Coronado. It certainly is not the one used on the Mariner.

Ryan, I talked to your Dad earlier today and he said that you had already left for the Military Vehicle show at Tower Park. I need to swing by Eagle to buy the seat from your Dad and get it shipped off to Gary. I might be driving the bomb truck and ball turret to the MV show on Saturday so I hope to see you there.

I have other Tucker turret shots from NARA so if you want I can show them to you at the show.

Thanks Ryan,
Taigh[/quote

Looking at the pics of the turret, is it operated by that single pistol grip below the 50's.

Are there any pics anywhere of this prototype Tucker aircraft?

They were used on the early Elco 70 and 77 Foot PT boats. John Bulkley's # 41 boat that ran McArthur out of Corregidor was one equipped with these turrets.

Django--

Only pix I've seen are a three-view and an artist's concept in the old Lloyd Jones book on Army/AF fighters, which was prublished back in the mid- to late-70s. The XP-57 would have looked like an intermixture of a P-39 (overall layout) and an early Yak (looks)...but of course it was never built. Try Googling XP-57...I think I might do that myself in a minute.

S.

Found it.

The concept drawing would be nice to see.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_XP-57