Warbird Information Exchange

Something I've always wondered about was the relative success of powered turret mounted defensive weapons vs swivel mounted, manually aimed weapons. Is there any data comparing kills between the two types of installation?

I imagine powered turrets might be more effective against attackers coming from a relatively steady bearing, but hand aimed weapons would have more success against attackers from rapidly changing bearings. I'm guessing it was very hard for turret gunners with limited practice to be able to make the fine corrections necessary to accurately track a 400 mph fighter that made a pass with a rapidly changing bearing.

An interesting question, but the answer is clear. Essentially the power turret was developed in the 1930s as the answer to flexibly mounted guns being unable to be reliably aimed.

A look at the development of the Frazer Nash Lobster-Back 'turret' in Hawker Demons and the development of the Boulton Paul turret in the Boulton Paul Overstrand in the 1930s explains the why the limitations of hand aimed guns working in a wide arc of fire required turrets to replace them. Developing the technology of effective turrets was the next challenge.

Flexibly mounted guns lingered into W.W.II in areas where there was either a sheltered or limited arc of fire to be covered; but even those were replaced as soon as practicable by powered units.

I'm not aware of actual date of relative kills in combat - and if there were, I'd be suspicions of their reliability and how you'd segregate them in the case of aircraft like the B-17 and B-24 with mixes of both. But in the case of these two types, you can see that the initially all manual-operated gun positions were replaced one by one with power turret, as those turrets became viable and available, excepting the waist position - but even the waist position was actually automated to a degree on Privateers and experiments 'ball' turrets on test Liberators at the war's end. The exception was what might be called 'comfort guns' with a limited arc of fire, and little actual utility, but it made the crew feel better to be hurling something - the cheek and Rado Op compartment guns.

Either way, all air forces in all nations, where the technology allowed, replaced hand-managed guns with power operated units as they found that the gunners were unable to use the flexibly-mounted units as speeds and performance and altitude increased, and with a brake of technological capability to provide the power turret.

Having ridden in a number of turrets in W.W.II types (Liberator, Hudson) and sat in the interior of turrets of other grounded aircraft, I have to say I remain amazed and impressed that any of them ever managed to hit anything - yet they did. Remarkable men.

Regards,

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

Interesting question. I've never seen any data for man flexible vs power turret aircraft gunnery but I suspect some exists. The B-17 and B-24 data would be a good place to start since they each had both man flexible and power turret gun positions. I would guess that the gunsight had a great deal to do with a gunner's ability to hit an attacking airplane and I expect that was true for both powered and non-powered positions. I'm no expert but I have had the opportunity to "play" gunner in a B-17G a bit and I've fired lots of different machine guns on the ground. I've also spent some time around WWII era bomber turrets in the last few years and I've read lots of WWII era turret manuals. To be honest, I don't see how they hit anything with man flexible guns or powered turrets during WWII but clearly they did hit stuff so the training and the equipment must have worked pretty well.

I would guess the power turrets were more effective because of their better gunsights and their ability to more smoothly track a target. It would be interesting to speak with Navy gunners who had time in both a Helldiver and a TBM. It also might be interesting to find some gunners who had time in both a B-17's tail stinger and a B-24's Consolidated power turret. As a side note, I once tried to stay in the tail gun position of Evergreen's B-17G from Marana, Arizona to Portland. I thought it might be interesting to see what it would have been like for a gunner on a raid from England into Germany. I lasted less than two hours. The young men that pulled that off in the 1940s really were brave! I had on comfortable clothes, nobody was shooting at me and as far as I recall, there was no flak enroute to our destination.

Hmmm..there were no replies when I started typing. When I posted, there were two above me. We all used the word "interesting" right away. That's interesting in and of itself I think.

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Albert Stix Jr.
"Work is the curse of the drinking class"

Albert Stix? What would he know about turrets?

Seriously though, interesting overlaps in Albert and my responses, and I certainly defer to Albert in personal experience. What forced you out of the tail stinger position after two hours, Albert? Nausea? Lack of Sudoku sheets?

Incidentally, regarding Albert's sighting point - a good one - in British Commonwealth use, 'iron' ring and bead sights were replaced on both flexibly-mounted guns and fixed and turret guns; so sighting advantages were removed.

One more point not made so far is that as I said at the start of my reply, the first powered turrets came in when gunners could simply not hold their gun on target against the slipstream - the dorsal position on the Hawker Demon and the nose position in the Sidestrand, which became the Overstrand. The flexibly mounted gun position offered a weight advantage over a turret, but conversely only remained in some positions where they could still be used; there were several positions where it was a turret or nothing, and nothing (as in the famous anti- B-17F head on attacks) was not good enough.

So whatever the stats might be, turrets gave you the chance of more effective, all around defence.

Regards,

_________________
James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

JDK's comment about the powered turrets holding their gun on target against the slipstream load gets updated with the B-29 remote control turrets. Since these were closed loop control systems, any deflection of the gun from the direction commanded by the gunsight was considered an error, and the control system would try to reduce it to zero. That took care of the slipstream load, but it also minimized any recoil action during firing, something that wouldn't occur in an open loop powered turret. That should have improved accuracy during a firing burst. However, I'm unfamiliar with powered turret systems, and they may have had some type of recoil reduction built in to the over-all system.

Larry

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Regards, Larry

Another consideration that dovetails with Alberts couple of hours in the back end of EVERGREENS B-17 and is covered very well in Bob Dorrs book 'Mission to Berlin' is that gunners went 8,9, 10 or more hours in below 30c tempratures, had no way to rehydrate themselves, and were wrung out both physically and emotionally by the time the aircraft got back to base from their adrenal gland being wrung dry after hours of unrelenting fear. Now then, lets swing this pile of iron around and try carefully aiming it against a buffeting slipstream, at as guy coming on @ 350 MPH with cannons and machine guns blinking death at me.
A school friend of my late fathers was a turret gunner on a TBM but like most guys from that era wouldn't say much other than to be punishing on the parental lineage of one of his pilots who managed to get them shot down on a mission when they got lost and showed up late to the party just as the IJA anti aircraft guys were getting zeroed in on the range.

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

From what I recall in Barrett Tillman's book "Avenger At War", he relates that towards the latter part of the war, there was some talk of discarding the TBM's turret gun and returning to flexible dual .30s for the weight savings. The radio operators gun was usually not carried by 1945. By this point, fighter escort was so good that it was rare event when an Avenger was downed by a hostile aircraft. Only 20 Avengers were known to fall to enemy pilots after 1942, and only 5 in the last 8 months of the war. However, the Atlantic Fleet commanders wanted the turret retained as the .50 was a better choice for slugging it out with a sufaced U-Boat than the dual .30s.

Yes, that's correct and the "light weight" turret that was developed for the Avenger was put in the TBY Sea Wolf instead. They were a Consolidated Vultee design known as the 150 CH-3 that was built under contract by Emerson. I have sold all the parts that I have found to fellow WIXer DanK for his Seawolf project. As far as I know, there are no complete TBY Seawolfs or Seawolf turrets left but Dan is working hard to change that!

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Albert Stix Jr.
"Work is the curse of the drinking class"

That's one theory, Albert.

The only documentation I had (lost in a computer crash ) was a (poor) copy of a photo showing the top end of a 150 CH-3 mounted on an Avenger mockup. I believe that Vought-Sikorsky probably designed the turret for the Sea Wolf first and later proposed a lightweight version of it for the Avenger.

By "lightweight" I mean that, as designed, the 150 CH-3 had an integrated seat for the gunner. In the Avenger mock-up pic, no seat was present, and the gunner was standing inside the unit. A mystery for now.

Now, about those turret parts...

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It was a good idea, it just didn't work.