Tag Archives: B-17 Waist Gunner

Putting the ‘Fortress’ into the B-17: A Look at the Guns

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It is no understatement to say that the B-17 bomber is one of the most famous airplanes to fly a mission. Today we look at the hardware that lived up to its well-deserved “Flying Fortress” name.

When it first flew in 1935, the original B-17 wasn’t very well equipped with defensive gun armament; after all, its main armament was its massive 5,000-pound bomb load.

The YB-17 prototypes had a single gun up front, two in side nacelles, one for the radio operator, and one below – just five all told, all with limited fields of fire. (National Museum of the Air Force)

Boeing YB-17 nose turret via National Museum of USAF 

Boeing YB-17 flex gun turret via National Museum of USAF

Wartime experience soon changed this, and by the time the B-17G model took to the air, it carried 13 .50-caliber air-cooled machine guns and almost 7,500 rounds of ammunition to keep them firing. While a few of the bomber’s crew were dedicated gunners, everyone save for the pilot and co-pilot had a gun at their disposal and were expected to use it if needed.

B-17G Flying Fortresses Drop Bombs On Berlin, Germany 26 February 1945. [91St Bg] 59348AC 342-FH_000123

For a closer look, head over to my piece at Guns.com that includes a walk around we did out at Pima. 

Combat Gallery Sunday: Inside the dugout edition

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Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, photographers and the like that produced them.

Combat Gallery Sunday: Inside the dugout

The below, from the LOC, are all sketched by Howard Brodie, who voluntarily left his sweet gig as a sports artist for the San Francisco Chronicle to draw for Yank magazine as an Army combat artist in WWII and got close enough to his subjects (he volunteered as a medic when needed) to receive a bronze star.

Drawing shows two privates, John Minihan of Rockford, Illinois on the right, and Sal de George of Manhattan on the left, kneeling to operate a machine gun from their dugout during the American offensive on Mt. Austen during the World War II Battle of Guadalcanal. Their gun is the iconic M1917 Browning water-cooled sustained-fire GPMG

It is closely related to this one, which was not as fleshed out:

Sketch shows an enlisted man, John H. Minihan of Rockford, Illinois from the side. He kneels as he operates his machine gun from a dugout on the island of Guadalcanal during World War II.

Similarly, this sketch by Brodie is in the same vein, but is inside a fortress made of aluminum rather than jungle earth:

The drawing shows a World War II gunner wearing an oxygen mask as he stands before an open slot in a B-17 airplane firing his machine gun during the Battle of Guadalcanal.

Brodie later went back to war, with his pencils, and covered Korea, French Indochina, and Vietnam.

He died in 2010.

Thank you for your work, sir.

B-17 Waist Gunner

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The great Mel Blanc in “Position Firing” a 1944 USAAF Training Film on aerial gunnery, specifically using M2s from the chilly waist positions of a Flying Fortress.

Enjoy.