In article ,
"William Anderson" writes:
How exactly did they work? Could the turrets be fired independently at
multiple targets? What crew members controlled them? etc? etc?

There were turrets in 5 locations - Upper Forward, Upper Aft,
Lower Forward, lower Aft, and the Tail. A;; turrets were power
operated, including teh tail.
There were 5 Gunner's Stations on the aircraft -
the Upper Gunner, who had a dome on top of the fuselage in the Aft
Pressurized Compartment, and who acted as the coordinatoe.
The Bombardier-Gunner, with a sight in the extreme nose.
The Right and Left Side Gunners, with domes on wither side of the Aft
Pressurized Compartment,
The Tail Gunner, in a small pressurized cabn in the extreme tail.

All Gunners hy gyroscopic lead computing sights with stadiametric
ranging. As the Gunner tracked teh target, the gyroscopes measured
the rate of movement of the target in Azimuth and Elevation, The
Gunner would also track teh target in range, by using a "Motorcycle
throttle" type grip in the sight to size a ring of dots in the sight
picture to match the airplane's wingspan. Since the wingspan of an
attacking fighter would be known, or estimated slose enough, this
would give Range and Range Rate (Closing speed) information to hte
sight.

The sights fed their Azimuth/ Elevation/Range and Az/El/Range Rate
data to the Central Fire COntrol computer, which was an
electromechanical analog computer that would take the sight's data,
the firing airplanes' current environment - (Altitude, Speed, Outside
Air Temp, and produce a Firing Solution for that target. The computer
sent teh xontrol signals to the turrets, which aimed the guns to
correct for Lead, Gravity Drop, Jump, and the firing airplane's
motion.

Most sighting stations could control more than one turret.
The Upper Gunner controlled both Foreward and Aft Upper Turrets.
The Bombardier normally controlled the Lower Forward Turret.
The 2 Side Gunners could trade off control of the Lower Aft Turret.
The Tail Gunner controlled the Tail Turret.
The Tail Gunner and Bombardier-Gunner each had deadman switches on
their sights. If they did not have the deadman switch held cloased,
their turrets (Lower Forward and Tail) could be controlled by the Side
Gunners. The two Side Gunners had a switch box between them that would
control which Side Station controlled the three turrets.
Each sighting station could aim independantly, adn whichever turrets
were available to that station when a target was designated would
track and fire at teh target that the station was tracking.

It was an amazing system, and once the original bugs were worked out,
it worked quite well. The CFC system was also used on the B-50, which
was basically an uprated B-29 with P&W R4360 engines.
While the basic principals of remotely-controlled turrets and a
computing sighting system was used on the B-36, teh B-36's gunners
didn't control multiple turrets. (I don't know why for certain, but
I'll bet that the -36 was so large that a Gunner just didn't have
enough of a field of view to make it worthwhile.
The B-45, B-47, and B-52, and B-66 all had only tail guns, radar aimed and
computer controlled. On the B-47, the Gunner was the Copilot, who had
the turret controls and radar displays on hte aft bulkhead of teh
cockpit. His ejection seat swivelled around so that he was facing aft
when he was working the guns. The other jets ahd dedicated gunners.

Hope this helps.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster