Ram air

On Jun 4, 5:03 pm, Tina wrote:

Do we know for sure if that belly gunner -- gear up landing scene
really happened?

This is not an attempt to belittle any who have put themselves at risk
for the rest of us: the question I have is do we know with certainty
the gear up landing with a trapped belly gunner is reality based or is
it from a film?

It happened more than once. The ball turret was operated by a
mechanism that would get shot out and so the gunner couldn't get the
ball back up into the fuselage to get out of it.

Dan

"gregvk" wrote in message
...

I didn't hear it from a film. I heard about it from some old guy who saw
one land that way. The craft's hydraulics got damaged and stopped
working,
which made it impossible to drop the landing gear or to rotate the ball
turret (it had to be properly positioned in order for the gunner to open
the little door and climb into the craft) so the gunner was stuck in there
and they had to belly land. I always thought the B-17 had a manual
override crank or something to rotate the ball turret by hand... But
maybe
they didn't all have those, or it was also damaged (or maybe I'm mistaken
about the existence of a manual override).


Hey Bertie, your forgot to change your name back!!!

:0)