you thought that was bad; the germans had belly turrets in some of the
ju52's (tante Ju, or autie junkers!!), they werent really turrets in the
strictest sense of the word, it looked like a big pail, hanging down, with a
hatch in the floor of the a/c to drop down into it, must have been bloody
cold in there!!
"Alan Dicey" wrote in message
...
ANDREW ROBERT BREEN wrote:
Freeman Dyson, who did the Op.An, on the night bombers, is worth
reading on this. Essentially - lose the ventral turret: speed goes up,
losses down. Lose the dorsal and nose turrets on the Halibag - and
losses
went down. Lancaster was already good enough to not mess much more with
(it upset the production lines), but certainly H2S in ventral was much
better for bombs-on-target and crews back home than the dustbin turret.

The trade off was different in daylight, of course.



The subject of under-turrets came up in a recent thread "Has there ever
been an off-center gun?"

From my reading, only the Sperry ball turret seems to have been
successful. Periscopic arrangements didn't have sufficient field of
view, and it was very difficult to acquire the target in the sights.
Dustbins were cold and draggy, some even being open to the breeze.

In the Manchester, for example, lowering the dustbin under-turret
apparantly produced a marked change in trim, and a gunner described the
experience of manning one as like getting into a refrigerator with the
lights out.

So in addition to being a drag, the ventral positions on British bombers
weren't much good even as look-out positions.