Saturday, February 28, 2015

Tailgunner Dick Gets Taught




BARN ARMY TRAINING                                  


The  Lt. Col. Gen. Tailgunner dick Story
Starring Burgess Meredith as "dick"
and Ronald Reagan as TRKOF





As hokie as some of them are, including this one,  I love these old WWII training films, and there's a treasure trove of them now on the "Tube"


2/28/2015 08:24:00 AM 4 Comments

"If the number of Islamic terror attacks continues at the current rate, candlelight vigils will soon be the number-one cause of global warming. "
Argus Hamilton


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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jeez Rodg, now everybody will know how old I am. Actually, I had to have Meredith stand in for me, because I was old then, having ridden with Pershing in Mexico.
My stepfather-in-law, a waist gunner on a B-17, described that gunnery course to me. Also said the German fighters attacked head on to the nose of the bombers, giving a gunner no time to aim and only a second or two to fire before they were gone. He said he thinks he might have hit one once.

I noticed the movie enthusiasm for the B-24. My dad was a mechanic on B-24's and hated them. He called them flying coffins.
Lt. Col. Gen. Tailgunner dick

2/28/15, 12:00 PM
Anonymous said...

My dad flew B-17s. He said the B-24 was the crate the B-17 was shipped in.

2/28/15, 5:32 PM
Anonymous said...

My dad was in the group that did the research, wrote the manuals and trained the instructors for turret gunners in the bombers. They did that work in Nevada near Las Vegas. He was there when Carole Lombard's plane crashed and was in the group that went up into the mountains to bring out the body parts and the mail. Later during the war, he got a look at the casualty reports coming back from Europe. Apparently, the life expectancy of a tail gunner in actual combat was about three seconds. The side, top, belly and nose gunners could count on help from each other. The tail gunners were back there basically alone. The German fighters knew that they only had to deal with one gunner and would often attack from the rear. In addition, it wasn't an easy crawl to get back to the turret.
Thanks for finding the video, I'll send him the link. I'm sure he will enjoy it.
Steve (no longer in CA)

2/28/15, 9:48 PM
Anonymous said...

Range m'boy, range and payload.. If you need to take out the oil fields deep in Romania, ya call in the Liberators.
olds-mo-william

3/1/15, 12:35 PM

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