B-17 nose job

[Oldbaldguy]

This morning I found myself studying Keith Ferris’ wonderful portrait of a B-17G in his painting “Schweinfurt Again.”  He always does a masterful job and his attention to detail is epic, accurately capturing every tiny nuance.  The airplane in the painting sports the iconic twin 50 chin turret with a 50 on either side of the nose and that got me to wondering.  Why would they do that - put four heavy machine guns in the nose of that thing?  I’ve clambered thru several B-17s over the years and can testify with certainty that they are not as big inside as they appear in the movies.  Am I correct that two guys lived in the nose along with a nav table, at least one seat, a powered turret with two guns and its operating mechanisms, a bomb sight, two more guns located in awkward places, O2 bottles, ammo feed chutes and enough ammo cans to make carrying the guns worthwhile?  How did that work?  We’re talking about a space not much bigger than a modern bathtub.  I can see having the two cheek guns in the nose early on but why keep them once they added the chin turret?  I don’t see how there was enough room up in the front of the nose for two guys in cold weather gear to use the turret and the cheek guns at the same time and still hope to hit something.

[chrish]

the term "sardines" comes to mind almost immediately!

[Juggernut]

Quote

...Why would they do that - put four heavy machine guns in the nose of that thing?  I’ve clambered thru several B-17s over the years and can testify with certainty that they are not as big inside as they appear in the movies.  Am I correct that two guys lived in the nose along with a nav table, at least one seat, a powered turret with two guns and its operating mechanisms, a bomb sight, two more guns located in awkward places, O2 bottles, ammo feed chutes and enough ammo cans to make carrying the guns worthwhile?  How did that work?  We’re talking about a space not much bigger than a modern bathtub.  I can see having the two cheek guns in the nose early on but why keep them once they added the chin turret?  I don’t see how there was enough room up in the front of the nose for two guys in cold weather gear to use the turret and the cheek guns at the same time and still hope to hit something.

The weakest point (read as most vulnerable to attack) of the B-17 bomber was the nose; that's why they put/kept the number of guns there. 

 

You are correct that the nose of the aircraft had two crew stations, bombardier and navigator; and also some of the pieces of equipment. 

 

The bombardier sat primarily in his seat, manning either his guns or the bombsight (as required). I don't believe he moved around a whole lot for the amount of time they were in the air under combat conditions (emergency situations notwithstanding).

 

The navigator was free to use either cheek gun depending on the quadrant of the attack, bringing another 50 caliber gun to bear on the target.  Either cheek gun could swing directly forward and through an azimuth that I do not remember offhand.  That's why they were installed in dedicated "housings" (for lack of a better/correct term) that allowed them to swing directly forward.   In an attack, three guns (2 chin and 1 cheek) is better than two;  that's why they kept the guns in situ.  It is my belief that they were staggered to provide a relative clear path of evacuation should it be necessary (and in many cases, it was).  Eventually, it was the radio room gun that was deemed unnecessary and was removed from very late model B-17G's bringing the total number of 50's down to 12.

 

The last reason I can think of for the number of guns in the nose, and tied directly to the first, was the method of attack on the formation used by the Luftwaffe.  It was Luftwaffe preference to do a line-abreast, frontal attack with their fighters, each one so far from the next.  The more guns you can bring to bear on that target, the better your chances are of living to tomorrow.  The B-17 combat box was a very formidable defensive formation.  I cannot think of how many aircraft made up the combat box but at squadron level, there are 12 (if memory serves) aircraft.  With that many aircraft x 4 guns in the nose of each, that's 48 50's,an awful lot of firepower.  Granted only 36 of them can fire at any given time but that's still a whole bunch of high-speed metal flying through the air.  You'll also note that I purposely did not include the top and ball turrets which would also be trained on the attacking formation but I considered that outside the scope of the discussion.

 

This is my best answer to your question based on all the documentation I've read.  I have ad-libbed a little here and there but done so  based on information presented in multitudes of documents on the B-17 and their operations in the ETO.

Edited February 9 by Juggernut

[LSP_K2]

Keep in mind too, that during the bomb run, with flak everywhere, the Luftwaffe would have had no presence in that area, so manning anti-aircraft guns was unnecessary.

[Juggernut]

1 hour ago, LSP_K2 said:

Keep in mind too, that during the bomb run, with flak everywhere, the Luftwaffe would have had no presence in that area, so manning anti-aircraft guns was unnecessary.

That may be generally true but not really pertinent to the question as to why those nose guns were still in the forts.

[LSP_K2]

1 minute ago, Juggernut said:

That may be generally true but not really pertinent to the question as to why those nose guns were still in the forts.

 

It's an addition to the answers already given. I believe the bombardier operated the chin guns remotely, this leaves the other two weapons to be pressed into service by the navigator, on whichever side needed defending.

[vince14]

Another interesting aspect of defensive armament on bombers in WWII - it was largely ineffective at shooting down the enemy, but had a very positive impact on the morale of the crew. The vast majority of claims by bomber gunners can be discounted and overclaiming was rife - for example bomber crews claimed 288 German aircraft shot down in the first Schweinfurt/Regensburg raid, but the Luftwaffe only lost 40 aircraft that day to all causes. There was another mission where the USAAF claimed to have shot down more fighter aircraft that the total Luftwaffe fighter inventory on the Western front!

 

This was understandable, as a fighter going head-first through a bomber formation would typically start an attack run slightly higher than the bomber formation, as this gave a better chance of hitting the flight crew, and emerge slightly lower before diving away. This, combined with exhaust gases from the engine being mistaken for smoke from a fire, meant that a single Bf 109 going through a formation might be claimed by multiple gunners, even if it wasn't hit.

 

The high-ups at both the RAF and USAAF knew that bomber crews were significantly overclaiming, but allowed scores to stand to let the crews believe that they could be effective against fighters, which would improve morale and lessen the risk of crew mutiny. A similar story goes along with the 'Bomb-in-a-pickle-barrel' myth - this was partly spread to mitigate the potential morale impact on USAAF crews, who might otherwise have doubts about bombing military and industrial targets surrounded by civillian housing in the cities of an enemy which hadn't directly attacked the US itself (obviously, this didn't apply to RAF crews).

 

Being hit by flak was seen by crews as a random chance of good or bad luck - there was nothing you could do about it, but you could do something about a fighter attacking you. As anyone who has ever been under fire can tell you, simply having the ability to fight back against an enemy is invaluable for your morale, even if it turns out to be ineffective.

[Oldbaldguy]

Late to need, I just googled some pix of the interior of a G-model nose.  Fisheye lenses do nothing to show how small the space is but the pix showed that the cheek gun breeches were behind the hapless bombardier in his little office chair.  So while the bombardier was doing his business with the Norden or his chin guns, the nav was bouncing back and forth, banging away on either side right behind his head.  Not distracting at all, I wouldn’t think.  More like a rugby scrum in a phone booth during a thunderstorm than anything we see on a movie screen.  I understand the morale issue and the need for everyone to be doing something in times of high stress but, holy cow, the nose of a later Fort must have been a loud and hectic place to be when the fighters showed up.

[tomprobert]

I've flown in the nose of a B-17G and it's actually more spacious than it looks. Granted, I wasn't wearing any heavy-duty flying gear and we were not facing the horrendous conditions of combat, but the two of us in the nose could move around quite freely. 

 

For the bomb aimer the chin turret was directly below him - the mechanism for the turret is out of harm's way and largely in the turret itself, so it doesn't protrude into the fuselage as such, bar some equipment directly under the bomb aimer's seat. The gun operating arm swings over the right when not in use, so doesn't get in the way. To operate it, he needs to be seated, so movement is not necessary. The sight protrudes into the plexiglass nose so again, doesn't hinder movement in any way. The bombsight was more or less between his knees.

 

With the cheek guns, as alluded to by Juggernut above, they were stowed almost flat against the fuselage sides when not in use due to the design of the mounts - only when they needed to be fired would they protrude into the nose section itself. In the G, the starboard gun is almost directly behind the nav as he sits, and the left slightly forward of his table, so access was reasonably easy and wouldn't impede the bomb aimer.

 

Ammunition storage for the cheek guns was in wooden boxes on the right of the nose floor - again positioned in a way it didn't get in the way of things as the feed chutes went directly to the right gun (immediately above) and around and under the bomb aimer's set for the left. 

 

Oxygen bottles were all positioned under the floor of the flightdeck and out of the way - the crew simply plugged their masks into the regulators at each crew station.

 

Yes there's lots of equipment in there, but it was carefully positioned and the 2 crew were not as hemmed in as it may seem. Not to take away anything from the horrendous conditions they would have faced on every mission, but the B-17 nose was a Hilton Hotel in comparison the B-24 - those poor sods could barely see out!

[Mark_C]

I remember my tour of a B-17 as well; it struck me not only as very cramped, but full of sharp corners.  Crew could hurt themselves before they even left the airbase.

 

 

[patricksparks]

Another note on the "CHEEK" gun stowage, they both had cables attached to them that went through pulleys with basically a garage door spring attached to offset the weight of the guns, which are very heavy.

Pat

[John1]

The cheek .50’s were pretty much useless.   Next to nothing for field of fire.  Should have eliminated them and the aircraft would have picked up a few knots from weight / drag reduction.   Same with the side mounted weapons. Just adding two more KIA’s when a ship went down, for no tangible increase in its defense.   

[Juggernut]

2 hours ago, John1 said:

The cheek .50’s were pretty much useless.   Next to nothing for field of fire.  Should have eliminated them and the aircraft would have picked up a few knots from weight / drag reduction.   Same with the side mounted weapons. Just adding two more KIA’s when a ship went down, for no tangible increase in its defense.   

 

Is that your opinion or based on something written somewhere?  If it's based on a writing or account, please provide a reference because from everything I've ever read and seen, the guns weren't useless.  Several waist gunners, including S/Sgt. Tony Nastal (R waist gunner on the Memphis Belle), had more than one kill using these "side mounted weapons".  There are photos with the cheek gun positions faired over but that occurred very late in the war and was (after the Luftwaffe had been pretty much reduced to a residual level of effectiveness), to the best of my knowledge, done at field level and was not a force wide implementation.

That post smacks of disrespect for all those brave young men who manned those weapons through unimaginable conditions; risked life and limb to help defeat totalitarian aggression.  

Edited February 10 by Juggernut

[Oldbaldguy]

2 hours ago, John1 said:

The cheek .50’s were pretty much useless.   Next to nothing for field of fire.  Should have eliminated them and the aircraft would have picked up a few knots from weight / drag reduction.   Same with the side mounted weapons. Just adding two more KIA’s when a ship went down, for no tangible increase in its defense.   

I have to agree with John the First about the cheek guns.  They covered a limited part of the left and right front quarters of the bomber with minimal field of view forward, up or down for the gunner -  ya gotta be able to see something coming long (relatively speaking) before it gets there to have any hope of hitting it.  Those little windows in the nose let in light but didn’t give the best view of what was going on outside so spotting a target at those closing speeds with the bombardier blocking the view forward had to be tough for the nav.  This is what made me wonder why they hauled those guns around til the end of the war once the chin turrets showed up.  The waist gunners had a better field of view and fire but with a max range of more than a mile for a .50, I don’t see how those guys didn’t shoot up the airplanes next door during a fight.

[Juggernut]

I stole this off the web....  Hardly useless.