Arming the Flying Fortress
Every day we literally lose hundreds of veterans around the world from the Second World War. This makes sitting down and discussing an in-depth subject such as what B17 Flying Fortress’s were armed with against the German fighters that tried to shoot them down so much more valuable when we actually get to talk to one of the crew members on those heavy bombers in the European Theater of Operations. James Lee Hutchinson was a gunner turned radio operator on a B17G in 490th Bomb Group based in England during the war. He went on 20 combat missions by the time he was twenty years old and when the war ended in May 1945. In this episode he discusses the finer points of taking care of the seven M2 .50 BMG heavy machine guns mounted throughout the bomber, and how the crews would use the guns.
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Transcript ….
[coming soon]
Infantry Marine, based in the Midwest. Specifically interested in small arms history, development, and usage within the MENA region and Central Asia. To that end, I run Silah Report, a website dedicated to analyzing small arms history and news out of MENA and Central Asia.Please feel free to get in touch with me about something I can add to a post, an error I've made, or if you just want to talk guns. I can be reached at miles@tfb.tv
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When I worked in the Aerospace business I worked with this guy:
http://www.luftwaffe.cz/pet...
Horst and I became pretty good friends and had many interesting discussions about the war.
Even though he only flew in the west for a month while training up on a new model of aircraft, he told me there was nothing he was more afraid of than attacking a formation of B-17's with their 50's in overlapping fields of fire.
We were once temporarily assigned to a project where they needed around the clock coverage and we went on night shift with a new boss. Joe told him he had heard that he had been a pilot during the war and asked Horst where he was from. When Horst told him Berlin, Joe said "Oh yeah? I've seen Berlin. Through a bomb sight in a B-17". Joe never said a another word to Horst and always came to me for updates even though Horst was by far the senior guy in the crew.
Horst spent 4 years building shipyards in Russia after the war and let's just say he didn't care for Bolsheviks very much. And since the Swedes handed him off to the Russians, he didn't care for them very much either.
Since I was a kid I was fascinated with aircrafts, and B-17 was one of favorite designs. Today I can only bow before people like Mr Hutchinson who fought on land, in air and sea on the fronts of World War 2.