Been reading Martin W Bowman’s book ‘Great American Air Battles of World War II’, and on page 62 there’s a photo of Corporal Jerome E Ferroggiaro in his position on the B17, the left hand waist gun position. One thing different about this B17 though – instead of one .50 cal machine gun, it’s been specially modified with two .50 cal’s. Does anyone know if many other aircraft had this modification, and why wasn’t it adopted as standard? Must have been a pretty good modification, doubling the fire power of the two waist gunner’s.
By: Dog House Ldr. - 7th May 2006 at 01:20
YB-4O if my memory serves me, it was intended to be an escort platform. It carried 2 fifty’s in each of the waist positions, two top turrets, as well as the ususal, armament i.e. tail, belly, radio operator, and cheek blisters in the nose. But I understand from reading is that they were slower than the bombed up 17’s, and the program was scrapped.
They even tried it on a few B-24’s with the same results.
By: Moggy C - 6th May 2006 at 17:40
Doubling the number of waist guns would also halve the length of firing time before the waist ran out of ammunition. To load extra ammunition would mean cutting down on fuel or bomb load.
They did indeed try some ‘escort’ B17s, loaded to the gunwales with extra guns and ammunition. The problem was that once the bombers had dropped their load the now heavier ‘fighters’ couldn’t keep pace with them and became stragglers behind the main formation. Not quite what was intended.
Moggy
By: Alex Crawford - 6th May 2006 at 17:39
Hi,
Go to this site
http://www.100thbg.com/mainpages/350th/cleven.htm
and you’ll find out the story of the last mision of Phartzac.
Alex
By: Rlangham - 6th May 2006 at 17:23
I’ve heard of them, but it doesn’t mention anything different about the aircraft, the only details it gives are that the aircraft was called Phartzac, flown by 1st Leutenant Norman H Scott and in the 350th Bomb Squadron
By: Alex Crawford - 6th May 2006 at 17:18
Hi,
Didn’t they modify a number of B17’s with loads of extra guns to act as escorts to the main bomber force? Maybe the photo is one of them.
Alex
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May 6, 2006 at 5:06 pm