Your Life as a B-17 Ball Turret Gunner #ww2

As a B-17 ball turret gunner, you're 19 and folded into a steel ball 25,000 feet over Germany. The deal is 25 missions, then home. Will you reach 25? Your parachute doesn't fit in the ball, your heated suit can catch fire, and in the Eighth Air Force, frostbite is grounding more men than German guns. The "you" in this story, and your friend Dutch, are composites built from real WW2 records. The missions, the numbers and every person named below are real, and every fact is sourced. 📚 RESEARCH & SOURCES: ▸ Black Thursday losses: "Black Thursday: October 14, 1943," The National WWII Museum. 291 B-17s flew to Schweinfurt, 60 didn't come back, and more than 600 men were killed, wounded or missing. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/black-thursday-october-14-1943-second-schweinfurt-bombing-raid ▸ Life inside the ball: "The Sperry Ball Turret," Cradle of Aviation Museum. No room for the gunner and his parachute, up to 10 hours inside, least likely to be wounded and least likely to get out. https://www.cradleofaviation.org/plan_your_visit/virtual-museum/curators-choice-video-collection/sperry-ball-turret.html ▸ The real first to 25: "First to 25," 303rd Bomb Group. Delta Rebel No. 2 reached 25 missions on May 1, 1943, two weeks before the Memphis Belle. https://www.303rdbg.com/first-to-25.html ▸ Frostbite vs. the enemy: "Cold Injury, Ground Type," chapter 7, AMEDD Center of History and Heritage. December 1943 temperatures of -22 to -45 F; 1,634 fliers removed for cold injury vs. 1,207 for wounds in the 14 months to December 1943. https://achh.army.mil/history/book-wwii-coldinjury-chapter07/ ▸ The 77%: "Masters of the Air" by Donald L. Miller (2006, Simon & Schuster), statistics page. 77% of American airmen who flew against Germany before D-Day became casualties. https://sites.lafayette.edu/millerd/books/masters-of-the-air/statistics/ ▸ The tour goes to 30: "Moral Courage: Jimmy Doolittle, Eighth Air Force Memorandum," Journal of Character and Leadership Development (US Air Force Academy). The tour rose from 25 to 30 effective March 15, 1944, and Doolittle expected "a great lack of enthusiasm." https://jcldusafa.org/index.php/jcld/article/download/63/61/60 ▸ Eighth Air Force losses: "Brief History," National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force. About 26,000 killed and 28,000 taken prisoner. https://www.mightyeighth.org/brief-history-of-the-eighth-air-force/ ──────────────────── PEOPLE, PLACES & EVENTS IN THIS VIDEO: ▸ Black Thursday (Schweinfurt raid): The October 14, 1943 raid on German ball-bearing factories. It's the reason there's an empty cot waiting for you. ▸ Eighth Air Force: The US bomber force flying from England against Germany. Your employer, and your odds. ▸ Kingman, Arizona: Home of one of the Army's aerial gunnery schools. Six weeks in the desert, then stripes. ▸ 1929 Geneva Convention: The treaty on prisoners of war. It let captured sergeants be made to supervise work, not do it. ▸ Memphis Belle and Cecil Scott: The famous B-17 that finished 25 missions in May 1943, and its ball turret gunner. The poster on every hut wall. ▸ Delta Rebel No. 2: The B-17 that actually reached 25 first, on May 1, 1943. Nobody made the movie. ▸ Maynard "Snuffy" Smith: A ball turret gunner awarded the Medal of Honor for his first mission in May 1943. He pulled kitchen duty the same week. ▸ Alan Magee: A ball turret gunner who fell about 22,000 feet over Saint-Nazaire, France, in January 1943 and lived. The story Dutch won't stop telling. ──────────────────── 🔔 Subscribe if you'd rather count other people's missions than fly your own. https://www.youtube.com/@StickTory?sub_confirmation=1 Chapters 0:00 The Worst Seat in the Sky 2:01 Why You Got the Job 4:27 The World's Most Dangerous Gaming Chair 8:17 New Leadership and Changing Odds 9:59 The Rules of the Game Change Disclaimer: This video is educational entertainment. It dramatizes real historical practices through a second-person character, and some scenes depict historical violence, punishment and hardship for educational context. It is not an endorsement of any of it. Historical sources sometimes disagree, and where they do, we follow the sources listed above. Nothing in this video is professional, legal or medical advice. #B17 #WW2 #BallTurretGunner #StickTory #HistoryAnimated