Jerry Duran, who served as a ball turret gunner during World War II, was recognized at a meeting of the Veterans Coffee Club on Thursday, Feb. 18, at the B-17 Alliance Restoration & Museum in Salem.

The ball turret, like this one on a B-17 in England in 1943, was designed small to reduce drag, so its gunner usually was the shortest man in the crew. Gunners on World War II bombers had only a ...

Mighty 8th's B-17 gets its ball-turret. ... the 93-year-old Army Air Corps veteran who flew 11 missions over France and Germany on an 8th Air Force B-17 crew admitted some benchmarks along the ...

Letter: The ball turret gunner. ... This Plexiglas ball hanging from the bottom of the B-17 or B-24 was a heavily armed bubble just big enough to hold a small man and two 50-caliber machine guns.

Once the B-17 was in the air, the gunner would enter the turret by placing his feet in the heel rests on the front wall, hunker down in a fetal position, and then close the hatch.

The Museum of Aviation in Warner Robins unveiled a piece of World War II history on Monday. A ball gun turret from a B-17 flying fortress was restored and is on display. The turret is the first ...

Terpenning was a radar operator and ball-turret gunner on a B-17 during World War II and flew 21 air-sea rescues to Japan. "I saw the first atomic bomb hit Japan," he said.