OT: World War 2 Rear Gunner Stations

[Autothrottle]

Hello all,

Just a quick observation, during the Second World War , there were alot of two seat designs of fighter aircraft. My question is, what mechanism or what skill what it have taken to prevent the rear gun bullets shooting the rear tail or radio wires off when firing at attacking aircraft from the rear? This goes for any nationalities design.

 

[SabreAce]

Two techniques were used that I'm aware of - someone with more knowledge than I may know of others.

The first was an interrupter gear, similar to the devices used to ensure propellers weren't shot off. I've read that, in some cases, the design was similar to that used by ships - that is, a camera or simliar device that would recognize a "fixed point" (such as a tail fin) in relation to the turret/gun, and disable the firing until said point was safely clear.

The other option was to physically put something around the turret/gun position that would push it away from the aircraft component. Here's that setup as demonstrated by the Lancaster.

Dorsal Turret Photo:
http://www.lancaster-archive.com/lanc-turret-mu.jpg

Diagram:
http://www.lancaster-archive.com/lanc-turret-mu1.jpg

That fairing around the turret would make sure that the guns would lift above any components that might otherwise fall in the line of fire. Since the Lanc's cockpit was raised compared to a B-17, the raised portion of the fairing was also positioned on the front of the turret. It'd be bad form to accidentally blow the back of your pilot's head off.

 

[glh]

From what I have seen of old combat footage involving AMERICAN aircraft equipped with dorsal/ventral power turrets, I would opine that they operated something like this: The gunner would control the azimuth and elevation of the machine gun(s) with his left and right foot. The gun(s) itself would be fired electrically by a squeeze trigger for one or both hands of the gunner. As the turret swings around, electrical contactors positioned on the turret ring would "break/make" the electrical circuit that fired the gun before and after it broke the plane of a surface of one's own aircraft. Thus, it would electrically shut the gun(s) down while the turret kept on swinging through until the surface was out of the way.