Recently, I was at the Dayton Airshow. I took a cockpit tour of Fifi, the B-29 while there. The gentleman giving the tour was a former Superfortress Gunner. He explained clearly how the turret system defense worked on the B-29.
First, you had the blisters for aiming the guns. Those contained the computing gunsites (There was also a site in the nose for the bombadier to use and the tail gunner had his own, of course). They would place the center gun site pipper on the center of the enemy aircraft and track it. While they were tracking the enemy aircraft, they would also turn a knob on the gunsite that would adjust `the diameter' of a circumference of pippers so that the `ring' of piper diameter was the wingspan (actually, wingtip to wingtip..it would only be the wingspan from a tail or HO aspect) of the aircraft. You would contstantly adjust that ring while you tracked the target. the gunsite sort of looked like a cantilevered supported camera box with two handles/knobs on either side. There thumb buttons where the handles were so you could fire the guns with either hand.
The computer on the B-29 had all the info on the B-29s Flight Vector automatically sent to it, so the gunner was really feeding tracking and distance info of the enemy aircraft to the computer. Whereupon, the computer would automatically compute the lead trajectory required to hit the target. It was, quite literally, a point and shoot system.
As for who controlled the turrets, they were set up such that certain positions had priority over others. For instance, the top gunner in the back, had priorty control on the top rear turret and secondary priorty on the top nose turret. So, if he saw a target diving in high at their 3 O'Clock, he could put his pipper on the target and, if he was the only gunner `gunning' at that time both top turrets would shoot for his target. However, if the nose gunner saw someone come in at their 1 O'Clock high, he would get priorty on the top nose turret and it would automatically slew from the 3 O'Clock target to the 1 O'Clock target.
He explained who had priorty on which gun, etc. but I couldn't remember that much....he was telling all kinds of great stories I don't want to forget, so I let some of the technical details go. There was a switch though, I believe it was like `activating' the gun position. e.g., as soon as the bombadier activated his gun site, he had priorty control of the nose turrets, etc.
I am not sure if I have cleared anything up or just complicated it more, but I think what I added should clarify the turret system on the B-29.
If you guys ever go to any airshows and see the old guys standing around them or working on them, stike up a conversation with them! The guy who took our money for the tour (His patch said his name was `Jack Bradshaw') was a World War II Fighter pilot. He joined the RAF in 1940. He was transferred to the 56th FG in 44 (Two weeks before Gabby went down). I could have listened to this guy talk for hours! But the stories he told are another `story'. This one is already too long!
<<Edit>> P.S. - I forgot to tell you, Biff has an article about the Dayton Airshow up at
www.dogfighter.com go check it out!
[This message has been edited by Sundog (edited 08-06-2000).]
