German Pilots Were Stunned By B-17 Ball Turret Kill Rates скачать в хорошем качестве

German Pilots Were Stunned By B-17 Ball Turret Kill Rates

German Pilots Were Stunned By B-17 Ball Turret Kill Rates November 1943, Nazi-occupied Europe. Messerschmitt Bf 109 pilots climb through thin air at 25,000 feet, their engines straining against the cold. American Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses approach in perfect box formation, 54 aircraft arranged in deadly precision. The mechanism rotates beneath each bomber's belly: Sperry ball turrets with K-4 computing gunsights, twin Browning AN/M2 .50 caliber machine guns ready to track targets at 750 rounds per minute. The stakes are absolute: German fighter tactics must evolve or die. Oberleutnant Friedrich Beckmann of Jagdgeschwader 26 rolls his Focke-Wulf Fw 190 into a steep dive, targeting the lead B-17 formation approaching the Ruhr Valley. His squadron has intercepted American bombers dozens of times, but something feels different today. The defensive fire seems more coordinated, more lethal, as if the Flying Fortresses have grown new teeth. Through his gunsight, Beckmann watches tracers stream from every angle, including directly below the bombers where no guns should exist. The Sperry Corporation of Lake Success, New York, had solved an engineering puzzle that seemed impossible in 1942. How do you fit a human being, two heavy machine guns, 500 rounds of ammunition, and an advanced computing sight into a sphere just 3.5 feet in diameter? The answer required revolutionary thinking: hydraulic systems that could rotate 360 degrees in azimuth and 85 degrees in elevation, armor plating that could stop 20mm cannon shells, and optical glass that could withstand the shock of sustained machine gun fire. The A-2 ball turret for the B-17 Flying Fortress represented the most sophisticated defensive system ever mounted on a bomber.