Military Aviation History

  A Sperry ball turret, used on the famous American B-17 heavy bomber A ball turret was a spherical-shaped, altazimuth mount gun turret, fitted to some American-built aircraft during World War II. The name arose from the turret's spherical housing. It was a manned turret, as distinct from remote-controlled turrets also in use. The turret held the gunner, two heavy machine guns, ammunition, and sights. The Sperry Corporation designed ventral versions that became the most common version; thus, the term "ball turret" generally indicates these versions.  The gunner sighted between his elevated feet and routinely stayed inside the turret for up to 10 hours on a mission. The turret was too small to hold both the gunner and his parachute, thus the gunner was required to rotate the turret, exit into the fuselage and put on his parachute should the plane be going down. Statistics showed the Ball Turret gunner was the least likely member of the crew to be wounded, as he was surroun...

  Probably the most efficient German flying-boat produced during World War 2 was the Dornier Do 24. It was both `a pilot’s aeroplane’ in the air and at sea could cope with all but the roughest weather. This resulted in the type being assigned the air-sea rescue role and continuing in that humanitarian task in Spain until 1970, becoming the last original Luftwaffe aircraft to fly regularly 25 years after the end of the conflict. Dornier Do 24 conducting a test flight in 1938 The Dornier Do 24, originally designed in 1936 to meet a Royal Netherlands naval air service requirement for a flying-boat to operate in the East Indies. The Do 24 was a large parasol-wing monoplane with three engines on the wing and with Flossentummeln (sponsons) for stability on the water, The first flight by a prototype Do 24, powered by three 890-hp (664-kW) Wright R-1820 Cyclone radials, was made on 3 July 1937, this aircraft being delivered to The Netherlands that year and followed by the export of 11 simi...

Arado Ar 196  An A-3 model conducting a maritime patrol mission The Arado Ar 196 was the principle reconnaissance seaplane used by the  Kriegsmarine during Second World War. A single engined aircraft with a low wing monoplane. It's two crew sat tandem with the pilot in front and the observer controlling the radio equipment and manning the rear facing machine gun. For its time in the late 1930s, the Arado Ar 196 was an advanced modern aircraft. The radial 9 cylinders BMW 132 engine was capable of producing 970HP under full power. The airframe structure of the Arado was optimized for operations from Germans vessels and cruisers. It could be catapulted directly from vessels with its fuselage-wing hinges backwards folding wings system. Despite being designed in the lead up to the Second World War, the Arado 196 was a mainstay of several airforces including the Bulgarian, Finnish and Romanian Air Forces. Beginning production after completing the prototype stage in December 1938, th...