The Sperry ball turret was a marvel of 1940s engineering. American manufacturer Sperry figured out how to cram a human being into a 3.5′-diameter armored sphere with Plexiglas windows, alongside 500 rounds of ammunition and with two .50-caliber machine guns sticking out of it.
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This ball turret was suspended from a gimbal inside B-17 and B-24 bombers and protruded from the bottom of the airplane. An electro-hydraulic system allowed the turret operator to rotate the thing in all directions, defending the underside of the airplane from German invaders.
Incredibly Taigh Ramey, an aircraft restoration expert, came across a “new old stock”—i.e. fully manufactured but never used—Sperry ball turret in a surplus shop some years ago. He convinced the owner to sell it to him. After bringing it back to his shop, Ramey was surprised to find that once he added hydraulic fluid and fired up the turret, it “ran like a charm,” despite having sat on a crate since the 1940s.
What do you do with such a find? Ramey hooked the turret up to a scaffolding, brought it to a shooting event, and allowed spectators to fire the thing:
Unsurprisingly Ramey was a consultant on “Masters of the Air,” Apple TV’s currently-running series covering American WWII flyers. For those interested in the subject, Ramey provides some details of the job on his Facebook page.
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Lastly, Ramey runs the unusual Bomber Camp, a “living history” experience where you can train as a member of a B-17 or B-24 bomber crew, then fly a mission in one of the actual planes, where you drop dummy bombs on a target and the gunners can fire .50-cal blanks. Just nuts.
Source: core77