What's in a Name?

In addition to target practice, gunners learned how to use their potent equipment safely, and from these lessons emerged the one piece of equipment that distinguished them from other members of a bomber crew. This was a small toggle that they made themselves, a piece of round wood with a stiff wire attached to it at right angles and a loop in the end of the wire. The gunner placed the loop around a projection on the side of the breech block and used the toggle to draw back the springloaded block so he could remove the round that the gun automatically placed in the breech when the gunner ceased fire. Removing this round was crucial, because otherwise it might "cook" and go off by itself from the heat of the gun. When he wasn't using the toggle, the gunner slid the wire into his flying boot, with the wooden handle protruding. Alex showed me a small brass statue he had bought of an air gunner in full flight gear, including the wooden handle sticking out of his right boot top.

The mid-upper gunner not only had to retrieve the live round in the breech when he ceased fire; he also had to return the turret to its locked position, so the gun barrels were parallel to the fuselage of the aircraft and pointing aft. If they were not locked into this position, a cooked round could go off and hit the plane's tail. Alex remembers this happening once in training; it did not create serious damage to the airplane, but the mid-upper gunner who forgot to lock his weapon and retrieve the round was court martialed. Ordinarily the plane's tail was protected from the mid-upper turret by an interrupt gear that automatically prevented the gun from firing when it was aimed at the tail, but of course if it was accidentally left in that position, a cooked round could cause serious damage. Hearing all this, I began to realize that the toggle was a gunner's means of defense against friendly fire in the form of severe discipline.

By mid-1944, when John was trained, the difference between novices and their combat-experienced instructors was enormous. Pilots who had been on active duty in new high performance airplanes were bored by the routine of flying obsolete Ansons for gunners in training. During air-to-sea practice, when gunners aimed at a buoy in the water, pilots laughed as they scared trainees by flying so low that the prop wash whipped up the water. One pilot did a tight 360o turn around a lighthouse, just to show the gunner he could do it. Once a bored pilot told a gunner to sit in the cockpit, so the pilot could have a go with the machine gun. When the gunner protested that he didn't know how to fly the plane, the pilot told him the Anson was a steady airplane and he should simply sit there without touching the controls. If the Anson was that steady, the gunner wondered, why did he bother sitting in the cockpit at all?

At the time John reached Italy, SAAF Sqn 25 was switching over from the older B34 Ventura to the new two-engine Martin B26 Marauder. In fact, John joined his SAAF crew in September, 1944, in Shandur, a desert airbase on the railway that parallels the Suez Canal, where the crew had been sent from Italy to retrain on the new airplanes. Bernard Davies and Alex Kinch also met at Shandur, Bernard coming with his SAAF crew from the Biferno base and Alex joining them for the first time as rear gunner.

Retraining was a challenge, because the Marauder was notoriously difficult to fly. Specifications for heavy armament, bomb load, and high speed produced a sleek profile but also resulted in an unusually small wing area, making for poor lift, which in turn required extraordinarily high take-off and landing speeds. Most of those who died flying or servicing the B26 in SAAF Sqn 25 were killed in accidents on take off and landing. To facilitate lift, weight was concentrated near the wings, so the rear gunner was required to occupy a forward position when the plane was taking off or landing. When Alex Kinch took his place as rear gunner, he routinely zipped up a heavy canvas partition just forward of his cramped space, to reduce draft and cold in flight. On one op, however, the zipper jammed, and he told Capt. Leadbetter on the intercom that he could not leave his position before landing. Leadbetter landed safely just the same, and they eventually freed the zipper, but it was a harrowing experience for Alex, who never zipped up the partition thereafter, hoping to avoid the fate of John Irving's Technical Sergeant Garp, the ball turret gunner whose familiarity with violent death cannot be exaggerated.

The cold Alex tried to avoid was a constant enemy of bomber crews in the European theater. Like most World War Two airplanes, the Marauder was not built for high altitude, so it was not pressurized, and its skin was full of holes and cracks, adding to the natural cold and thinner air at 10,000 feet. To help keep them warm, the crew wore an inner flying suit, made of brown silk and kapok-filled for insulation, with wires running through it, like an electric blanket, so the gunner could plug it into a circuit in the airplane. However, the flying suits were issued by the RAF, and the Marauder was an American plane, so the plugs were incompatible, and the wires were useless in keeping anyone warm. Over the kapok-insulated suit, the gunner wore a "sidcot" suit of finely woven canvas, and over that a fleece-lined leather jacket called the "Irvin" jacket after the company that made them. The heavy leather flying boots were also fleece lined. A gunner's gloves were layered as well: an inner silk gauntlet, a short woolen glove for the hand and fingers, and a leather gauntlet over all, but all three were thin and supple, to enable mobility. Parachutes were too bulky to wear in the cramped spaces of a medium bomber, so they were stowed. If needed, they could be taken out and attached to metal D-rings on the chest of the parachute harness, which crewmembers wore while flying. It was often raining or snowing while they were being moved in open trucks from the camp to the runway, so they got wet--flight suit and all. Drying their gear was impossible in the small tents, and besides, they needed the gear to keep warm at night; all they had otherwise was a single woolen blanket. So when the gear got wet, it tended to stay that way, and then, of course, it provided less warmth.

Three gunners flew on the Marauder (one more than the Ventura), because it was the most heavily armed medium bomber built during World War Two. With twelve Colt-Browning .505s, it had only one gun fewer than the B-17 Flying Fortress, which was a four-engine heavy bomber. The guns were belt-fed, and their movement was hydraulically powered so the gunner could maneuver them easily and quickly in the heavy slipstream caused by an airplane moving at nearly 300 mph. The youngsters who flew with these potent weapons were duly impressed by them. Even the firing of one double-barreled turret was enough to shake the whole airplane; when several turrets opened up at once, the effect was overwhelming. With this kind of firepower at the gunners' fingertips, it was easy for young and untried bomber crews to imagine that no fighter would dare attack them.