Post #160612 by tiki1963 on Sat, May 21, 2005 3:54 PM

*On 2005-05-21 14:28, Shipwreckjoey wrote:*I was amazed at how cramped the plane is (I only saw it on the old TV show "12 O'clock High", when it looked like you could swing a dead cat in there and not hit anything). My hat goes off to the poor sonofabitch in the ball turret (he had to have balls of steel).

i wonder how any of those guys dealt with it. honestly, there isn't a place in the plane other than the pilot seats that were somewhat comfortable to be in. and these poor bastards had 5-7 hour missions in the cold with enemy fighters and flak constantly at their throats. now, i'm not saying that the guy in a foxhole had it any easier, but the bombers were no picnic.

in one of the pics where you see the pilots backs through a bulkhead, that area is barely enough room for one person to get through. you have to squeeze around the dorsal gunner's position if they were at their station and crawl up into the cockpit. if you look towards the bottom of the pic, you can see someone at the bombadiers position underneath the cockpit. to get to there, you have to crawl, and i mean CRAWL down onto a catwalk the size of a 2 X 4 to the nose position. while there, the bombadier is basically sitting in space. the position is literally away from the plave with nothing but a 1/4" thick plastic bubble between you and god knows what. how these guys could keep their cool with cold, flak and fighters is just amazing.

here's some more pics although the 24 is now painted in European theater colors...