Yep, got to love these old videos and the way the narrators voices sound!

+TK “Darth Dan” xz420 That's because the same guy narrated EVERY one of those old documentaries. :)

+TK “Darth Dan” xz420 Yeah man. I was thinking about it.

+TK “Darth Dan” xz420 probably because of their old voice recording device thingies.

+TK “Darth Dan” xz420 Maybe the same guy, but don't forget the trans atlantic accent. Pretty popular in those days.

Exactly my first thought. I think he is in all the training videos as the commentator

his very dull and uninspiring voice

Yeah, he's the narrator in everything.

Col. Potter

His name was mel blanc

Yea I watched that on youtube. The German Luftwaffe pilot actually escorted the B17 back to where there wouldn't be any more fighter attacks. He simply flew alongside knowing the damaged bomber was simply trying to get home and wouldn't cause any more harm. The bomber pilot couldn't believe his eyes. They met nearly 50 years later and became like brothers.

+Jonny B I just looked it up and to my surprise found the story. Charlie Brown and Hanz Stigler. Unbelievable story of professional courtesy in war. Thanks for sharing.

+James Robert This is just an introductory training video for gunners. I am sure the gunners watched a lot more other tapes, and underwent plenty of combat and survival training programmes.

+Tony Ferrari Courteous yes, professional no. Your job in a war as a soldier is to kill, wound or maim the enemy so he can't come back and fight you on another day.

+James Robert i remember a story that a ball gunner from one of the b's got stuck in his ball and couldn't get out. the plane was shot up and returning home. what they din't know was that their landing gear got shot too and was useless. well they found out when they where going in to land. but fuel was running out and they had to land... i think you know what happened next.

I like the type of film that has color

I like the type of film that has grain

I like the type of film that has film

i like grainy pudding with a film.

I like when my Mac n cheese gets cold and has a film

I was thinking the same thing.

Well, you gotta' give it to 'em straight I suppose. Give 'em time to adjust to it and to become confident.

+museack Can you blame today's society? I do believe that if the cause is right and just, we would be just as motivated to defend what we have. I'm not going to war for a nation that has no sympathy for the people they claim to try to protect.

Kristian Søndergaard *Jews* Yo, America, like-- our alliance is cool and all but this ISIS thing isn't really helping us much. Could you come and like-- get rid of 'em? I mean, they just beheaded my grandpa in the street. *Obama flips the double bird*

+Gift0r Let's choose, Air force-go up high in the air in freezing cold, get attacked by planes and flak artillery, both wings and tail get shot off, try to parachute and realize you should have listened to the physics section on centrifugal force, make note to self to apologize to science teacher, then parachuting out, chute fails, or land with tree up your bum or be captured with or without tree up bum . Navy-go onto the ocean, and get attacked by submarines, very large rifles up to 18" in diameter, very large machine guns, kamicrazy pilots, have ship sunk, go into ocean, if water is cold freeze to death while relaxing in fiery oil, if water is warm it is filled with fiery oil, sharks, and fiery oily sharks, wait for certain death or uncertain rescue. Infantry-get transported on ship with a thousand other men who fart constantly and have auto erotic fixation, get seasick and vomit for a week, get on smaller boat get seasick again while attempting to take a beach. Get on beach get shot at by machine gun which you were told that its bark was worst than its bite, find out bite is much worse, get mortared, sniped, try to avoid landmines, cut through barbed wire, lay on barbed wire so everybody can step on you, get hand grenaded, in the next fifteen minutes, there is no defilade and planes strafe you, tanks attack you, and this continues until you are freezing to death in the summer and get eaten by mosquitoes in winter all the while somebody telling you that your wife or girlfriend is committing adultery or fornicating with those that did not participate. Fight with Nazi S.S. who have sworn a blood oath and have been doing this for five years and you have about five days experience the rest is theory, or fight Japanese where dying is sacred and is really just virtual reality with LS.D. Is there a silver lining anywhere? I would have to choose the infantry because there are no women in the stratosphere, mermaids do not exist and I can shoot the enemy from a mile away and not have to get up close like this and bada bing and blow their brains all over my nice ivy-league sui

Mate..I used to watch and love your videos too...coz you never baised on any comparison you made

It also had low-level ground attack abilities, as well as fighter/night fighter recon. capabilities.

I belive the us still uses the m2 while fighting sand people but would unveil something new for war against a conventional army

+DEVIL DOG EUPHORIA it probably still will be in service until 2100. The GAU-19 is one of the more modern variants

Jacob Beaumont Indeed interesting vid but I too thought that it would be a movie about the mg in detail.

+Jacob Beaumont It must be "How do you train to be an Aircraft Gunner - WW2"

Well it around a month of training then right into war

nice explanation of war somehow i felt everytying you were telling

air force wasnt created until after ww2

justin mccaffery During WW II it was U.S.A.A.F.United States Army Air Force or Army Air Force. You are nitpicking.

+Brad Davies It was actually the United States Army Air FORCES (plural). Now THAT'S nitpicking.

***** Yes please throw the baby out with the bathwater. I dislike dealing with childlike intellect.

And then the Russians mounted 20mm on all their planes and said touch my pee pee

+Nospoon53189 and then they mounted 45 mm cannons and just stared

But USA said *NO* and launched the specter gunship with it's mighty 105

Before that they fitted B-25 with 75mm gun.

***** and before the A-10, wasn't there a plane with like 4 30mm cannons and a similar firing rate?

+FuzzyTacoGaming Did he fight at Shenandoah?

+FuzzyTacoGaming Didn't know they had those in that war...

***** They were black and white...and silent :D

+LEDN42 I assume he meant the Bosnian civil war

+FuzzyTacoGaming That was the steam powered one, wasn't it?

Ben Baker Even in the 60s most SAC Air Force bases with B-52s had trap and skeet shooting ranges on the Base, it was a big hobby for airman and SAC crews. Maybe the Air Force thought if they really needed it they would have a pool of already trained gunners.

John doe hahah maybe if there was an invasion of tiny toy planes or martians in tiny saucers?

Ben Baker actually trap and skeet is the best training for aerial gunners, if you've ever tried to shoot at something flying through the air you would understand.

Rest assured, they would have seen a Messerschmitt in their minds eye, not a clay disc!

rezaul Karim - No, they gave their lives for Rockefeller and Rothschild!

Watch some captured Luftwaffe gun camera films...They knock that turret off quick! Or it easily takes battle damage and you get wounded. Routinely would jam in place and you would fly hours back knowing your going to die because one or two of the landing gear is damaged too and you will be crushed upon landing. While suffering from terrible wounds, with the open air blowing around inside at 30,000 ft. Still think its cool?

No, If you were the enemy, yes. If you are in the army or Air Force you'd love to pass this unless you were drafted lol

NGGSamWard i was talking about being drafted xDD

0955interactive I think it's safe to assume that the audiences for this film were almost all draftees. Remember what he says here..flight duty pay and an automatic promotion to sergeant. If you flunked, you were sent to the infantry.

Jonny B yes, about 50,000 air crew lost in the RAF in a few years and each bomber had only 7 men in it

Ben Baker and almost half all deaths werent in combat

That is the main way of clearing jams right? Cutting off the ammo supply and pulling back the bolt the number of times needed to eject the jam?

If the extractor on the bolt can grip the base of the cartridge and pull it out of the breech, yes. If not, then you find some other way of removing the cartridge. If there has been a hang-fire - you know the bolt chambered the round, but it didn’t fire - you wait a while with your finger off the trigger and the weapon aimed downrange before taking any action, as hang-fires have been known to go off when being fiddled with. But Rule One is *always* remove the belt first.

Yeah... Thats a big thing to remember during a hang fire, to keep the gun pointed in a safe direction... AND in my case, not to pull out a 30-06 shell that didn't fire. Fuck sakes I almost died from having the shit scared outta me when it went of on the ground... Lucky I didn't get hit either

+MarsFKA I think there are different insturctions for the air force, not to concerned about accidently firing while in the air, not much to hit, more concerned about getting the gun going.

airforce instruction are "dust off the .50 every 3 months, find nearest Bar."

Best advice ever

I thought about the phrase too! I just burst myself when hearing it the first time!

+bud morse For what aircraft?

not to sure he dint talk about it my dad told me.

bud morse Can you find out? It seems really interesting :D

b24 i think.

bud morse Nice :D

+ryan alexander flor: Pocos conocen que la muerte de artilleros de fortalezas volantes es una de las cifras mas ominosas cosechadas por los raids anglo-americanos sobre Alemania. Si bien su efectividad no fue buena, su presencia en los aparatos era el precio en vidas que el dominio estratégico de los bombarderos exigía para posibilitar la victoria. Cuando los aparatos alemanes adaptaron sus piezas de 88 mm en los lomos de sus cazas prácticamente los reventaban dentro de sus cabinas artilleras.

Yes it was. One would have a better chance of survival the war landing as a Marine on Guadalcanal.

+Richard “renegade” McGuire It was called the Box formation. The bombers in it flew so close together that there was a real danger of mid-air collision and the bombers themselves had no room to maneuver if they were attacked; they had to just ride it out. The Germans figured out that if they launched rockets into the formation, they had a better chance of getting a lucky hit in than using rockets against single aircraft. Overall, it was a necessary tactic because a lone bomber was an easy target for a heavily armed fighter, but losses were still tragically heavy.

+Jeff Anderson - Honestly though, for a bomber trying to defend itself against a fighter, you'd be better off riding it out in a straight line than trying to evade, anyway. The fighter will always be able to out-maneuver you, and by trying to turn away, all you're doing is making yourself a bigger target - so, rather than getting a flat cross-section of the bomber to shoot at, banking would give them a huge top-down angled shot at the entirety of the plane It's easier for the gunners when the plane isn't banking and diving around everywhere, too.

***** Good point, but I also hear folks who know a lot more about this sort of stuff than I ever will talk about target leading and deflection angles; something maneuvers might get for the bombers that flying in straight lines most certainly won't. However, those cases would definitely be for independent flying bombers; not the formations that was the basis for this video. As I said earlier, for bombers flying in formations, the whole discussion of maneuvers is pretty moot; they can't do it without risking collision, so their only option is to ride it out and hope the weight of the formations firepower is enough to carry the day...

Jeff Anderson - At least until the Germans introduced the Messerschmitt 262, and were too fast for the guns to track! lol

***** True, but the 262 wasn't without its own set of problems. If it came straight at a formation, it'd be forced to fly through it due to an inability to manage the high gee turn-out to pull away from a strike. In addition, such an attack pass would leave them with only a brief moment to fire, and given the slow firing rates of their 30 mm. cannon, it'd mean only getting (barely) a couple rounds out, many of which would have the same problem with hitting a bomber as the 262 would have in the other direction (avoiding hitting the bomber). Furthermore, such a straight-in approach would leave the 262 nearly as vulnerable to the defensive fire as older German fighters; the same deflection and target leading I mentioned in my last post are matters that high speed exacerbates, but the advantage of higher speed is lost when the target is on a straight line approach. In fact, the only real defensive benefit for the 262 would be the same brief engagement time that makes its own attacks so problematic. At least, that's what I think. I could be wrong...

Ball turrets were effective. But death traps? yeah that is true however..

sexyloser safer than the gunner on the bottom of the he 111

You should look up the Royal Air Force Bomber Command topic of "Scarecrow" matched with the German Luftwaffe topic of "schragemusik". In short, if British bombers like the Lancaster had ball turrets (a.k.a. "ventral turrets"), a lot fewer of them would have been shot down by German nightfighters. It took a long time for the British to realize German nightfighters were using cannons pointed almost straight up to shoot down Lancasters and Halifaxes from close range. Ironic considering this had been done with flexible mount machine guns in World War I, including British guns on the SE-5a. Saburo Sakai, Japan's highest scoring ace to survive WWII was nearly killed by a ventral gunner on a TBF Avenger. He was out of the war on medical leave until Japan had no chance of winning after his injury sustained near Guadalcanal in 1942.

RULE#1 "BE a good killer or a damn good duck'er!"

you can't really duck 30mm minengeschoss inside a turret.

Look at the casualty rates, the 8th Air Force suffered higher losses that all of the other branches over all. For bomber crews the positions that had the highest fatality rates were tail gunner, ball turret gunner and waist gunners due to their positions in the plane when being attacked by fighters.

Yes but with all the suffering we managed to make technologies that are ineffable to describe just take a moment to think about hell look it up in the internet.

I think, yes and no. Certainly things were bad when the Army was trying to send bombers beyond the range of escort fighters things were bad. As that situation was remedied, bomber crew casualties must have dropped dramatically. I'll further speculate that the collapse of German air poeer and industry, and shortening of mission distances as the war progressed must have reduced casualties even further.

stclairstclair That is his FUPA!! Fat Upper Pubic Area. Google images for FUPA....:)

Omg, I couldn't stop looking at that. I don't even know half of what he said cuz I was so confused on trying to figure out where this mans belly button may have been located... So much cringe

Massive erection. He likes big guns...

Sad but throughout history an absolute necessity.

What did you say!!? I'll report you to the great and mighty Stalin and his army of T-34's (stalinium included)

+Meepo Bellic What? Did you say "russian bias?" Nawwwwwww, thats not a thing.... - Gaijin

All I have to say: Tu-4, Stronk Russian Gunners. Almost as stronk as das stalinium.

Been a while since i've play war thunder... Good Call!

What did he say?

Was he a little guy? Usually little guys did that job, they were the only guys who could fit

Yeah , Dad was 5 ' 2 but the bravest little man I ever knew

would have to be to crawl in that bubble in the bottom of the beast. Mine was in the top turret....he said the top ball was like a lounge compared to that bottom ball. he was 6'!

***** The thing is , he was such a good shot and understood how to aim ,etc . He was offered an instructors job at gunnery school but turned it down .

except you only have a %25 chance of surviving the war.

photonman54 of course, but it still looks awesome

To being in war isn't awesome, it's hell.

Well... what you could do, is acquire some cranes, then suspend a plexiglass sphere on the cranes, then climb in the said sphere then have people shoot at you while you are hanging there and after the orb and you are full of holes, have the sphere fall to the ground.

that stat is only for the beginning of US invovlment inthe war mostly the 8th AF once the fighters could go full mission the bombers did pretty well......better then getting blasted by a Panther anyway!