Japanese Pilots Saw No Gunner in the Turret — Then the Guns Started Moving

Over Japan, late 1944. A Japanese fighter crosses the side of a B-29 Superfortress at high speed. An American gunner keeps his sight directly on the fighter. But the machine guns themselves point somewhere else. That was not a mistake. The B-29 was calculating the shot for him. Unlike earlier American heavy bombers, the Superfortress used remotely operated defensive turrets controlled from sighting stations inside the pressurized aircraft. The gunners were not sitting inside most of the turrets they controlled. Instead, each sighting station was connected to an electromechanical analog computer. The system automatically corrected for three major problems: bullet ballistics, target lead, and parallax caused by the distance between the gunner’s sight and the remote turret. This meant the gunner could keep his sight directly on an attacking fighter while the computer calculated where the guns themselves actually needed to point. And the system went even further. A single gunner could control more than one turret at the same time, concentrating multiple .50-caliber machine guns on one attacking aircraft. The upper gunner could control both upper turrets. Side gunners could operate the lower turrets and, under certain conditions, even control the tail guns. Built-in firing limits also prevented the remote guns from accidentally firing through parts of the B-29 itself. And if one gunner became incapacitated, control of his weapons could be transferred to another station. On November 24, 1944, 111 Marianas-based B-29s took off for the first major XXI Bomber Command attack on Tokyo. Weather and mechanical problems meant only 88 actually bombed Tokyo targets, while Japanese fighters mounted repeated attacks against the new Superfortresses. The B-29 was already revolutionary because of its range, altitude, pressurization, and enormous size. But hidden inside it was another remarkable piece of World War II technology: a centralized, computer-corrected defensive gun system years ahead of the manually operated gun positions found in earlier American bombers. The gunner aimed at the fighter. The computer solved the geometry. And the guns could point somewhere else entirely. #B29 #Superfortress #WWII #USAAF #AviationHistory #MilitaryHistory #WorldWar2 #JapaneseFighters