When it comes to the arms with the highest mortality rate in World War II, it is not the army units, but the bomber units are surprisingly the first to bear the brunt, especially the turret machine gunners of the B-17 heavy bombers of the US Army Aviation, which are even more famous for their nine deaths. The U.S. B-17 bomber was the main heavy bomber of World War II, with a long range and a bomb load of several tons, but there were many losses.
Turning the clock back to 1943, the victories at the battles of Midway and Kuah finally gave the breathless United States the strength to deploy heavy bomber forces on a large scale in Europe. At that time, the more advanced B-29 strategic bomber had not yet been put into mass production, and the main equipment of the heavy bomber unit of the US Army Air Force was the B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator. The B-17 heavy bomber, due to its early service time and relatively mature experience, often takes the lead in the strategic bombing of Germany, but the poor design and the strong firepower of the German army have also caused the United States to pay huge casualties.
This brings us to the nickname of the B-17 Flying Fortress, the B-17 heavy bomber has a four-engine layout, and in extreme cases, even if three engines fail, the B-17 can fly back to base. At the same time, the aircraft is 22 meters long, 31 meters wide, has a maximum take-off weight of nearly 30 tons, has a very strong body, can carry 8 tons of bombs, and the fuselage is huge and the overall resistance to strikes is extremely strong.
Even if the fuselage is hit to a thousand holes, there will be no breakage of the fuselage, and with the dense machine gun turret on the fuselage, the nickname of the B-17 Flying Fortress can be said to be worthy of its name. However, the B-17 also had a fatal flaw, which was the design of the machine gun turret, with a 12.7 mm self-defense machine gun turret in front and rear to intercept incoming Axis fighters. Dozens of machine guns made the B-17 a tough hedgehog to bite, but it also cost a lot.
The first is the tail turret of humanoid reactive armor, which was originally designed to interfere with German fighters attacking from the rear. However, in actual air combat, in the face of German FW-190 fighters equipped with two 13 mm heavy machine guns and four 20 mm cannons, only two 12.7 mm tail turrets were often beaten into meat sauce by the German 20 mm guns when they were still correcting their ballistics.
Many of the B-17 heavy bombers that returned with injuries were shattered together with the tail turret and tail fin. So much so that on the later B-24 heavy bomber, the United States focused on strengthening the tail protection. However, in the absence of air superiority fighter cover, these measures still provide minimal protection for the tail gunner. So much so that in World War II, the casualty rate of the B-17 and even the tail machine gunners of other Allied heavy bombers has always been three times that of the cabin members.
However, the tail machine gunner is not the worst, and the machine gunner under the belly of the machine is really dead. The belly turret of the B-17 was completely independent of the bomber and could only be accessed from the outside, and every time the B-17 bomber sorted, the machine gunner had to climb from the ground into the belly spherical machine gun turret in advance. Moreover, the space of the spherical machine gun turret in the abdomen is extremely narrow, and the machine gunner can only lie in it, and it is difficult for the body to move for several hours at a time, not to mention how aggrieved it is. Moreover, in order to reduce the casualty rate, the B-17 heavy bomber often chooses to fly to an altitude of 9,000 meters, at which the temperature can be as low as minus 40 degrees, and the belly turret machine gunner at this time is only a thin layer of iron and the cold clothing he wears.
Moreover, the sewer exit of the toilet in the B-17 cabin, just in front of the belly turret, when flying at high altitude and high speed, as long as someone pees, there will be a large amount of yellow liquid, which splashes on the belly turret and quickly freezes, and as a result, the belly gunner sees nothing. But all of the above are actually able to overcome problems. The real problem of the belly turret machine gunner, in the protruding design, was too close to the ground.
The B-17 heavy bomber took off with a belly turret machine gunner, only 30 centimeters above the ground. In other words, even if the aircraft is forced to land with slight damage, the belly turret gunner will be slapped on the ground and quickly crushed into a patty, and even if the normal landing procedure is not operated carelessly, the belly turret may come into close contact with the ground. When intercepted by German fighters, the machine gunners in this area were very nervous.
In addition, anyone who understands the protection design of battleships should know that the reason why the battleship chose to focus on the protection of the center and despise the defense of the head and tail is largely because, according to the simulation, in the sea sports engagement, the probability of being hit in the middle far exceeds the probability of being hit by the head and tail. And for high-altitude bombers, the same is true. When the anti-aircraft gun is constantly correcting into the sky, the middle part of the fuselage has the highest probability of being hit.
This also led to a dense barrage of anti-aircraft fire, which has been one of the key reasons for the death of machine gunners in the abdomen. Although the United States later made some improvements based on feedback, such as allowing the belly heavy to enter the spherical turret from the machine gun, the belly heavy was still the position with the greatest casualties after the bomber was damaged. Even if the B-17 was not injured, the weak belly of firepower was often one of the first targets of German fighters. Fortunately, the P-51 long-range fighter was put into the European theater of operations on a large scale at the end of the war to provide escort throughout the whole process, otherwise the nickname of the B-17 heavy bomber may not be "Fortress in the Air", but "Widow in the Air".