2RHPZ
06-05-2005, 05:11 AM
The Big Guns
Armed with .50-caliber weapons and the knowledge they can die on their next mission, aerial gunners stand up to the best the enemy
can muster
by 2nd Lt. Chuck Widener
Capt. Charles Chandler operates a Lewis machine gun as Lt. Roy Kirtland prepares for takeoff onboard a Wright Model B biplane in 1912. Chandler, the first commander of the Aeronautical Division of the Signal Corps, was also the first person to fire a machine gun from a plane. It didn’t take long for aviation pioneers to see the potential of aircraft as weapons. During World War I, aerial combat, bombing and close air support were born.
Hunched behind a pair of .50-caliber machine guns in the tail of a B-24 Liberator, Robert Sweatt could only watch the Ju-88 fighter unload its 20 mm cannons into his plane as he hastily tried to unjam his guns.
“ My gun would fire two short bursts and jam,” said the 81-year-old veteran, recalling a 1943 mission over Germany.
Narrowly escaping the first attack from the Luftwaffe fighter, Sweatt’s entire body clinched up as he watched the German swoop around for his second attempt.
“ I knew he had us. He was so close I couldn’t shoot him. The bullets looked like golf balls coming right at us,” he explained as his voice got louder. “He couldn’t have been a hundred yards from me.”
Then BOOM!
“ A P-38 Lightning came out of nowhere and hit him right in the middle,” he said.
As a member of the 389th Bomb Group’s 566th Bombardment Squadron during World War II, Sweatt flew on 17 missions over Europe. His squadron was in one of three 8th Air Force B-24 groups that took part in the Ploesti mission — one of the war’s most daring heavy bomber raids of oil fields in Romania. The fields were estimated to be supplying 60 percent of Germany’s crude oil. Of the 177 planes and 1,726 men who took off on the mission, 54 planes and 532 men failed to return.
Armed with .50-caliber weapons and the knowledge they can die on their next mission, aerial gunners stand up to the best the enemy
can muster
by 2nd Lt. Chuck Widener
Capt. Charles Chandler operates a Lewis machine gun as Lt. Roy Kirtland prepares for takeoff onboard a Wright Model B biplane in 1912. Chandler, the first commander of the Aeronautical Division of the Signal Corps, was also the first person to fire a machine gun from a plane. It didn’t take long for aviation pioneers to see the potential of aircraft as weapons. During World War I, aerial combat, bombing and close air support were born.
Hunched behind a pair of .50-caliber machine guns in the tail of a B-24 Liberator, Robert Sweatt could only watch the Ju-88 fighter unload its 20 mm cannons into his plane as he hastily tried to unjam his guns.
“ My gun would fire two short bursts and jam,” said the 81-year-old veteran, recalling a 1943 mission over Germany.
Narrowly escaping the first attack from the Luftwaffe fighter, Sweatt’s entire body clinched up as he watched the German swoop around for his second attempt.
“ I knew he had us. He was so close I couldn’t shoot him. The bullets looked like golf balls coming right at us,” he explained as his voice got louder. “He couldn’t have been a hundred yards from me.”
Then BOOM!
“ A P-38 Lightning came out of nowhere and hit him right in the middle,” he said.
As a member of the 389th Bomb Group’s 566th Bombardment Squadron during World War II, Sweatt flew on 17 missions over Europe. His squadron was in one of three 8th Air Force B-24 groups that took part in the Ploesti mission — one of the war’s most daring heavy bomber raids of oil fields in Romania. The fields were estimated to be supplying 60 percent of Germany’s crude oil. Of the 177 planes and 1,726 men who took off on the mission, 54 planes and 532 men failed to return.