The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner - Skylighters | The Web Site of the 225th AAA Searchlight Battalion

BY RANDALL JARRELL

Ball turret gunner Richard O. Getty checks out his turret – dubbed “Ball of Fire” – in the belly of his B-17 Flying Fortress (“Ruthie I”), England, September 1942. Getty was wounded in action, July 1943. Photo by Margaret Bourke-White.

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose

1 Comment

larry.m.belmont

January 6, 2022, 10:55 am

“Black Flak and the Nightmare Fighters” is my short play based on Jarrell’s poem, which features the bottom of a B-17 fuselage complete with functional ball turret on stage (the twin .50-caliber machine guns aren’t functional). But it spins with the actor inside “at rise” with the sounds and light-flashes of flak.

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