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The WWII Ball Turret
🕑 Added 2023-01-20 11:15:01 +0000 UTCDirect link: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vwohmAj4xP8
While researching this story, I came across the poem "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell. It's only five lines long, so here it is in its entirety:
"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."
For such a short poem, it certainly packs a punch. Jarrell is a brilliant poet, and he wrote widely - not just war poems, but verses on many subjects. If you like the above, you can read some more of his work here.
Comments
Fascinating Horror
I've seen that news footage. What a story! In retrospect it seems insane to blow it up with dynamite, but apparently that's one of the most expedient ways for dealing with such a big corpse.
Fascinating Horror
Glad you enjoyed the short, and the poem. Your father must have been a very brave man - to take on a job like that at just 19 years old. I'm in awe of what young people did during the war
Michael Rutherford
For a slightly more humorous and lighthearted story, how about the Oregon Exploding Whale of 1970? A dead whale washed up on a beach in Oregon and the local authorities decided that the best way to deal with it was to blow it up with dynamite. It wound up not quite going to plan. There's a famous TV local news segment from the day of the incident featuring footage of the explosion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CLumsir34
Marie Horton
Good morning Kristain. Hope you are well. The poem is brutal - very tragic. The short was great. Made me think of my dad. He was a tail gunner in WWII, in the back of a B29. I had the privelege of getting into the tail gunner area on a real B29 and it too was tiny. Not as tiny as the turret, but very small. I am 5'4" and had to bend over a little. My dad was 5'10" tall and only 19 years old when he enlisted - like a great deal of other enlisted men.
