In a previous column, we looked at the early-war B-24 Liberators that embraced a large glazed nosepiece with plenty of visibility for the bombardier and, perhaps naively, insufficient defensive firepower to discourage head-on attacks by fighters.
Japanese and German fighter pilots made head-on attacks with closing speeds sometimes exceeding 500 miles per hour. Eventually, production B-24s would feature a manned nose turret with rapid powered movement, two .50-caliber machine guns, and a sophisticated optical gunsight, but in early 1943 the first B-24 nose turret configuration was a successful cut-and-try experiment with existing greenhouse B-24Ds.
Credit for the design goes to Lt. Col. Marion Unruh of the 5th Bomb Group, an early Pacific user of Liberator bombers. He foresaw relocating the B-24D’s powered tailgun turret into the upper part of the nose. The idea offered several viable solutions simultaneously. It reallocated weight for a better overall weight-and-balance configuration for the B-24D. It gave the B-24 better forward firepower. And in the tail position, where enemy attacks did not have the rapid closing speed of frontal assaults, an open-air lightweight tailgun placement with a pair of .50-caliber guns on a simple post proved sufficient for defense.
The Hawaiian Air Depot undertook conversion of more than 200 greenhouse B-24Ds that received distinctive nose turret modifications for use in combat.
And at the Oklahoma City Air Depot, hands-on designers and mechanics rendered their own version of a B-24D with a nose turret, differing from the Hawaiian product by deepening the chin area to give the bombardier more room and side windows for situational awareness.
Consolidated Aircraft in San Diego and Ford Motor Co. in Willow Run, Michigan, wrestled with the best way to give future B-24 Liberators a nose turret on the production line. Although several iterations and modifications of the Consolidated tail turret would find their way into Consolidated’s early factory-built Liberators with nose turrets, Ford mastered the use of the new Emerson Electric turret, once intended as a B-24 tail turret, and now embraced as the optimal and available nose turret of choice for B-24s. The Emerson’s electric motors were said to give the gunner quicker responses when tracking an enemy aircraft.
The rush to produce nose-turreted B-24s gave Ford the honor of delivering the first Liberator so equipped from the factory on the last day of June 1943. It was a new Ford B-24H.
Even as depot-level rebuilding of B-24Ds to incorporate nose turrets began earlier that year, the manufacturers understood the need to introduce nose turrets for all future production Liberators. The threat from enemy fighters was real and the duration of the war was still an unknown date somewhere in the future.
Consolidated in San Diego and Ford in Willow Run adapted Liberators with nose turrets in 1943. The results gave a distinct look to the noses of Ford-built B-24s, different from that of Consolidated products. Both styles endured through the end of B-24 production in 1945.
Unlike the underslung chin turret that gave the B-17G frontal protection, nose turrets on B-24s added one more hump to inhibit forward visibility for Liberator pilots.
While the Army Air Forces (AAF) converted B-24Ds to accept nose turrets, the Navy took its own perspective on the problem of forward armament, and added the round Erco bow turret. (Yes, it’s the Navy, so it was a bow turret, not a nose turret!)
As 1943 roared into 1944 and 1945 before war’s end, the AAF grappled with issues of visibility, for pilots as well as bombardiers, brought about by the placement of vital nose turrets. The ultimate answer, conceived and applied to only eight single-tail B-24N models by Ford, was a new style of Emerson ball turret fitted into a nose that had many glazed panels.
That cleaner nose job was slated for incorporation on a production run of more than 5,000 B-24Ns, but the end of the war axed the contract in 1945.
And remember Marion Unruh, who helped pioneer the use of power turrets in the noses of B-24s? He went on to be a well-known, well-liked, aircraft homebuilder in Kansas. Unruh died in the crash of one of his aircraft in April 1968.
Thanks Fred for the article on B-24 nose turrets. My dad worked on B-24’s at the San Diego plant early in the war. He then joined and flew combat missions as a Navigator in B-24’s in Europe. He didn’t speak a lot about the war, but every-time he saw a B-24 he said he much preferred the H models when he was flying in combat. I think he felt it gave him the best chance to make it home.