The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
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The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner is a five-line poem by Randall Jarrell. It was about a gunner in a Sperry ball turret on a World War II American bomber aircraft, who was killed and whose remains were unceremoniously hosed out of the turret.
"A ball turret was an acrylic glass sphere set into the belly of a B-17 or B-24, and inhabited by two .50 caliber machine-guns and one man, a short small man. When this gunner tracked with his machine guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below, he revolved with the turret; hunched upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the foetus in the womb. The fighters which attacked him were armed with cannon firing explosive shells. The hose was a steam hose." -- Jarrell's note.
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