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A ball turret was a Plexiglas 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 fetus in the womb. The fighters which attacked him were armed with cannon firing explosive shells. The hose was a steam hose. —Randall Jarrell, poet/author of “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”

When you hear the B-24 bomber fly overhead this weekend — it should traverse the Preston Hollow, White Rock, Lake Highlands, Garland and Rockwall before circling Lake Ray Hubbard a couple of times before heading back to the Frontiers of Flight Museum on Lemmon Avenue — try to get a good look at it. It is the only one of its kind still in working order.

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