hey it's norm from tested comm I'm here outside of Atlanta Georgia at the home
of Fred visa Fred thank you for inviting us here you do something that's really
interesting some people restore cars old cars some people restore old planes but
you restore old turrets and when I say turrets I mean the guns that were
mounted on airplanes from World War two he told me a little bit up these turrets
sure turrets were invented right before World War two they were invented by the
British and were hydraulically powered once we got into the war the British
sent over some turrets for us to look at our industrial designers started
designing their own turrets and which were electrically powered it's actually
better to have an electrically powered turret because hydraulic ones have a
thousand and fifty pounds of pressure of a flammable liquid and the other guys
are shooting flaming bullets at you so that's not a good thing my goal is to
restore 20 different turrets and have them in the same room I'll restore most
of them back to working condition which is pretty rare turrets are one of the
most under told stories of World War two because there are so few of them
survived there's not many of the aircraft left and there's even a lot
less of the turrets left that's pretty much what I've done for the last 25 or
30 years I've restored seven turrets to working conditions so far all of them
electric most of the turrets that I have here under restored when I get them
they're usually crumpled balls of rusty metal this is a good example right here
this came off of an Avro Lancaster turret it came from a Canadian World War
two bomber four-inch and bomber some of the turrets we have back here are b-24
tail turrets they're hydraulically powered we don't know much yet about
hydraulic so they're probably a few years off the electric turrets were
really good at now we can usually restore one in less than six months the
first turret restore is about a year Wow so different type is for it's one of
different epic planes and right many of the planes in the heart of World War two
had some of these turrets on them yeah they were strictly used on bombers any
kind of bombing aircraft mostly four-engine bombers sometimes two-inch
and bombers and very rarely single-engine
aircraft had turrets on them British had a defiant that took a turret on the back
of it our Grumman Avengers had a turret on the
back of it also a single-engine plane and how are these operated well they're
operated by Gunners they went to a gunnery school located around the United
States and they would go and train on these turrets and then go for a ride in
the aircraft with the turret and shoot it either a drone or some sort of towed
target sleeved you know train the Gunners at them Wow and they sat in the
planes another pilot flew the bomber and they're sometimes inside like a
shell yeah it's rambling they're basically
there were turrets on the nose of these bombers the tops of the Bombers that
tails of the Bombers and the bottom had a ball turret other Gunners were located
at waist windows and in restoring these you can imagine these shirts come from a
variety of manufacturers right right and so one of them some of the manufacturers
and one of differences from my favorite was made by Emerson Electric out of st.
Louis flourescent Avenue and st. Louis Bendix also was a big turret maker
Glenelg Martin at a Baltimore General Electric kind of Rochester New York
all of these industrial manufacturers that you know made lots of things during
the war usually made turrets on the side and very few of them survived today when
the war was over the aircraft came back to the States because Jets had just been
invented and the turrets could not keep up with shooting at jets they were
usually removed from the aircraft and scrapped so that's where there's a few
of them today and so a weapon technology that was invented right before World War
Two in the UK he said and it was obsolete by the time that war was over
right by the end of the war our b-29s had basically remote control turrets a
robot turrets where the gunner sent one part of the plane and the turret was
actually another part they had really elaborate analog computer systems full
of gears and pulleys and they actually worked pretty well at that time of
course they were top-secret state-of-the-art
the Japanese and the Germans didn't have anything like them and then once the war
was over the turrets and the propeller driven aircraft were pretty much over
with well let's take a look at some of these turret and maybe something that
you know is in the condition of when you first acquire and talk about how you'd
go about thinking about restoring it okay as you can see these turrets here
are unrestored and usually when I get them they're crumpled balls of rusty
metal so I wish they were all this nice when I started on them in the other room
we have some that are finished yeah let's go see because up
okay this turn here was manufactured by Bendix corporation at South Bend Indiana
they made about ninety nine hundred of them they were used on the nose of
late-model b-17 cheese it's an all-electric turret again it
takes about a year to restore them I've restored three of them so far to work in
condition when I'm is in a museum now in Savannah Georgia the eighth Air Force
Museum and this when I take around to air shows and museum events and let
people operate so that you know it's it's in working order this one's full
restore and he's caught some of the components and sure sure we do too it's
a peace of God okay this is the elevation gearbox and elevation drive
motor it's what makes the guns go up and down the guns by the way are all fake
I'm creeped out by real guns this is the drive motor and gearbox assembly that
makes the turret spin that's the left and right junction box relay box and
this is the hand controller which would have been mounted on an arm in the nose
of the b-17 you have to go back and restore each little thing after it's
tore this motor and make this motor work on your bench before you can put it on
the turret now this is the hand control over this turret these are safety
switches they have to be held in at all time left and right is left and right up
and down is up and down triggers for the guns if they had been real and then
these buttons on the top are the hospice which is they make it go really fast
most Hertz have limit switches to protect the airframe of the aircraft
there's an elevation limit switch system it's what keeps the guns from hitting
the bottom of the nose there's also an azimuth limit switch assembly that keeps
it from going side to side these protect the aircraft airframe from
the barrels of the gun the very analog mechanism where it's just a rod that
taps a switch when when the turret swings too far crew but affected
and we started restoring these what was your resource we are your reference
material to will I discovered turrets for about 30 years ago and was just
fascinated by them and I was finding them in junkyards and when I got them
they were literally crumpled balls of rusty metal so I learned to work on
turrets by taking the junker ones apart and I would literally drill it apart
sawed apart separate the good pieces from the junker ones and then you know
restore them catalog them put them in bins and then they would be standing by
and after you take a half a dozen turrets of the same model apart they
generally have enough parts to put one back together so that's the ratio six
Jeung quarters will equal one working turret and then you just have this big
catalog now apart that you I do I do have mountains just tens of thousands of
turret parts that I've accumulated in the last 30 years plus once you get the
parts you have to have the manuals to put them together so I've collected
manuals over the years as well and of course with the wonder of the internet
now there's a lot of things that I find on eBay in the way of turret parts or in
the way of manuals or whatever so it's real easy to find the stuff online
all right Fred so tell us about this turn okay this turret is especially near
and dear to my heart it's the first turret I ever restored back in 2000 it
was manufactured by Emerson Electric Company what makes history so special is
it it's an all original condition and we believe it to be a combat veteran that
actually flew in the skies of Europe and you think it's a comprehend ring because
of some discoloration yes if you see right here this is where the heat from
the gun firing caused the paint to discolor whereas everything forward to
this was out in the wind stream and the cooling effect of the windscreen
protected the paint out here this Plexiglas is the original dome which
makes it incredibly rare because it's 70 years old and survived a war this is the
kind of term that someone actually sat in and they just operate the controls
and look through a sight yes this particular turret was being
late in the war they had developed what was called a compensating sight by
cranking in the altitude and airspeed of the aircraft which the pilot would tell
them over the intercom and it would mechanically compute the lead for the
gunner which made them much more accurate and gave them a much more
success rate against the German and Japanese fighter plane because on the
controls there's a mic button you're talking to the pilot pilot relays
reroute to your speed and they're actually dials here to dial that in and
you're doing that as you're in combat it's just so you can get the right lead
yeah firing that is another thing about turrets is that when the aircraft took
off the Gunners were not in the turrets in case there was a problem during
takeoff but once they got to the English Channel then the Gunners were required
to get in their turrets and would stay there until they came back across the
English Channel all right Fred so this looks like something you're in the
process of restoring yeah this is a Martin 250c II it was a very popular
design used on many aircraft during the war we're about halfway through with it
we just got it riding on the bearings the stand that it's on is a loose copy
of the stand they used in the factory in Baltimore Maryland and as you can see I
was spinning around by using this tilting stand it's able I'm able to get
to the components which would be bolted on here in the very near future and it
will become a working turret as well in Fred you said you've restored one of
these tours before so let's take a look at what it looks like when this is blue
okay it's right over here
all right Fred so tell me about this turn okay it's a Martin 250c II was
manufactured by Glenn L Martin in Baltimore Maryland it was very popular
turret worked really good used on many aircraft at least a dozen different air
allied aircraft made by General Electric General Electric was a subcontractor to
most turret manufacturers even though this was manufactured by Martin in
Baltimore General Electric provided most all in the electrical system for it this
Kurt is a good example of what we mean by crumpled ball of rusty metal it's so
smashed and so demolished that we decide to leave it like it is it's a very early
model b-24 tail turret and has a couple of unique features on it occasionally on
a turret will find the Gunners name you look in the front here it says dead and
watch out and the Gunners name was lb McLeod so if there's anybody out there
that knows a family member of lb McCloud we sure would like to hear from them
well thank you so much Fred for inviting us over and showing us these beautiful
beautiful machines that you restored your three done here you've restored
seven now seven total to working condition and you want to get to 22 so
you have a soapy parts you're going to get there eventually and the goal is to
get this traveling to museums and show them off I've gone as far as Detroit
Michigan with them we hope that once we get our inventory up enough that we can
actually do a touring turret exhibit where we have a half a dozen different
turrets that people can ride in this particular turret I've traveled for 14
years now and I've had over 3,000 children ride in it during that time so
it's a great educational tool to teach Americans mostly children about our
history of World War two Wow kid-friendly very kid-friendly again
thank you so much and you'll find more about Fred's turrets on tests calm and
subscribe our YouTube channel find more stuff on our adventures down here in
Atlanta Georgia Fred again thank you thanks for being and I'm norm I'll see
you next time
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