George Kangian - Ball Turret Gunner - 449th BG 717th Squadron 15th AAF - October, 1944 to April, 1945. George E. Kangian (kneeling far right) served as a gunner in a B-24 Liberator on several aircraft for 50+ missions. The ball turrett may well have been the most dangerous defensive station on the aircraft. While some of the crew had an opportunity to wear a parachute at their stations, could at least see another crew member and were protected by a minimal amount of armor plate, the ball turrett gunner had no such luxury. Suspended alone below the aircraft, he had a panoramic 360 degree view of the action not available to the others in the crew. He faced flak, attacking fighters, exploding and burning aircraft at his station with only the plexiglass wind screens between him and enemy fire in sub zero weather. If he or his aircraft were hit severely, he knew that he was the least likely member of the crew to escape the final plunge to the earth.

Work in progress 12/17/2002
George Kangian in Philadelphia in 1919. George: "My father was an immigrant from Bitlis, Armenia. He came to this country and opened a shoe store. When he made enough money, he brought over other members of his family, who in the tradition of the times and at Georges fathers request brought with them a wife of 15, sight unseen. The marriage worked out and the family grew to two girls and George the youngest and only son. Arranged marriges were common throughout the world in those days.

The depression wiped out my fathers business and he lost his four shops, all the money in the failed banks and our house. It contributed to his death at the age of 55. Times being what they were I never had access to a car, there was not a lot of money for anything beyond the rent at times. We rode the trolleys everywhere we wanted to go. I went to West Philadelphia Highschool and was active in the Boy Scouts. I had plans to attend the seminary as religion was always an important part of my life and my mother thought it woudl be a good idea. As my father had died and my sisters were married I felt I should take care of my mother. I worked prior to the war at the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Eddystone. When war broke, being the only son and in a war critical industry I could have easily avoided serving in the military. I felt it was my duty to enlist, especially being the the leader of a scout troop, always telling boys about patroitism. The farthest I had ever been from home prior to the war was upstate New York for the first National Boy Scout Jamboree in 1937.

At the Baldwin works we had a pretty good football team as there were several of the Philadelphia Eagles football team players working there. As it was a war industry they were exempted from the draft and coudl still play. One of my favorite teams were the Philadelphia A's who's team mascot was an elephant. It turned out that my future squadrons logo would also be an elephant.



I heard about Pearl Harbor like most people. I was on Lancaster Avenue and someone had a radio. Being a bit older than some of my later peers in the air force I was more aware of world events and like the situation today in the middle east, we all knew something was coming. No one expected it to come the way it did though. At 23 I signed up at the local armory where the Army was quartered. One of the recruiters was asking what people wanted to do and I said fly for the Navy, I was told to shut up.



A flag was often hung in the windows of families who had loved ones in the service, a gold star meant a lost son.


I joined in July of 1943 at 23 and went armament school at Lowry Field in Denver Colorado and then a course in Amarillio before going to gunnery at Harlingen Texas where we got out wings. At Lowry in Colorado I had another opportunity to stay in the states as I was the wrestling instructor in the base where one of my students caused me to tear ligaments in my knee requiring a period of convalescence.

I still wanted to fly and applied for the pilots program. I took all the technical and psychological tests and passed easily. I still needed three letters of recommendation. I asked three people who informed my mother of my plans. My mother had moved in with my sisters when I shipped out. She convinced people not to write the letters, they told me she was so upset that they could not refuse her. I never attended the pilots course but because I had applied I did end up being assigned to flying duties.

At the time the B-29 was just coming off the assembly lines and flight testing was proceeding at a near by base. I saw this aircraft and thought this is for me, but I was told that there were a lot of problems with the B-29. It was the first pressurizd aircraft mass produced and had a lot of bugs, like the crew getting blown through the windows and hatches when the pressure systems accidentlly failed. I was told the B-24 was what I wanted.

Training for a gunner was not sophiscated. There were a lot of eye tests, focused on night flying. I did not like to shoot. They put us on the back of a truck facing the back and then drove. Skeet would be shot out from behind us and we had to track and hit them. After a few days two skeet would come out. This sharpened your skills for angle shooting & I got pretty good at it. Hitting a moving target while you are moving is very difficult. In another training method we were taken into a room where tin models were flashed around the ceiling and we would fire at the with air guns loaded with BB's. We were given only a split second to tell the difference in the silhouette between a
..Spitfire or a Fw190 as that is all we would have in real combat. We eventually moved to firing 50 caliber machine guns from the back of a truck in the desert where we could not hurt anything and then in an aircraft at a target drouge. Some of the gunners were pretty bad and would shoot up the tow plane. The Army then turned over the job to the women pilots (the WASPS) as they did not want to risk the trained men. A lot of though that was not right and some of us started to fly the tow mission for others in our group. If you can survive training you could survive the war. When I was in training SABU the elephant boy, a movie star of late 1930's was in our training class. I do not know what became of him. (He later served int e 13th AAF on a B-24 as a ball turret gunner as well) A lot of movie stars were in the service, I thought a lot of Jimmy Stewart as he flew a lot of missions, and not the easy milk runs that some of them took a lot of credit for back home.

While I was in Texas we had an instructor that kept the group on constant detail like guard duty or KP so that he himself could have a lot of time off. People really disliked this guy. Once he had us go out at midnight wearing only raincoats. When we got into the desert he made us remove the raincoats and march around in the desert as punishment for some infraction. The Kentucky and Tennessee boys were furious and were planning to actually kill this man once we got back. They were drawing straws for it. It was serious, I decided that I had to quietly get the word out about it. Had the other in the barracks found out they might have attacked me, but the instructor was busted in rank and removed fronm the base. No one was hurt.

From gunnery school we were sent to Westover Mass. to form up as crews. Were were assigned and the plane commander did not pick us. We got to know each other proceeded to Chatham Field, Georgia to begin training in the B-24 as a crew. While in Georgia we got lost on an exercise in low clouds. We were all discussing what to do and wethere or not were were over land or flying out over the ocean. Fisher finally said he was tired of all of this and was going down for a look. When we came out of the cloud layer we were so close to the ground that we could read the names on the street signs. That was the closest I think we came to an accident.


We went over seas as a replacement crew vs. a squadron or group move. In fact there was some dificulty finding a unit to take us. We took the brand new plane from the United States, flew it to Gander, Newfoundland where we were fogged in for three weeks. There was nothing to do there and few facilities. The next leg was to Logan Field in the Azores where we had a tricky landing, people were getting confused with lowering and raising the landing gear and we came in pretty close to the cliffs near the airfield, then to the West coast of Africa at Marrakesh, Morocco to El Aquina, Tunisia and finally to our base at Grottaglie Field, located in southern Italy on the instep of the Italian boot, near the town of Taranto. Being at the tip of the Italian boot made for very long missions into Austria, southern Germany, Romania, Poland, Hungary and Southern France. While were were stopped in Tunisia we heard about a B-24 unit that was disbanding due to an incident that made us glad we were not a part of them. It seems one of the units B-24's was badly shot up and the Germans surrounded the airplane with fighters in an attempt to get them to land an intact B-24 at one of their bases. The crew went along until close to actually landing when the crew then took advantage of the German guard being down, rushing to thei rgun position and shooting down some of the German escorts. Since that time the Germans had let it be knows there would be no mercy shown this particular unit. Each unit had particular tail markings so we would know who was who in the air. We were happy to be able to move on the 449th was already in Italy. At the base we hired the local Italian people to build cinder block walls that we then used to support out tent homes. The maintenace and truck personel were upset because we paid what was considered a large amount of cash ($20) for the work that they had been able to get done for a few packs of cigaretts. Aircrews were paid more than the ground staff and we did not know any better. Once the tent was up we built a stove and ran it on high octane avaition fuel.

[ Though it was 1944, the war was being fought well north of Rome and Italy had been out of the war for a year the base was still subject to attack. Sabotage was a real threat. ] George: "Not only did we have to fly the long missions over the Alps we also had to pull guard duty on our own aircraft. There was a military police unit responsible for our base protection. There had been several instances of planes blowing up just after takeoff, at first it was attributed to accidents but it started becoming a little too frequent. It seems the local partisans had hired the prostitues of the town to keep the guards "busy" while the sabotuers placed bombs on the aircraft. They were eventually caught, I do not know what happened to them but the police guard unit was replaced.

The Worst Mission - Vienna Austria
Our worst mission was to Vienna. It was a crossroads for a lot of rail lines and with the Russians needing relief on their front we hit this target regularly. Vienna was always a tough target and the 15th AAF counted it as 2 missions in the requirement a crewman had to fly. We flew our mission on October 10th 1944 to hit the marshalling yards. They had very large caliber anti aircraft guns (flak) around the railroad. The German guns would keep a constant circle of fire power and our planes had to fly right into the fire with out wavering as The Norden bombsight (sort of an auto pilot) would be steering the plane at that point and the run required a constant steady course. The Germans could just throw up a box of fire and you would invariably fly into its path.
..
The aluminum skin on the plane was very thin and the flak shards were very heavy and had no trouble tearing through the aircraft. We sustained a lot of damage with the electrical systems and hydraulics shot out and 80 plus holes in the wings, fuel tanks and fuselage. You really stopped counting them after a while. We were crippled and a crippled bomber is a real target for fighters. Lt. Fisher my pilot said he was going to look for a soft place to try to land and barring that suggested that we bail out. We asked him what he was going to do and he said he was going to try to make it home over the Alps. We quickly discussed our options and decided to stay with him. The hydraulic fluid was leaking and we were afraid the brakes would fail. We all passed a flak helmet and tried to urinate into it to fill the hydraulic fluid resevoir. We were all too scared to do that much and were afraid too that it woudl water down what real fluid was left. But we got enough to build up a bit of pressure in the lines. There was a small air base in the mountains used by the British, the runway was much shorter that what we normally would use as it was a make shift fighter bomber strip as artiliery could not be brought into the mountains easily. We managed to get into the strip just barely using all of the runway and fortunatly our brakes worked just enough. While there I ran into an examples of spies in our lines. I was dark and fairly small in stature, the cooks in the British kitchen were Italian and I knew a few words. They took me for an Italian and called me around to the kitchen. I thought I would get some extra food or some fruit and my crew left me alone. When the cooks started asking a lot of questions about the aircraft and other military information I got scared as they all had knives and cleavers. I gave them some false information and they seemed satisified. I got out of there as fast as I could back to my crew. We were there for 4 days. This base from close to the front and the cooks were probably getting paid for information they could provide to the Germans.

[ Crews carried escape maps, food packs currency for the countries that they flew over and their identy cards had in several languages a message promising rewards for anyone helping the downed airman ]
The Official Mission Report
SPECIAL NARRATIVE REPORT No. 150
MISSION: Vienna/Sauerwerke
DATE: 17 October 1944

I. CHRONOLOGY
28 B-24's took off at 0813 hours to attack the Vienna/Sauerwerke. There was one early return and one prior return, both of which jettisoned their bombs. 18 dropped on target 35.25 tons of 500 lb RDX bombs with .1 nose and .01 tail fusing at 1227 hours from 25,000 to 25,500 feet. 3 of these aircraft jettisoned .75 tons. B-2 box became separated from the formation because of weather and attacked target of opportunity, dropping 12 tons on Strasz M/Y (4644N-1538E) at 1236 hours from 25,500 feet. 2 other a/c attacked targets of opportunity dropping 2 tons each on Koszeg M/Y (4721N-1631E) at 1245 from 22,600 feet and on Hlebine M/Y (4609N01658E) at 1350 hours from 17,000 feet. 21 returned to base at 1601 hours. One lost, none missing, four at friendly fields. There were 26 effective sorties.

II. ROUTE AND ASSAULT
Rendezvoused with 98th Group at San Vito on course at 10,000 feet at 0925 hours behind the 450th and 376th Groups. Proceeded to Vrgada (4351N-1531E) to Bosan Petrovac (4434N-1622E) to Durdevac (4603N-1703E) to Galambok (4632N-1708E) to Weiz (4713N-1537E) to Turnitz (4756N-1530E) to I. P. to target, attacking on a heading of 112 degrees true. Bombing was done by P.F.F. methods and in sections. Rallied left, using evasive action by variying altitude and course, around Bratislava and proceeded to Csorna (4737N-1715E) to Galambok (4632N-1708E) and then to reciprocal of course out to base.

The weather showed only a slight amount of clouds north to the Dinaric Alps with no trouble experienced in rendezvous or climb. From Dinaric Alps northward over Yugoslavia, there was 10/10 cirrus cloud at 23,000 feet with 7/10 low cloud. From I.P. to target, formation was flying in and out of low deck of clouds amounting to 8/10 andobscuring the target except during occasional small breaks. On return heavy cloudiness continued southward until the center of the Adriatic was reached. There was no difficulty in the let-down and there were broken low clouds at 2,200 feet over the home base.

Rendezvoused with approximately 40 P-38's at 4715N-1705E at 1159 hours at 23,000 feet. Departure of escort was unobserved due to weather.

No radio jamming was reported.

III. RESULTS
Visual observations was impossible due to 8/10 cloud cover. Photos of the primary target are cloud obscured and no bomb strikes can be seen. 25 to 30 bursts are visible 5-3/4 miles SE of the primary target. No photo coverage is available of the strikes of B-2 box that bombed a target of opportunity at Strase M/Y.

IV. ENEMY RESISTANCE
A. Fighters. Three ME-109's were sighted by a prior return at 4516N-1704E at 1145 hours at 22,000 feet. One ME-109 made one pass at our a/c from 8 o'clock low, closing to about 300 yards before peeling off in a dive to the rear and circling around to 3 o'clock before disappearing into the clouds. The other two e/astayed out of range and did not close. The attacking e/a had black wings with a silver fuselage.
B. Flak. Flak at the target was I-A-H and of 3 to f minutes duration, both aimed and barrage type.

[Losses: One, from Flak. Damage from flak: 16(10 minor, 6 serious). Casualties: 2 wounded, seriously. Victories: 1 ME-109 damaged.]

We learned a few things in the war zone not taught at home and I later passed them on to others coming into the unit. The ball turret has a chute for the expended shell casings to be ejected from the plane, the links that held the rounds would get snagged on the chute and cause your guns to jam. We decided to just take the chute off and live with the air rushing in the hole. Another change was to the ball turret hatch, it was originally hinged and later it was decided to hold it in with pins. As the hatch was at you back in the operating position this was dangerous. In my case the hatch fell off twice when I was in the turret on the way to the target. With the turret in the operating position your back is supported by the door. With no parachute your hanging on to the guns to keep from falling out. We were issues K-rations for the flight and the would freeze solid, so we learned to put them in our arm pits to keep them warm enough to eat.

We never had a name or painting on our ship, paint actually slows you down. Ours was a brand new aircraft right out of the factory. we had a great pilot in Fisher. He had been an instructor before the war and later in the war became the Squadron operations officer. As such he could have his pick of crews when he went on missions but always stuck with us. There was something special about your own crew, when you were a substitute on another plane it was a little different. I was one of the oldest at 24 and some of our crew were barely 18, just out of highschool. I had to keep on them to try to get them into church services. In your own crew you chatted about all sorts of things and kept watch over each other. At 25,000 feet a man who lost his oxygen could die pretty quickly. One member of our crew was a southern boy and we could hear the captain calling him on the intercom bit I think he was listening to some of that hillbilly music of his and was not answering. That sort of thing could get you court martialed, we threw things at him till he looked up and got the message. The Captain never found out. As small as the plane was inside everyone was pretty busy on the bomb run. I was responsible to remove the copper wires placed in the bombs by the armorers to prevent them from arming prematurely. These wires stuck out and could snare you if they were cut to a long length, especially if there were a lot of antipersonnel bombs on board. I was on the catalk in the bomb bay trying to get the wires out with a five minute oxygen bottle attached to my suit when suddenly the bomb bay doors opened and there I was 25,000 feet on a narrow beam, no parachute trying to get the rest of the wires pulled out.
A diagram of the Ball turret (Sperry Model with ammo cans external vs Georges station) and some photos of a restored B-24 interior looking toward the tail. The belly turret and hatch are visible. (The hatch could be a dangerous flaw in the design.) The yellow bottles contained oxygen for the crew. In order to retract back into the ship the turret had to rotate facing aft to allow the guns to come back through the slots cut in the fuselage.

George: "The ball turret was retractable and was deployed about an hour after we took off, I was in this position for 8 or 9 hours at a time and would come out perhaps an hour from the base when we could be fairly sure no fighters were in the area. I entered the turret and it was lowered. I could not wear a parachute or flak vest due to the crampt conditions. I kept spinning around looking for the enemy and at things on the ground for the intelligence debriefing.

The entire time in was overseas I never really worried about being killed, that may seem strange but it was a job, my duty and I did not think about it. I did worry about being maimed, losing my legs or something similar. Because of my Boy Scout background the crew elected me to be the primary crew member to recieve the first aid training in case someone was hit. The person who was doing the training knew even less than I did but still I was certified to do the job.

Mary and my family knew where I was and the unit I was with. Our pilot was responsible for censoring our mail but it was not something he felt right about doing so he signed a lot of our envelopes and said you all know what the rules are and I expect you to follow them. We could not send photos of the base. In our case the base had an abandoned derigible hanger that stood out. It would have been a dead giveaway to the enemy had the photo ended up in the wrong hands. The hanger did provide us with building materials for our tent. Out scout master was a WWI submarine commander and he kept in touch with all of his troop during the war. he put together a new letter that he sent to each of us to let us know what was going on as we were spread from the Pacific to Italy. he gave us each a small flag (48 stars) whgich I still have to this day.

I got only one leave that I remember in Italy, several fo us took a trip to Rome and we actually met the Pope. He blessed several rosaries that I had brought with me. We visited the the ruins and catacombs.
On the base since I had a religious bent and talked a lot about prayer I was asked by the chaplin to help conduct services for the protestant members of the unit. Italy being a predominately Roman Catholic country did not give others much of an opportunity to go to church. Three of us volunteered, but as I was the only one with flying duties I did not do this very often. There was not a lot to do on the base and I always walked around in my green sweater which the officers did not particularly like so I tried to stay away from that part of the camp. I had met an Italian pilot and we traded wings. I wore these on my sweater. (not Georges set)

I fired my guns on several occasions, I'm not sure that I hit anything but I did see our planes going down all around us. We would try to count the chutes and hope that everyone would get out. Just a few of the adversaries faced by a B-24 crew in 1943 and into 1945 FW-190...ME-109

JU-188...ME-163 rocket..
ME-262 the first operational Jet.

As the Allies drove deeper into Germany and France the Luftwaffe pulled in fighters from the Eastern Front and introduced the first jets. As dangerous as they were, once Allied long range fighters like the P-51 Mustangs became available and the impact of the attacks on the fuel industry took hold they were nothing compared to the heavy and light Flak defenses.

My last mission was April 15th to bomb German troop concentrations near Bologna in Northern Italy and then I was rotated home. I arrived in time for V.E. day. Coming home on a transport took less time than flying the bomber across the ocean. I was stationed in Miami Florida and had responsibility to write stories for the AAF paper and assisting in the new canteen set up for returning aircrews on R&R from Europe and the Pacific. Mary was able to join me and got a job running an elevator in one of the other hotels the military had taken over that served the infantry. When ever I would go to pick her up I would get soundly booed by the infantry as we aircrew were known to be better paid and more popular with the girls. While there it was interesting that the cooks in the hotels run by the military were often German POW's, that after their duties were completed, had the run of the beach. They would actually be suning themselves with some of the girls on the beach unguarded.

Post war I did some radio work for WCAU and some people thought I should become a disc jockey, television was in its infancy but with my background in Maimi, I decided to try for a job as a social director for the Philadelphia Housing Authority. The man who took my application though I would be better suited as a manager of the the projects and that is what I became. I worked over 15 years with the housing authority before opening my own dry cleaning business from which I retired. I stayed active with the Boy Scouts in the inner city as well and have been in scouting for 70+ years.

I'm still working with the Boy Scouts, Mary and I have traveled pretty extensively as I also have a great interest in anthrpology. We have a large collection of commerative spoons that is unusual as they represent different events and visits to all the countries and states we have been to. Some of my crew still keep in touch and there have been the reunions over the years that we have attended together.

George and Mary who met at a church function when they were still in their teens live in the North East close to their two children and grandaughter.

George was awarded the Air Medal with three oakleaf clusters and the Distinguished unit citation.

Air Medal (Est 1942) Criteria: Heroic actions or meritorious service while participating in aerial flight. Devices: Bronze Oak Leaf, Silver Oak Leaf

The Distinguished Unit Citation was established as a result of Executive Order No. 9075, dated 26 February 1942. The Executive Order directed the Secretary of War to issue citations in the name of the President of the United States to Army units for outstanding performance of duty after 7 December 1941. The design submitted by the Office of the Quartermaster General was approved by the G1 on 30 May 1942. b. The Distinguished Unit Citation was redesignated the Presidential Unit Citation (Army) per DF, DCSPER, date 3 November 1966. As a veteran George is entitled to wear the following Campaign medals.

European - African - Middle Eastern Campaign Medal (Est 1942) Dates: 1941-45 Criteria: Service in the European - African - Middle Eastern theater for 30 days or receipt of any combat decoration. Devices: Silver Star, Bronze Star, Bronze Arrowhead - Mounted

World War II (WWII) Victory Medal (Est 1945) Dates: 1941-46 Criteria: Awarded for service in US Armed Forces between 1941 and 1946. Notes: None.



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Copyright © Ken Arnold 1999. All rights reserved.

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LINKS:

The sources for much of my data and insignia.

HEAVY BOMBERS WEB SITE

449th BG SITE Source of Group and Squadron Insignia and Mission report

Kevin McHAles Aircrat photo site Source of interior shots of B-24

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