Another thread brought this to mind… wasn’t sure where to put it, but I figured C&R would have more historically minded guys…
When I was a kid, my granddad described a rig -up of two 12 ga.(pump?model 12 ?) shotguns modified and attached to an electric motor somehow… and mounted in a B-24 turret (that was on a gantry-like stand). He said they shot clay pigeons with the thing for practice. He wasn’t much of a gun nut, and I was a kid … so the vague description of its workings could be wrong. What’s certain is : twin automatic 12 gauges mounted in a turret for "shooting skeet", as he put it.
This would have been in Manduria, Italy in WWII. Given the "colorful" history of the group, and the base commander’s openness to ideas that his men came up with, it’s possible that they jerry-rigged this thing up but my research on it hit a dead-end.
He was a ball-turret gunner with the "Cottontails" … 450th Bombardment Group (721st squadron).
Anyone ever hear of this, or anything like it?
When I was a kid, my granddad described a rig -up of two 12 ga.(pump?model 12 ?) shotguns modified and attached to an electric motor somehow… and mounted in a B-24 turret (that was on a gantry-like stand). He said they shot clay pigeons with the thing for practice. He wasn’t much of a gun nut, and I was a kid … so the vague description of its workings could be wrong. What’s certain is : twin automatic 12 gauges mounted in a turret for "shooting skeet", as he put it.
This would have been in Manduria, Italy in WWII. Given the "colorful" history of the group, and the base commander’s openness to ideas that his men came up with, it’s possible that they jerry-rigged this thing up but my research on it hit a dead-end.
He was a ball-turret gunner with the "Cottontails" … 450th Bombardment Group (721st squadron).
Anyone ever hear of this, or anything like it?