On the old Revellogram kit, when you assemble and fit the rear turret, it swivels down so the guns are pointed at the deck. Is this accurate ? I imagine the rear turret was power operated, when the crewman left the aircraft, where would the rear guns be pointing ? Should I glue them so they point horizontal ?
Here are some pictures scanned from color slides of various B-52D’s (these slides purchased on eBay). The slides are all dated Oct 1974. All tail turrets in the slides show them horizontally level. I have more slides stashed away somewhere; my dad was actually a tail gunner aboard the B-52 and completed 100 missions in BUFF on his second tour in Viet Nam (first tour was aboard AC-47 Spookys with 4thACS).
After the B-58 Hustler was retired in 69. Our family was transfered to the 7th BW at Carswell AFB, Ft. Worth, Texas. Dad was assigned to the 7th AMS, ECM shop with the B-52Ds . Stationed there till I enlisted my self in fall 76.
To answer your question, yes point the guns horizontal. Altough a slight droop could be acceptable and could add to the candid apperance of your model, and to really give it a look of “let’s blow up something”, mount inboard wing pylons with MERs. The old BUFF can carry another 24 bombs at those stations.
No wonder why a POW in the Hanoi Hilton reported of a guard dropping his rifle and wetting himself upon witnessing a B-52 stike during Linebacker II. Mucho firepower.
Couldn’t help but notice the background in these pics looks familiar. Could it be Carswell AFB?
In bottem slide, looks as if taken during a base open house. If this is Carswell and open house, I was there.
The seller stated that these were taken at Carlswell AFB, that is a cool coincidence.
Hay here comes pictures I found of the rear of the Buff,
three planes taking out a half mile by a one and one half mile long box with a class A load. When they leave there’s nothing there but splinters and dust in the air
gary
Thanks men, those pics are great.
B-52 on display at the Wings Over The Rockies in Denver
Several of the above photos are of non-flying, static display aircraft with either no guns or some substitute, so they have no bearing on the operational AC. The one of Ol’ 100 dropping bombs is of course during an operational mission, so they would be level. Most, if not all of the BUFFs that I can remember seeing at Beale, Andersen & Utapao had the guns pointed up. This was especially true if they had live ammunition loaded as in Nuke alert or ready for an ARC Light mission. This was a safety feature so that if the guns were accidentally discharged, the bullets would go up instead of straight across the flight line. Any aircraft on display for an open house would be devoid of live weapons of any kind including bullets in the tail guns.
Darwin, O.F. [alien]
Isn’t this the B-52 over at the March Field Air Museum? Because the faded camo seems to suggest that it is.
It could be, don’t know were I found this picture.
I have looked through a bunch of individual BUFF photos as well as those in several books and of those few that show the tail guns, about 3/4 are level and the rest are elevated maximum up. I did not find a single photo with the guns depressed.
This is a B-52C-50-BO which appears to be on nuclear alert.
This is a B-52D being prepared for an ARC LIGHT mission
Darwin, O.F. [alien]
The picture with the guns pointed up was taken at Ellsworth in 1971. The aircraft was on the Christmas tree and I think it was the end slot. I thought they were "D"s.
All the 52s that I came across, except at Loring kept their guns pointed up. Wether it was at Ellsworth A.F.B. or U-Tapao R.T.N.A.F.
The tail number matches to a production batch of Cs. The paint patches on the fin would seem to indicate a bird that had been around awhile and suffered some from the weather exposure.
Darwin, O.F. [alien]