![]() 50 Browning M2 machine guns on each turret. It was the revolutionary General Electric Central Fire Control system that directed the five remotely controlled turrets which were each armed with two. ![]() Each sighting stations were equipped with separate computers dedicated to each gunners sight, increasing the weapon's accuracy by compensating for airspeed, gravity, temperature, humidity and even the lead in aim needed to pinpoint an enemy target. ![]() One in the nose and tail and three in plexiglass blisters in the center fuselage. In the remote system, the gunner aimed the sight directly and the turret was driven electrically to follow the sight-position signal.įive sighting stations were positioned throughout the aircraft. Instead, the weapons could now be aimed optically by a targeting system that was controlled by analog electrical instruments. With the pressurized cabin, the crew needn't be exposed to the the cold thin air encountered at high altitudes. Unlike the B-17 and other bombers before, gunners in the B-29 were no longer required to physically operate the heavy machine guns that sat in openings in the fuselage or dangling from precarious turret balls at the bottom or tail of the plane. Fortunately the Superfortress was such a massive aircraft that ample space was available for a new high-tech computing device. A single computer would encompass an entire room. Most computers of the time were designed to break Nazi war code and constructed of pulleys and vacuum tubes or mechanical relays to crunch data on rolls of punched paper. Remember that in 1944 the evolution of the electronic computer was in its infancy.
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