Why B-24 Gunners Started Firing 'In Spirals' — And German Fighters Lost 40 Planes In One Week

Why B-24 Gunners Started Firing 'In Spirals' — And German Fighters Lost 40 Planes In One Week
November 13th, nineteen forty-three. Staff Sergeant Frank Delacroix is locked inside a plexiglass bubble at the tail end of a B-24 Liberator named "Reluctant Virgin," twenty-six thousand feet over Bremen, Germany. The temperature gauge reads fifty-four below zero. Ice crystals coat the inside of his oxygen mask. Through the curved transparency, he watches a Messerschmitt BF one-oh-nine materialize at six o'clock high, diving toward his aircraft at a combined closure rate of over five hundred miles per hour.
Delacroix's gloved hands grip the twin fifty caliber charging handles. He tracks the fighter through his gun sight, watching it grow from a dot to a recognizable silhouette. Twelve hundred yards. One thousand. Eight hundred. The BF one-oh-nine's nose lights up with cannon fire, orange flashes winking against the gray sky. At six hundred yards, Delacroix squeezes both triggers.
The twin fifties roar, hammering against their mounts. Brass casings eject into the collection bag. His tracers arc out in clean lines, reaching toward the diving fighter. Then something happens that Delacroix has seen seventeen times before, something that fills him with a rage so pure it cuts through the fear. The Messerschmitt enters what looks like four hundred yards range, and Delacroix's own aircraft betrays him.
The B-24's vertical stabilizer, the tall fin that rises above the fuselage, slides into his line of sight. His guns are physically blocked by his own aircraft's tail structure. He can see the German fighter through the plexiglass. He can see the pilot's head in the cockpit. He can see the cannon rounds walking toward his position, bright tracers that seem to move in slow motion. But he cannot bring his guns to bear.