Re:Ammo allotments when the Radio Compartment gun was removed
(permalink)
This is a partial answer....
The CAF AZ Wing's B-17 "Sentimental Journey: that travels to airshows, has a top turret removed from the Milwaukee, Oregon Gas Station's B-17G.
Instead of three small ammo containers for each .50 Cal gun in the top turret,..the top turret structure is composed of two deep ammo cans, that comprise the actual structure...and the top turret came from a late model Vega built B-17...I am guessing that the top turret was developed from the YB-40...I have never seen any information as to the capacity of each side support structure, but, I estimate at least a top turret ammo capacity of approximately 1000 rds per gun for this particular top turret.
The designation for this top turret was a Sperry type A1-C.
In my 15th AF bomb group,(99th BG), we carried the radio gun on all missions until the end of the war..it was not removed as some of the 8th AF bomb groups are reported to have modified thier B-17s.
Another item is a remark made by a member of my unit (99th BG), is that several extra ammo boxes were carried on missions in the B-17s of the 15th AF. When asked how many extra boxes of ammo were carried on a mission...the answer was "Oh...10-15 extra boxes"....each ammo box weighed approximately 250-300 lbs. (these were the wooden cases, but, I did not get the locations where the extra boxes were carried...possibly one or two in the nose for the cheek guns,and the rest in the waist.
Jim :-)
James S. Peters Sr. T/Sgt B-17 Flt Engr, 27 missions 99 BG, 348BS, 5th Wing, 15th AAF Tortorella, (Foggia#2), Italy My Tour was from 12/03/44-06/19/45 M/Sgt USAF (Retired)