B-17 flying duty was a horrific experience. However, on a far lighter note, I’ve not seen it mentioned elsewhere that the B-17 ball turret must certainly have inspired the spaceship Discovery’s pods in the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey:
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The B-24, introduced some years later, also used the same model of ball turret, according to this interesting web page. Here is another good picture of a ball turret module.
