George Ahern - Ball Turret Gunner, 351st B. G.
Sergeant George Ahern was still only 18 years of age and stood only five feet / five inches when he earned his gunner's wings and was assigned as the ball turret gunner of Lieutenant Marvin Walker's B-17 crew. Squeezed into the bubble of the ball turret beneath his B-17, George got a birds-eye view of the air war in the summer of 1944. He would hear the tiny pieces of metal glancing off the back of his turret as Walker flew through the enemy flak fields, he would watch as the "popcorn" (an innocent name for the twenty millimeter explosions) appeared next to his turret and he would see the .50 caliber bullets of his turret guns rip apart the belly of a Messerschmitt fighter. But George and the other gunners on Walker's crew would also discover that even liberty on the streets of London could be fatal.
© 2005 Travis L. Ayres