Movies train air gunners
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Title (Dublin Core)
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Movies train air gunners
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Article Title and/or Image Caption (Dublin Core)
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Title: Movies train air gunners
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Subtitle: Flyers blast phantom planes in battle practice
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extracted text (Extract Text)
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TO BRIDGE the jump between shooting at
slow-moving sleeve targets towed in a
straight line and shooting “live ducks,”
aerial gunners now are getting their final
licks on the Waller Gunnery Trainer. De-
veloped by Fred Waller, who formerly was
in charge of special effects for Paramount
Pictures and more recently head of their
short-subjects division, the Trainer repro-
duces, on a mammoth concave movie screen,
attacks by dodging, twisting fighter planes,
and shows the gunners how to hit them.
The screen is a segment of a sphere, meas-
uring 40 feet from end to end. On this is
thrown a picture by five projectors, each
covering a separate portion of it. Twenty
feet in front of the screen sit the trainees,
each in one of four gun positions. They have
two gun handles in front of them, just like
those on a real .50 caliber machine
gun. When the image is thrown on
the screen, they can see the wing
tips of their own bomber, as well as
the approaching fighter. They lead
it in their standard Mark 9 reflector
sights, pulling the trigger when
they think they are on the correct
“point of aim.” If they are in a
free-gun position, instead of a tur-
ret position, the gun handles start
jumping, the vibrations carefully
reproduced to simulate those of a
real gun. Through earphones they
can hear the authentic sound of
their own guns. When a hit is
scored, it sounds a 1,000-cycle
“beep” in their ears and moves a
register on the instructor's control
panel. The Army Air Forces also
use the Waller Trainer.
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Contributor (Dublin Core)
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William Crist (Article Writer)
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B. G. Seielstad (Illustrator)
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Language (Dublin Core)
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eng
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Date Issued (Dublin Core)
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1943-09
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pages (Bibliographic Ontology)
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65-70
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Rights (Dublin Core)
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Public Domain (Google Digitized)
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Archived by (Dublin Core)
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Matteo Ridolfi
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Marco Bortolami (editor)
Popular Science Monthly, v. 143, n. 3, 1943
