written by Bob Podurgiel

Writer and journalist Bob Podurgiel befriended WWII Ball Turret Gunner Santo Magliocca in the 1990s, when Bob covered local politics for Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Santo served on a local borough council. Santo also came to our Veterans Breakfast Club events and shared parts of his story. Bob’s account below is based on his interviews with Santo, who passed away in 2017 at the age of 92.    

Santo Magliocca was a gregarious bear of a man who made friends wherever he went, but in World War II he had one of the loneliest jobs imaginable – Ball Turret Gunner on a B-24 bomber, flying missions over Nazi-occupied Europe.

Santo flew 23 combat missions with the 451st Bombardment Group, 15^th Air Force out of Foggia, Italy. His job was to hang alone, suspended underneath the bomber in a rotating bubble where he manned twin .50-caliber machine guns.

The Plexiglass and aluminum sphere was only 3.5 feet in diameter, large enough to fit a small man curled up on his back almost in a fetal position.

The guns’ barrels were positioned between the gunner’s feet and the hydraulic motors that rotated the sphere were by his head.

The ball turret gunner could actually spin his turret 360 degrees, as well as up-and-down to a 90 degree angle from the ground.

Designed to protect the bomber from German fighter attacks below, the turret was so cramped the gunner couldn’t wear a parachute.

If the B-24 took a direct hit from enemy flak, sending the plane into a death spiral, Santo, like all Ball Turret Gunners, had to crawl back into the plane’s fuselage before he could put on a parachute to bail out.

Santo flew his first mission on December 17, 1944, the second day of the Battle of the Bulge. The mission was to destroy an oil refinery at the town of Odertal, on the German-Polish border.

Santo remembered the crew gathering together in their tent to say a prayer. When the pilot entered, the crew invited him to join them, but the pilot said he didn’t believe in anything and wouldn’t pray.

Santo’s bomber, nicknamed “Sloppy But Safe” encountered a deadly flak barrage at 24,000 feet. The temperature was -36 degrees below zero.

The Germans were well-prepared and ready to mount a tenacious defense with all the means at their disposal.

The Nazis needed every ounce of fuel they could muster for their Panzer tanks to punch a hole in the American lines during their massive offensive in the Ardennes.

Santo remembered German fighters, Me-109s and Fw-190s, tearing through the bomber formations in reckless close range attacks, their cannon and machine gun fire ripping into the bombers.

Two bombers ahead of “Sloppy But Safe” collided and exploded in mid-air, sending debris and the mangled bodies of crew members hurtling into the air beside their bomber.

Another nearby B-24 exploded from a direct hit by German 88mm anti-aircraft cannons.

Santo’s pilot ordered the crew to deploy the ball turret which, in a B-24, was in a retracted position in the fuselage until it was time to be lowered under the airplane’s belly for combat.

There was a problem. “The side gunner trained to lower the ball turret had passed out” in response to the violence and destruction, said Santo.

So, under fire, Santo crawled into the turret and instructed the second side gunner on how to lower it into position. It was a delicate process, and Santo warned the gunner to lower the ball slowly.

Instead, the side gunner engaged the hydraulic system at full force.

“I went down so fast I almost went right through the bottom of the turret,” Santo said.

After the initial shock of almost being hurled into the sky without a parachute, Santo’s training took over.

“I started firing my machine guns and saw a German fighter trailing smoke.”

But enemy fire only increased as “Sloppy But Safe” approached the target. German Fw-190s deployed an especially deadly weapon: rockets mounted under the fighter’s wingers.

Santo’s plane reached the oil refinery and dropped its payload. One of the four engines on “Sloppy But Safe” was knocked out of commission, while another engine started trailing smoke.

“We become a straggler. We couldn’t keep up with the formation. The pilot radioed back that German fighters were waiting for us.”

“Then I heard a swoosh under the plane, and another swoosh over the top. Two P-51 Red Tails from the Tuskegee Airmen escorted us back to the base.

“Red Tails” was the nickname of the P-51 fighters flown by African American pilots on missions to protect the B-17 and B-24 bombers from German fighter attacks. The tails of the planes were painted a distinctive bright red color.

Santo and the ten-man crew made it back to base in Foggia, but barely, running dangerously short of fuel.

“We were sucking fumes when we landed, and we all kneeled down to kiss the ground,” Santo said, the crew grateful for having survived their first mission.

Others weren’t as lucky.

“We lost 21 bombers that day,” Santo said.

“The next day, the pilot came into our tent with a Bible in his hands. He said, `From now on I will lead the prayers.’ He changed his mind in a hurry after that first mission.”

The assault on German oil supplies worked. The German spearhead in Belgium led by the Sixth Panzer Army was halted, in part, by an oil shortage. Their strongest attack group, led by German Waffen-SS tank officer Joachim Peiper, ran out of fuel on December 24^th before reaching its target of Antwerp, the vital port used by the Allies to bring in supplies for the final attack on Germany.

Unable to advance, the German Tiger II Tanks, the most formidable weapon in the German arsenal, became easy targets for Allied aircraft and artillery. Without fuel, Peiper and others had to abandon their tanks before walking back to their lines.

The “Sloppy But Safe” mission on Odertal and those like it proved a crucial factor in winning the Battle of the Bulge.

Santo went on fly 22 more missions as Ball Turret Gunner on “Sloppy But Safe.”  Some were easy “milk runs.” Others, just as harrowing as the first.

On his thirteenth mission, Santo’s crew encountered a new danger: the German Me-262, the first jet plane to be used in war.

“We had never seen jets before. At our briefing the next day, they told us the Germans were working on jets but the process wasn’t perfected yet.”

On their next mission to Austria, Santo’s 451st BG made the jet fighter program a lot harder for the Germans to perfect. They dropped thousands of pounds of fragmentation bombs on Me-262s assembled on the ground.

On April 11, 1945, during the last month of the war, Santo flew a mission bombing the Brenner Pass, a vital passageway in the Alps between Italy and Austria.  The mission was a success, but on the way back, a problem.

“The pilot called on the intercom to inform us a bomb was hung up in the bomb rack, and he told me to get out of the turret and go release the bomb.”

“We couldn’t land with an armed bomb in the bomb rack. We either had to get rid of the bomb, or put the plane down in the ocean and bail out.”

“I went down to the catwalk with a parachute in one hand, a pair of heavy gloves, and a screw driver in the other hand. I told the pilot I needed help, someone to hold the other end of the bomb up while I released the clamp. The pilot came down. He was a tall, lanky guy. I put the screwdriver underneath the clamp. He gave the bomb a good kick.”

“I said, `What the hell are you doing?’”

The bomb released. I watched it go all the way down, landing on the coast, about a hundred yards from a farm house. When it blew up, I bet that farmer down there had nicotine in his pants.”

As the war neared its end, Santo flew front line support missions for the 5th Army. No one wanted to fly these because they knew the war was almost over. One of Santo’s close friends in another B-24 lost his life on one of the last missions when his plane took a direct hit in the bomb bay.

“When the war ended, everyone wanted to celebrate.”

Santo went to the PX and bought three cases of beer for 50 cents each. The PX told him they would sell him all the beer he could carry.  He said he had a case under each arm, and one between his legs, all he could carry, for his crew to drink.

“We were really glad this war was over. To celebrate, a lot of the boys went out to the planes and started shooting in the air. Since they were drinking, when they would hiccup, they would strafe the area.”

“I slept in a foxhole. The next morning, when I woke up, the tent was full of holes.”