INTERIOR OF A B-17 showing two .50-caliber Browning machine guns. These planes were highly complex machines, well armed, with machine guns in front, rear, sides, top, and bottom. The man in the picture is working on the gun turret which protruded beneath the fuselage. The tank on top of this turret was for oxygen.
ENGLAND
AN ORDNANCE SPECIALIST in the repair of optical equipment cleans a pair of field glasses, England, September 1942. Ordnance responsibility extended to “everything that rolls, shoots, is shot, or is dropped from the air.” Its complete catalogue contained 35,000 separate items, ranging from watch springs and firing pins to 20-ton howitzers and 40-ton tanks.
ENGLAND
A REPAIRED M 3 MEDIUM TANK is given final check by Ordnance personnel. Every tank, gun, or vehicle, damaged either by an accident or later in combat, which could be repaired meant one less new tank to be supplied. As the war progressed the medium tank underwent changes as did a great deal of other U. S. equipment. It became lower so as to present a more difficult target, the riveted hull was replaced by a welded or cast hull, and toward the end of the war the suspension system was changed. These, and other mechanical changes, with the addition of better armament and armor, made the vehicle a more formidable fighting machine, better able to combat enemy tanks.
ENGLAND
