0:03 October 3rd, 1943. 30,000 ft above the
0:07 cold gray waters of the North Sea, the
0:10 freezing metal of a 50 caliber Browning
0:12 machine gun pressed against a waste
0:14 gunner's cheek as he tracked a Messers
0:17 Schmidt BF 109 slicing through the
0:21 bomber formation 200 yd out. His breath
0:24 fogged the gun sight, his gloved fingers
0:27 trembling not from fear, but from what
0:29 he was about to do. Every instinct
0:32 screamed to aim directly at the enemy,
0:34 to put the reticle squarely on the
0:37 German's nose and pull the trigger. But
0:40 he didn't. He aimed six aircraft lengths
0:42 behind the fighter, squeezed the
0:45 trigger, and the gun thundered to life.
0:47 2 seconds later, the Messor Schmidt
0:49 disintegrated in a burst of fire and
0:52 falling metal. In that instant, this
0:54 gunner proved something that defied
0:56 every instinct and common sense. When
0:58 shooting from a moving bomber at a
1:00 moving target, aiming directly at the
1:03 enemy meant missing every time. The
1:05 secret to survival was aiming where the
1:07 enemy had already been. It was a
1:10 revelation born not from luck, but from
1:14 years of study, physics, and training, a
1:16 technique that would turn frightened
1:18 gunners into the deadliest defensive
1:20 marksmen of the war. And that revelation
1:23 had begun 3 years earlier in a place no
1:26 one expected. The barren desert outside
1:31 Las Vegas, Nevada. January 25th, 1941.
1:34 Colonel Martinez Stenith stepped out of
1:37 his car into 60 square miles of absolute
1:40 nothing. Sand, scrub, and wind stretched
1:43 to the horizon. This desolate wasteland
1:45 would soon become the most important
1:47 aerial gunnery school in American
1:49 history. The problem facing the Army
1:52 Airore was both simple and terrifying.
1:54 The United States had no schools
1:57 dedicated to training aerial gunners.
2:00 Not one standardized curriculum. Not one
2:02 set of proven methods to teach farm boys
2:05 how to shoot from a moving aircraft at a
2:07 target moving hundreds of miles hour.
2:09 Without trained gunners, the entire
2:11 strategic bombing campaign would
2:14 collapse before it began. Heavy bombers
2:18 like the B7 Flying Fortress carried 1350
2:21 caliber guns, but without men who knew
2:24 how to use them, they were useless. The
2:26 British had learned that lesson in
2:28 blood. Their gunners, trained only on
2:30 ground targets, were slaughtered by
2:32 German fighters in the night skies over
2:35 Europe. The Americans were determined
2:38 not to repeat that mistake. Construction
2:41 crews arrived in March, transforming the
2:43 desert into a base of barracks.
2:46 classrooms and firing ranges. By June,
2:49 over a hundred instructors had arrived,
2:51 facing the monumental challenge of
2:53 teaching a skill no one in the country
2:56 truly understood. 2 days after Pearl
2:59 Harbor, the orders came down. The base
3:01 was to be activated immediately. The war
3:04 had begun and America needed gunners
3:07 fast. The first trainees arrived at Las
3:09 Vegas Army Airfield just before
3:12 Christmas, and their journey began with
3:15 shotguns and clay pigeons. They learned
3:17 to shoot moving targets from stationary
3:20 platforms, practicing the age-old art of
3:22 leading a target. But the moment the
3:24 instructors mounted those shotguns onto
3:26 the backs of moving trucks, everything
3:29 they knew fell apart. The clay pigeons
3:32 sailed through the air untouched, no
3:34 matter how carefully they aimed ahead.
3:37 Confusion swept through the ranks. They
3:39 were doing exactly what their instincts
3:42 told them. Why were they missing? The
3:43 answer lay in a truth so
3:46 counterintuitive that even experienced
3:48 instructors struggled to explain it.
3:51 Sergeant Robert Hayes, a Texan with a
3:53 knack for physics, stood before his
3:56 students and drew a simple diagram. A
3:59 bomber moving at 300 mph. A fighter
4:02 closing from the side at the same speed.
4:04 a bullet leaving the barrel of the gun.
4:06 The students assumed the bullet traveled
4:09 straight. It didn't. It carried the
4:11 bomber's forward motion with it, curving
4:14 through the air in a diagonal path. The
4:16 faster the bomber flew, the more
4:18 pronounced the curve. To hit a fighter
4:21 attacking from the side, a gunner had to
4:24 aim not ahead, but behind. Hayes
4:26 demonstrated with a string and weight,
4:29 walking forward as it swung. The weight,
4:31 he explained, behaved just like their
4:34 bullets. It didn't drop straight. It
4:36 carried forward. The lesson was clear.
4:38 When you're moving and your target is
4:41 moving, the rules flip. To hit your
4:43 mark, you must shoot where the target
4:48 was, not where it is. By 1942, this
4:50 principle became the foundation of what
4:53 would be called position firing. Instead
4:55 of firing instinctively, gunners were
4:58 trained to calculate deflection, to
4:59 predict where the fighter and bullet
5:02 would meet in space. Charts, diagrams,
5:04 and mathematical tables filled
5:07 classrooms. Gunners memorized radians of
5:10 deflection, each representing the
5:12 angular distance they needed to aim
5:15 behind the fighter. At a 90° attack,
5:17 that might mean aiming as much as 12
5:19 aircraft lengths behind the enemy. It
5:22 sounded insane, but it worked. And by
5:25 the summer of 1942, Las Vegas was
5:29 producing 600 new gunners every 5 weeks.
5:31 Their 6-week training course became a
5:34 model of precision and intensity. Week
5:37 one was ground school, learning the
5:39 Browning machine gun, aircraft
5:41 recognition, and the physics of
5:44 ballistics. Week two, they climbed
5:46 aboard trucks to shoot moving targets,
5:48 forcing their brains to unlearn
5:51 instinct. Week three introduced
5:54 manipulation trainers, mock turrets,
5:56 where students tracked wire suspended
5:59 dummy planes through the sky. Week four
6:01 brought the Waller trainer, an early
6:03 flight simulator projecting enemy
6:06 fighters onto a curved screen, recording
6:09 every shot and teaching split-second
6:12 decisionmaking. By week five, trainees
6:14 took to the air in real bombers, firing
6:17 at towed targets. Their ammunition was
6:19 color-coded so instructors could track
6:23 who hit what. By week six, only the best
6:25 remained. Those who passed earned their
6:28 silver wings and joined bomber crews
6:30 already flying combat missions over
6:35 Europe. By mid 1943, over 57,000 aerial
6:37 gunners had graduated from American
6:40 schools. But training was one thing,
6:43 combat was another. On August 17th,
6:47 1943, 376 B17 bombers flew deep into
6:51 Germany towards Finefort and Reaganburg.
6:53 The Luft Dwafa threw over 400 fighters
6:56 against them. In brutal running battles
6:58 through clear summer skies, the bombers
7:03 lost 60 planes, a devastating 20%. But
7:06 they also shot down 27 German fighters,
7:09 an outcome that stunned both sides.
7:11 Waist gunners trained in the Nevada
7:14 desert used their deflection charts and
7:16 position firing instinctively. They
7:19 aimed not at the fighters but behind
7:21 them trusting their training and their
7:24 bullets found their marks. Those who
7:26 ignored their training, who aimed
7:30 directly, missed. For the first time,
7:31 mathematics had proven more powerful
7:34 than instinct. But as the war
7:37 intensified, so did technology. In late
7:41 1943, the British introduced a new tool,
7:44 the Mark 2 Gyro gun site. It used
7:46 spinning gyroscopes to calculate
7:49 deflection automatically. The Americans
7:50 quickly adapted it for their own
7:54 aircraft, creating the K14 and similar
7:56 systems for bomber turrets. With dual
7:59 reticles, one fixed, one moving, the
8:02 site showed gunners exactly where to
8:04 aim. All they had to do was keep the
8:07 moving reticle on the target. In tests,
8:10 hit accuracy doubled almost overnight.
8:12 It was a revolution that freed gunners
8:13 from the mental strain of calculating
8:16 angles in the heat of combat. By mid1
8:19 1944, thousands of bombers carried these
8:23 sites or simpler compensating versions
8:25 that adjusted automatically for air
8:28 speed and altitude. Training also
8:30 continued to evolve. New methods like
8:33 Operation Pinball brought realism to
8:35 unheard of levels. At Las Vegas,
8:39 instructors flew armored Bell RP63 King
8:42 Cobras, brightly painted and equipped
8:44 with sensors that lit up when hit by
8:47 special frangible bullets. Students
8:49 fired at real maneuvering aircraft for
8:51 the first time. The effect was
8:54 transformative. Accuracy improved by up
8:57 to 40%. And trainees gained confidence
9:00 that no simulator could provide. By
9:03 early 1945, the seven gunnery schools
9:05 together had trained over 200,000
9:08 gunners. When the B-29 Superfortress
9:11 entered the Pacific War, it carried an
9:14 entirely new innovation. Remotec
9:16 controlled turrets linked to computers
9:19 that automatically calculated deflection
9:22 and bullet drop. Gunners sat inside
9:24 pressurized compartments guiding their
9:26 turrets through periscope sights. The
9:28 computers did the math. The gunners
9:31 focused on tracking the target against
9:33 fast Japanese fighters. The system was
9:36 devastatingly effective. It was the
9:38 ultimate expression of the lesson first
9:40 learned in Nevada, that human instinct
9:43 could not outgass physics, but
9:45 technology and training together could.
9:49 By the end of the war, over 214,000
9:51 men had graduated from America's gunnery
9:55 schools. Las Vegas alone produced 44,000
9:57 of them. They had learned a lesson that
10:00 went against every natural urge to aim
10:04 not at the enemy but behind. The
10:06 statistics are difficult to measure, but
10:08 the evidence was clear. Properly trained
10:10 gunners were twice as effective as
10:13 untrained ones. Their survival depended
10:16 not on courage alone, but on their
10:18 ability to think like mathematicians in
10:21 the chaos of combat. They were the
10:23 living embodiment of disciplined
10:25 precision. men who had reprogrammed
10:28 their instincts to trust in science. The
10:32 lesson outlasted the war. The principles
10:34 of position firing carried into Korea
10:37 where B29 gunners use them against
10:41 Soviet Mig 15 jets. Even today, fighter
10:43 pilots rely on the same physics, though
10:46 computers now perform the calculations.
10:49 The old Las Vegas Army airfield is now
10:52 Nellis Air Force Base, home of the US
10:54 Air Force Weapons School and the
10:57 Thunderbirds. The desert ranges where
10:59 those first students once fired from
11:01 truck beds are long gone. But the
11:04 principle they learned still stands.
11:06 When you're moving, you don't aim where
11:09 the target is. You aim where it was.
11:11 It's a lesson that speaks to more than
11:14 war. It's about the human capacity to
11:16 learn what feels wrong and trust what
11:19 works. Those young men who once fumbled
11:21 shotguns in the desert became the
11:24 defenders of the skies because they
11:26 learned to let go of instinct and
11:28 embrace calculation. They learned to
11:30 trust in equations written on
11:33 blackboards, in the words of instructors
11:35 who told them to aim behind when
11:37 everything in them screamed to aim
11:39 ahead. And when the bullets flew and the
11:42 enemy closed in, that trust saved their
11:45 lives. The story of position firing is
11:48 not just about physics. It's about faith
11:51 in reason, about the triumph of training
11:53 over instinct. In a world where chaos
11:56 ruled the skies, they learned that
11:58 survival often means doing the opposite
12:00 of what feels right. They aimed where
12:03 the enemy wasn't. And because of that,
12:06 thousands of them came home. Physics
12:08 doesn't care what feels natural. It only
12:10 cares what works. And over the
12:12 battlefields of World War II, what
12:15 worked was the impossible idea born in
12:18 the Nevada desert. To hit a target in
