The Tucker armored combat car. Note the Tucker Turret.

The Tucker gun turret was a fast-traversing electrically powered gun turret widely described as having been mounted on World War II bombers and on some ground vehicles and small naval vessels like US Navy PT boats.[1][2][3] American industrialist Preston Tucker first developed the turret for the experimental Tucker armored car in 1938.

Steve Lehto in his biography of Tucker, asserts that it is a misconception that Tucker's turret was widely used on US bombers during the war.[3] He states that different manufacturers were each assigned contracts to develop different turrets for different planes, and that Tucker's firm was to build turrets for the Douglas B-18 Bolo. In the end no Tucker turrets equipped any bombers.

When Tucker was under investigation by the Security and Exchange Commission, a half-hour film entitled Tucker: The Man and his Car was prepared and shown to the Commission members.[3] Lehto and Jay Leno described the film's narrator "gushing" over Tucker and noted: "A short section on his wartime efforts to create the Tucker Combat Car introduced the Tucker Turret and may have been the source of the myth that his turrets were widely used during the war."

A Hollywood biopic of Tucker covered Tucker's production of the turret, prompting reviewers to characterize the turret design as "incredibly ergonomic, effective and convenient".[citation needed]

References

  1. ^ James Derek Sapienza (2016-02-23), The Tucker 48: The Greatest Car That Ever Could Have Been, Cheat Sheet, retrieved 2017-02-01, It was out of this environment that the Tucker emerged. Preston Tucker was a self-made man who came to prominence during the war with his "Tucker Turret," a rotating gun turret that saw duty in everything from PT boats to B-29 bombers.
  2. ^ Blake Z. Rong (2013-12-25). "Highlighting the Tucker Tiger, a 114-mph tank that could have been". Autoweek. Retrieved 2017-02-01. It weighed in at 10,000 pounds (a full ton lighter than existing vehicles), was entirely bulletproof, featured air conditioning and the "Tucker Turret," whose 360-degree powered dome later found its way from PT boats and LCM-8 Mike Boats to B-17 and B-29 bombers.
  3. ^ a b c Steve Lehto; Jay Leno (2016). Preston Tucker and His Battle to Build the Car of Tomorrow. Chicago Review Press. ISBN 9781613749562. Retrieved 2017-02-01. The chief of the air corps called the turret "ingenious" and invited Tucker to a conference at Wright Field to discuss the needs of gun turrets with the military.
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