Movies Train Air Gunners

By WILLIAM CRIST

Drawings by B. G. SEIELSTAD

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. Developed 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 reproduces, 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, measuring 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 aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa