During WWII, American engineers created a variety of training simulators for pilots and gun crews. This included Fred Waller, whose Waller Gunnery Trainer used multiple film projectors to train aerial gun crews. Before the war, Waller was in charge of special effects for Paramount Pictures and head of their short-subjects division. After the war Waller invented the multi-projector Cinerama film and theater format.
This film is likely a 16mm version of a Waller training film — which were originally created in 70mm. Perhaps it was meant to be distributed to training centers, where gun crews could use a “poor man’s” version of a Waller Trainer. The actual Waller Trainers were quite large and complex. According to a WWII article in Popular Science, Waller’s Trainer “reproduced, 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 those on a real .50 caliber machine gun. When the image is thrown on the screen, they can see the wing tips of their own bomber, as well as the approaching fighter. They lead it in their standard Mark 9 reflector sights, pulling the trigger when they think they are on the correct “point of aim.” If they are in a free-gun position, instead of a turret position, the gun handles start jumping, the vibrations carefully reproduced to simulate those of a real gun. Through earphones they can hear the authentic sound of their own guns. When a hit is scored, it sounds a 1,000-cycle “beep” in their ears and moves a register on the instructor’s control panel.”
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
