At 102, Wallace Goldfarb of Farmington still recalls what it was like to survive one of the most dangerous jobs in the military during World War II: ball turret gunner.

“It was no game,” Goldfarb, 102, said recently about his job of protecting his fellow crewmates with machine guns from his tiny, enclosed perch under his B-17.

His son Daniel Wallace of Illinois said in a recent phone interview that to this day, his father still has feelings of guilt about the death and destruction he saw below him on Omaha Beach on D-Day despite being powerless to stop it.

With some help, Goldfarb talked recently about his military career and his life since growing up in the Bronx fascinated with aviation.

Goldfarb was born in 1923 and his family was “extremely poor” both before and during the Depression, his son said. Goldfarb was responsible at age 6 for cooking meals. He went to work when he was 10 doing a variety of jobs, including setting pins at a bowling alley, Wallace said.

Goldfarb entered military service at age 19 in 1942. He requested and was assigned to the U.S. Army Air Corps, a predecessor of today’s U.S. Air Force.

He was initially assigned pilot training but later was sent to gunnery school. Following training, he was assigned to a B-17 crew. As the smallest member of the crew at 5 feet, 10 inches, he was assigned to be a ball turret gunner.

The ball turret was widely considered the most dangerous duty station during World War II. Used on the B-17 “Flying Fortress” and the B-24 “Liberator,” the ball turret was a small sphere suspended beneath the airplane’s fuselage, Wallace said. The job of a gunner was to protect the bottom of the plane from enemy fighters that attacked from below. The mortality rate of gunners was 62%, he said.

On each of his 34 missions, Goldfarb had to climb into the cramped turret and squeeze into what was practically a fetal position. There was no seat; his backrest was the outer skin on the turret and another crewman would close and secure a hatch that sealed him off from the rest of the plane and crew.

Goldfarb had two .50-caliber machine guns over his head, which he aimed through a gunsight between his feet, Wallace said. He controlled the turret with foot pedals and hand controls over his head that also held the machine gun triggers. The turret only held enough ammunition for about 30 seconds of continuous fire, he said. So the shooting was done in short bursts.

There were 10 machine guns on the B-17s including the two in the ball turret.

The biggest risk was that if the plane went down, the ball turret gunner often could not get out, Wallace said.

The space in the turret was so small there was not enough room for the gunner to wear a parachute. The gunner would wear the harness but leave the parachute itself on the floor of the plane next to the turret hatch. On one occasion, Wallace said, his father’s plane was hit by enemy fire and went into a dive. The pilot called for the crew to bail out.

Goldfarb was able to roll his turret to its base position and open the hatch above his head.

He stood up just in time to see his parachute fly into the tail of the airplane.

The pilot regained control of the plane and it limped back to England, Wallace said.

After that, Goldfarb worked out a way to squeeze the parachute into the turret with him, even though it was not attached to his harness, Goldfarb said.

Goldfarb recalls being awakened at 2 a.m. on D-Day, June 6, 1944, to go on missions over France and Germany to support the amphibious invasion of Normandy, France, which would ultimately liberate France from German occupation.

Goldfarb finished his combat tour in July 1944 and returned to military service as a gunnery instructor. He was honorably discharged in October 1945 as a staff sergeant.

Goldfarb earned several medals, including the Distinguished Flying Cross, which is awarded for heroism and extraordinary achievement during aerial combat. He also received the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters for his meritorious achievement in a combat zone.

After he was discharged, Goldfarb attended the University of Chicago on the GI Bill and became a mathematician. While in college, he had a campus job as janitor in the building where the Manhattan Project, which produced the first nuclear reaction, had been conducted, Wallace said.

After graduating in 1954, Goldfarb went to work for Boeing. He was initially hired to conduct statistical analysis on test flights of early intercontinental ballistic missiles, Wallace said. He learned that the actual data processing for the analysis was being done by a group of 50 women with 10-key calculators on their desks and was expected to take six weeks.

Goldfarb discovered Boeing had a new machine called a “computer” in the basement of the building where he worked. He taught himself how to program the computer, and was able to complete the six-week analysis in two days with no errors, Wallace said. That launched him on a career as a computer scientist.

“He was incredibly smart and analytical,” he said.

It is amazing to see what his father accomplished, Wallace noted.

“When you look at where he started, the poverty and deprivation he experienced, the war he fought, the career he had and the family he raised, it’s an incredible journey. And he did it all himself. Literally nothing was given to him. There is nothing about his life that was easy,” Wallace said.