[44 AMP]

Amp 44 was not getting it and repeating the Cooper myth.

What, to you, is the "Cooper myth"?

The trouble is, for myself, that any picture I have seen relating to this showed a very limber, smaller stature gunner entering the turret while on the runway.
Could this have been done for some preparation or other necessary pre-mission reason?

Without seeing the picture(s) you are referring to, I wonder, are you sure it was the ball turret gunner? and are you sure it was on the ground??

There are plenty of reasons someone would need to enter or get partway into the ball turret to do maintenance, which of course would be done on the ground. And, in most of those cases, it would be ground crew doing that. And, absolutely smaller guys were assigned to the ball turret.

Also, photos "on the ground" could be real operations photos, or they could be staged photos for propaganda use.

I know of an account from an actual B-17 gunner in the 8th AF. He said it was SOP that none of the rear gunners took their stations until well after takeoff. The waited in the radio operator's compartment until the plane was up, and headed for the Channel.

This makes sense to me, considering the possibility of problems taking off, climbing to altitude and getting in formation, the crew (who could) didn't get into their stations, until things were stable and underway, so that if something went badly wrong, it was easier for them to bail out. He said the ball turret gunner didn't get into the ball until they were over the Channel, locked in by the waist and tail gunners on their way back to man their stations and test fire their guns over the Channel.

And essentially the reverse on returning over England, the tail gunner came back into the fuselage, the ball turret gunner was "let loose" so that the odds of being able to escape the plane went up, if something went wrong. (and this was done in planes that weren't heavily damaged)

Re Japanese damage control, yes they did it, and yes, the bushido philosophy put a lower priority on it, and neither their organization, nor their equipment systems was as effective and efficient as ours, particularly on aircraft carriers. I don't know about the ships launched mid war or later, but I have information that several of the pre war ships firefighting water systems were built using cast iron piping, making them vulnerable to shock damage even well outside the direct damage area of bomb, torpedo, or shell hits.

Have also read survivor accounts of at least one time when the guy was killed before reaching the activation panel for the fire suppression system, and the fire kept anyone else from being able to do so...

Also, in some places, Japanese ships relied on "fire curtains" instead of actual bulkheads. Design philosophy and construction, including damage control organization was not as good as ours. We put an emphasis on our damage control systems being able to take damage, and still function. They didn't do as good a job at that as we did, overall.

Interesting footnote, despite the Japanese not seeming to care much about the welfare of their crews, there were several times (often in the Solomons) where Japanese ships (generally destroyers) would stop in the middle of a battle to rescue their sailors in the water. We rarely did, until the battle was over.