diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 6f6b4e55bf7..8456f7b9b6d 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -140,16 +140,21 @@ Optimizations
     of 0 now run 20-50% faster (Patch #31882).
     (Jonathan Hager via Daniel Naber)
     
- 6. A Version of BooleanScorer (BooleanScorer2) added that delivers documents 
-    in  increasing order and implements skipTo. For queries with required or forbidden 
-    clauses it may be faster than the old BooleanScorer, for BooleanQueries consisting 
-    only of optional clauses it is probably slower. The new BooleanScorer is now the 
+ 6. A Version of BooleanScorer (BooleanScorer2) added that delivers
+    documents in increasing order and implements skipTo. For queries
+    with required or forbidden clauses it may be faster than the old
+    BooleanScorer, for BooleanQueries consisting only of optional
+    clauses it is probably slower. The new BooleanScorer is now the
     default. (Patch 31785 by Paul Elschot via Christoph)
 
+ 7. Use uncached access to norms when merging to reduce RAM usage.
+    (Bug #32847).  (Doug Cutting)
+
  Infrastructure
 
- 1. Lucene's source code repository has converted from CVS to Subversion.  The new
-    repository is at http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/lucene/java/trunk
+ 1. Lucene's source code repository has converted from CVS to
+    Subversion.  The new repository is at
+    http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/lucene/java/trunk
 
 1.4.3
 
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/SegmentMerger.java b/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/SegmentMerger.java
index 423d631e4a2..197820211ad 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/SegmentMerger.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/SegmentMerger.java
@@ -392,12 +392,12 @@ final class SegmentMerger {
         try {
           for (int j = 0; j < readers.size(); j++) {
             IndexReader reader = (IndexReader) readers.elementAt(j);
-            byte[] input = reader.norms(fi.name);
             int maxDoc = reader.maxDoc();
+            byte[] input = new byte[maxDoc];
+            reader.norms(fi.name, input, 0);
             for (int k = 0; k < maxDoc; k++) {
-              byte norm = input != null ? input[k] : (byte) 0;
               if (!reader.isDeleted(k)) {
-                output.writeByte(norm);
+                output.writeByte(input[k]);
               }
             }
           }