Are tail-gunners bullet-proof?

[Lagarto]

Recently I've been watching, on external view, three AI Bf 109s engage a lone Il-2. After several passes they made a sieve out of their victim but the Sturmovik's tail-gunner, sitting waist-high and totally unprotected, kept firing at them. Which made me think - are tail gunners immortal? The guy should have been ripped to pieces.

[Daniël]

Gunners aren't bullet proof. You can kill them, but it's quite difficult. When you've killed a gunner you will notice thet he won't bail out when the pilot does.
I don't really care about the gunners, I shoot at the weak parts of a plane and then get out of there

[Lagarto]

Killing tail gunners shouldn't be difficult at all. It wasn't in real life. Perhaps this feature needs some tweaking in the future? The gunner's slumped body would immediately tell the attacker that this threat was neutralized.

[TheGrunch]

If any part of the aircraft's skin is between the bullet and the gunner they cannot be hurt. So kind of, yes.

[Juri_JS]

I remember earlier versions of the game showed the slumped bodies of dead gunners and pilots. I don't know why, but it was removed by a patch. When attacking bombers it is frustrating that you can't see if the gunners are still alive, therefore I hope DT can re-introduce this feature.

[76.IAP-Blackbird]

There was also a bloodtexture forthe early Heinkels.
That was a nice feature, but thedead pilot animation is helpfull.I hate to wait if Iget shot or not .. achance of 50%.. thats not fun

And the gunners onthe il2 where slaughtert