Mitsubishi Stuka and Thunderbolt

[horseback]

This might be a bit too extreme. Some planes flying solo really did shoot down multiple enemy aircraft - or at least damage them seriously enough that they were "probables" and out of the action. So, aerial gunners weren't completely useless - especially the tail gunners who accounted for a majority of the 8th Air Force gunner aces. It's also worth mentioning that the USAAF kept tailgunners long after they ditched every other gunner position (last tailgunner kill was over Vietnam).

Most of the stories we hear about a solo aircraft's gunners managing to destroy or damage attacking single engine fighters usually turns out to be apocryphal if we try to investigate; about 20 years ago, I was commissioned to build a 1/72nd scale B-24J with the markings of a Foggia based aircraft that was shot down in the sort of circumstances you describe for one of the surviving aircrewmen. I was invited to the presentation, and the honoree confessed to all present that the claims of four or five enemy fighters destroyed in their heroic last fight (over Turin, I think) were all bulls**t (his word, used as he pointed right at the Groups' former Public Information Officer), but he wasn't giving his Air Medal back.

As for the B-52's stinger, the 'gunner' operated a radar aimed gun remotely, with the help of a slightly more advanced stabilization system than that used on late-WWII era battleships's guns. It took shameless advantage of the limited range and acquisition cone of early Warsaw Pact heat guided missiles like the Atoll.

But, as you said, the USAAF (and every other Air Force) had problems with overclaiming kills. Often, when some hapless Bf-109 diving through a formation B-17 or B-24 coughed up smoke because pilot mishandled the fuel mixture, every gunner in the formation would claim it as a kill because they saw the 109 coughing up black smoke were sure that their gun was the one that "hit." With claims like that, even the most skeptical debriefing intelligence officer was likely to believe that the fighter was a "probable" even if the Luftwaffe plane wasn't scratched.

Almost any Allied fighter pilot in the theater for more than two days (i.e., long enough to visit the Officers' Club bar) could have told them that German fighters tended to belch black smoke whenever the throttle was shoved forward or back too quickly, and the Allies' commanders were well aware that the Luftwaffe wasn't taking even a tiny fraction of the losses the the gunners claimed to be inflicting. "Morale" was the only justification for awarding the overwhelming majority of gunners' claims for destroyed enemy aircraft, and they beat it to death.

cheers

horseback

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by horseback

Most of the stories we hear about a solo aircraft's gunners managing to destroy or damage attacking single engine fighters usually turns out to be apocryphal if we try to investigate

Interesting. Do you have any further info to back up this claim? I'm not disputing you, I'm interested in actually figuring out what was actually going on, and I've always wondered just how good gunners actually were.

I have to wonder if it wasn't a huge amount of institutional inertia that led to bombers being heavily equipped with gunners. After all, there is a strong tendency to "fight the last war," and during WW I gunners really were a threat given the relatively short range, limited damage and poor accuracy of the frontally-fixed fighter machine guns. But, by WW 2, many WW I pilots were colonels and generals, so they might have figured that if one or two men armed with single .30 caliber MG were good, 7-8 men armed with multiple 0.30 or 0.50 (or even 20 mm) MG were even better, without realizing that higher airspeeds made gunnery much less effective.

Arguably, the best strategy for bombing during WW2 was the Mosquito - two man crew, decent bomb payload and a very fast aircraft to make interception difficult. You send them out knowing that fast fighters and flak are going to get some of them, but low manpower requirements and relatively inexpensive design means that you can absorb the losses and win via attrition.

Instead, it seems to me that most air forces made huge design sacrifices, as well as operational and human sacrifices, to load up their bombers with gunners who literally might not have been worth their weight.

Originally Posted by horseback

As for the B-52's stinger, the 'gunner' operated a radar aimed gun remotely, with the help of a slightly more advanced stabilization system

Yep. But some of the later WW2 era bombers at least had tail warning radar, even if they didn't have radar-guided and stabilized guns. My point is that the "least useless" place to have a gun on a bomber is the tail, and tailgunners (or other gunners who faced to the rear) generally had the least
complicated firing solutions. I forget the exact numbers, but most of the gunner "aces" of the 8th AF were tailgunners, with top-turret gunners coming in next.

Originally Posted by horseback

Almost any Allied fighter pilot in the theater for more than two days (i.e., long enough to visit the Officers' Club bar) could have told them that German fighters tended to belch black smoke

Yeah, but if you've got an entire squadron of gunners swearing to God that they saw big trails of black smoke, and a few guys claiming they saw fire (due to reflections, tracers, sun glare, or whatever), plus one or two guys saying that the plane was diving "out of control" then a credulous intel officer might let the claim stand.

Eyewitness accounts are pretty damned unreliable, especially in the heat of combat. But, until you realize that, you might believe "they were there, they saw it, who am I to dispute them."