The Aces that history forgot - US Aerial Gunners WW2

[HReccon58]

The Aces that history forgot - US Aerial Gunners WW2. United States 1943, six aerial gunnery schools are pumping out 3 500 gunners per week, by the end of WW2 they had graduated nearly 300 000 men. The casualty rate for these aircrews was extremely high, and even in training 15 000 US aircrew was killed in accidents during the war. The Air Force view was that it was too hard to assign credit to individual gunners where dozens of guns may have been blazing away at the same target. Some units gave the gunners more recognition, but is was rare and only a few are recorded. See them train in this Video

 

[Greg Boeser]

Claims by aerial gunners were exhorbitantly high compared to actual recorded losses. That gunners were recognized was purely a matter of propaganda and morale boosting.

 

[cvairwerks]

For those that want to experience what it was like, when Taigh sets up another "Bomber Camp" down in Stockton, Ca., sign up and go. It's several days of loading and dropping bombs and shooting both flexible and turret guns while in the air. No clue when he's going to set another up, or the cost.

 

[Snautzer01]

wonder how many own ships were damaged by those .50 blasting away. At what lenght of travel ceases those bullets to be a thread?

 

[cvairwerks]

Standard .50 cal rounds are lethal to over 2500 yards. It gets sticky though, when you add in shooting from a platform moving in 3 dimensions, with each vector constantly changing direction as well as velocity. I would suspect that there was quite a bit of self inflicted damage when the bombers were in close formation wth rounds going in every direction.