My question is for curiousity,really. Were bomber gunners "awarded" kills like fighter jocks? Confirmation? Flying in a thousand plane formation, how would a gunner know 'his' gun brought down a fighter?
Relatively high numbers of 'kills' were claimed by air gunners of both USAAF and RAF. Confirmation was usually via another crew member. However, these claims must unfortunately be treated with caution. The RAF claims were often at night when it might not be apparent that the enemy aircraft was actually destroyed ( the bomber could hardly follow the claimed aircraft down...). And of course, there was huge over-claiming among 8th Air Force gunners - there could after all be 50 of them firing at one Luftwaffe aircraft. As usual, this over-claiming should not detract from the gunners' performance ; they were keen to play their part and defend their aircraft but circumstances made it very difficult to confirm their kills.
Thanks Martin. I had just recently bought "12 O'clock High" on DVD and was wondering. Also I noticed in that movie, you could see the bottom section of the top turrent gunner revolving right behind the pilot's head. Don't remember seeing that in any other B-17 movie.
