[Rainer]

The gunners were certainly not very effective in destroying enemy fighters in high numbers, but they forced the attackers to develope other tactics or weapons to evade the field of fire of the gunners. The German night fighters for example developed the "Schräge Musik" armament that enabled them to fire at the bombers without being shot at by the tail gunner. Interesting is that the Allied night fighters did not use this tactic, probably because they never encountered bombers as heavily armed as the Lancaster or Halifax?

Compared to "Schräge Musik" that initially was a field modification which found its way to the industrial production, the barbettes of the Me 410 are in my opinion typical for the German "overengineering" of certain technical aspects.