Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick Beale
Sure, there were successes but I have wondered whether the gunners in a night bomber (e.g. a Lancaster) were more useful as look-outs, triggering evasive action, than as armed defenders.
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IIRC RAF thought after WW2 that if there was any reasonable benefit (when compared to the weight penalty and the cost of a rear turret) of the rear turret it was mostly from the gunners acting as look-outs and because of the appearence of rear-warning radars they dumped the rear turret. On the other hand USAF kept them, maybe at least partly because of their daytime experiences. The only post-WW2 aircombat fought in the Finnish airspace was between an US RB-47 and two Soviet MiG-17s.