The Longevity of Tail Gunners

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During World War II, heavy bombers flown by all sides were armed with many gun positions located all around the aircraft for defense against fighters. The US even fielded a special B-17 that traded bombs for even more guns.

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Because the first thing cut from any WWII design was "restraint"

Designs had these guns all the way until the 1950s when the age of the jet fighter began. With fighters travelling faster than airmen could manually keep up with them, gun positions were eliminated from bombers. Except for the tail gun, which persisted for far longer than you may think . . .

The B-52 bomber, first introduced to the US Air Force in 1955,  had one gunner position: the tail. Seen as the most vulnerable place for an attack, the tail had four .50 caliber machine guns, later upgraded to a M61 Vulcan cannon, in order to blast the shit out of any aircraft ballsy enough to fire at it from the rear.

image via SmugMug

"Come at me, bro"

So, as antiquated as it sounds, aerial gunners continued to be trained by the Air Force well after WWII and into the 1990s. Here's a recruitment video for the job from 1985, featuring the most awkward airman ever caught on tape.

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And learn that death by Powerpoint was a thing even before Powerpoint.

Owing to the fact that the B-52 still sported guns, it holds the distinction of being the largest aircraft to have shot down another aircraft in combat. Airman Albert Moore managed to down a North Vietnamese MiG-21 using his machine guns over Vietnam on Christmas Eve, 1972. And that was only six days after Staff Sergeant Samuel Turner downed his own MiG-21 from his B-52.

By the 1980s, a second generation of tail gunners were being trained. Airmen were graduating aerial gunnery school for the same B-52s their fathers had flown on thirty years prior. And despite the advent of fighters that could travel over twice the speed of sound, and missiles that could be fired from miles away, the tail gun position endured until 1991 when an incident during the Gulf War spelled doom for the tail gunner position.

image via Wikipedia

For some comparison, this aircraft was already flying.

On January 17th, 1991, a B-52G was hit by a missile while flying a mission in enemy airspace over Iraq. While it's disputed whether the missile was friendly fire from a nearby F-4 Phantom, or an enemy missile from an also nearby Iraqi MiG-23, what was for sure was that the missile had locked onto the tail gunner's radar.

This coupled with the fact that no gunners scored any kills during the war convinced General George Lee Butler to removed the antiquated tail guns from all B-52s.

On September 27th, 1991 Airman First Class Patrick Torres became the last graduate from the USAF aerial gunnery school. Three days later the very last B-52 air sortie with trained aerial gunners on board landed at Minot Air Force base, with Master Sergeant Tom Lindsey getting the distinction of being the last USAF aerial gunner to fly a mission.

Meanwhile, the last former aerial gunner on active duty was Chief Master Sergeant Francis Dailey II, who retired in 2013, signaling an end to an era for the United States Air Force.

Aside from the US, the Russian Air Force continues to utilize the tail gunner position on their Tu-95 bombers as recently as 2015 in Syria.

image via Youtube

Because, Russia.