Thermodyne
New member
Now consider that these guys were operating in a relatively sterile and quiet environment compared to the average infantryman.
American European theater heavy bomber crews took the highest casualties per capital of any unit in the war IIRC. Also at 28 thousand feet and -30f one tends to not really recall things accurately. Personally I can't see how they hit anything under those conditions. Also if 6 gunners were firing on a 109 and it blew up, all six would make a claim confirmed usually by another gunner in their aircraft. I knew a 17 pilot with 34 missions when I was young, and he claimed that the flack got more 17's than fighters. And that a great deal of the losses were planes that had mechanical failures or pilot error. And that many just ran out of fuel on the way home.