Tail gunner

A tail gunner or rear gunner is a crewman on a military aircraft who functions as a gunner defending against enemy fighter or interceptor attacks from the rear, or "tail", of the plane. The tail gunner operates a flexible machine gun or autocannon emplacement in the tail end of the aircraft with an unobstructed view toward the rear of the aircraft. While the term tail gunner is usually associated with a crewman inside a gun turret, the first tail guns were operated from open apertures within the aircraft's fuselage, such as the Scarff ring mechanism used in the British Handley Page V/1500, which was introduced during latter months of the First World War. Increasingly capable tail gunner positions were developed during the interwar period and the Second World War, resulting in the emergence of the powered turret and fire control systems incorporating radar guidance. In particularly advanced tail gunner arrangements, the tail armament may be operated by remote control from another part of the aircraft, such as the American Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, a strategic bomber first introduced during 1955. The first aircraft to ever have incorporated a tail gunner position was the Sikorsky Ilya Muromets bomber, which became active during the First World War and the last years of the Russian Empire. The Ilya Muromets prototype flew for the first time in 1913, with no guns on board and no rear position for the crew. When the war broke out, in 1914, only a few Ilya Muromets aircraft had been built, but increasing numbers were required because of the war effort. After having entered the mass-production phase and having seen combat all along the first year of war against the fighter planes of the German Empire, a rear-defending position appeared to the Imperial Russian Air Service to be increasingly vital to protect both the plane and its crewmen. Such an arrangement, during March 1916, saw light of day on the model S-25 (variant Geh-2) of the Sikorsky Ilya Muromets bomber plane. This aircraft was the first in history to include on its ending tail area a gunner position.