"TTA Cherokee Driver" wrote in message

I have heard it asserted on various History Channel and Discovery Wings
documentaries that B-17 gunners actually shot down more Luftwaffe
fighters than escort fighters did.

This has been debated since the war. My grandfather said that the biggest
problem was, whenever an interceptor came through a formation and went down
in flames, there were might have been ten guys shooting at it and all of
them claimed it as their kill when they debriefed after a mission. By
contrast, when a fighter pilot won a dogfight it was obvious who had scored
the victory.

My grandfather's tailgunner told me "your pappy got two," and I had never
heard him claim a single plane. When I was old enough, I guess, he told me
that everybody had been shooting at the first, but that he was the only one
shooting at the second so he "guessed" it must have been his, but it was one
thing he didn't talk much about other than describing his tracers bouncing
off the armor of the enemy airplane right below the pilot, who had pulled
his fighter alongside the bomber as if in formation.

-c