Gunner: An Illustrated History of World War II Aircraft Turrets and Gun Positions

For those of us intrigued with seeing and understanding the interiors of places like aircraft gun positions, this book is both wonderful and disappointing. While there are some incredible modern photos and plenty of interesting archival information, illustrations and photos (the astonishingly complicated remote control gun system on the ME410, for example) I wanted the photographer to show me more. The book could easily have had twice the number of pages and gone into more detail on each aircraft. But as one reviewer has written, it's a coffee table book.There are also a number of typos, even misplaced photo captions, but that seems to be a common problem in recent books. Have publishers cut out the copy editor position as a cost saving measure!?Nevertheless, Gunner is a magnificent book that provides more information and photos and does so better than any other I've seen. It presents more than 20 aircraft from the US, Germany, UK, and Italy as well as an interesting section on the development of aerial gunnery in WWI.Well worth adding to your collection, especially considering the reasonable price.

For all the endless volumes written about combat pilots (and to a lesser extent, bombardiers and navigators), aerial gunners have always gotten relatively short shrift, credit, or appreciation in the writings of most aerial combat historians, so the authors of "Gunner," Messrs. Nijboer and Patterson, seek to rectify this shortcoming, and they've done an admirable job of it.Superbly detailed text and photographs alike. I especially like the section on the Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber (my favourite WWII warbird) and Nijboer's statistics on the SBD's air-to-air kill tally.

Nicely done book decent art & photos. The book implies a lot more then is given in the research. Could and should have been better done work.

A great read, I added it to my other books regarding cockpits of world war II and cold war. A needed reference toyour aircraft research material!!

Excellent , thank you.Book arrived quickly and well packaged. Book itself is excellent and humbling. So many young men died doing a cold and lonely job.

Good modeler's reference.

great product, good price, great service!

Good stuff. Informative, well illustrated and well written.

Superb book, actually better than expected.Excellent details, descriptions, crew opinions & photos.