I've just taken out 'AIR GUNNER' by Alan W. Cooper, from the library.
Along similar lines, and one I've recommended here before, is:
They Hosed Them Out
John Beede
Bookseller: OurBooks
(Braddon, ACT, Australia)
Bookseller Rating:
Quantity Available: 1
ISBN: 0426052153 / 0-426-05215-3
Written quite soon after the war, it's unusually frank (and bitter), and very critical of the RAF 'System'.
One story in it comes immediately to mind, of a tail gunner who from the start, was obviously not suited for the job, (for one, he was tall and lanky and had difficuty fitting into the cramped turret, but his main problems were psychological). His captain tried to get him re-assigned during training, but to no avail, and on his first op, when the captain called for a guns test, they got no answer. Someone went back to discover that in a blind funk, he'd jumped, (as it turned out) before they crossed the English coast.
Within 24 hours, he was found, court-martialled, and sentenced to death, his execution delayed only for as long as it took for Bomber Command to transport one air gunner from each and every Bomber Command station to witness the execution to spread the word of what awaited anyone who deserted his post on an op.
Beedle also talks about the LMF camp,
(perhaps mythical, but 'known to exist', a bit like the boogie man), in far northern Scotland, where LMFs were treated extremely harshly by SPs who had never seen a shot fired in anger themselves.
Beedle did a tour on tactical light bombers, where the casualties (twin .303 turrents against 20mm cannon) at the hands of massed FW190 squadrons were appaling. Not pleasant reading, but still a very good read.
Complete change of subject, but in regard to the book's title, my next door neighbour when I was a boy in far North Queensland had been a (civilian) ambulance driver at Garbutt, which was a huge American air base in North Queensland early in the Pacific war, and he said he'd seen the USAAF quite literally do that on a number of occasions with B17 tail gunners when the aircraft returned to base from ops over New Guinea. They would remove what they could from the turret, (which he was there to take to the morgue), and then feed a high presure fire hose in through the waist gunner's window and hose out the turret.
I always found myself wondering what it must have been like for the next gunner who occupied that turret. Hard to find any glory in that. They had to be seriously brave men.