Christoph1945,
Your:
"I set aside time to sit on the sands and contemplate the many young men that honed their target skills as their aircraft screamed in over the hills and dropped down to fire..."
This young man took a Spitfire II up there from 57 OTU, Hawarden in summer '42, but not to hone my target skills, but simply to fire into the sands the half- dozen rounds of 20mm loaded in each cannon (all they could spare at the time ?)
The idea was to let us feel what it was like to do this (it was terrifying, as the noise and vibration bid fair to shake the Spit to pieces), so as it would not be too much of a shock the first time we tried it later. Nor did we ever fire the Brownings, or use the gun cameras for practice. As I've noted long since, the budding fighter pilot might well reach his squadron having fired nothing more lethal than the popgun he'd had as a child. Perhaps the air gunners used the targets. Don't know.
Danny.