How to give control of your gunners back to the AI
 

As evidenced by this thread: http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...861#post427861

a player can only be assigned two positions on a multi-crewed aircraft.

Which means, that it keeps the two positions you selected last.

Now, all gunners seem to count as position of type "gunner", while the bombardier and pilot each count as a separate type (according to the net stats overlay at least).

In other words, if you want to give gun control back to the AI in your bomber, just cycle once between pilot and bombardier.

In aircraft like the Stuka and 110 that don't have a third position type (they only have "pilot" and "gunner") this will not work, but then again the visibility to the rear is adequate to take evasive action and let the AI gunner do the shooting.

For bombers however like the Blenheim, Ju88, etc, it is very useful. You can hop to your rear gunner, check your six and maybe take a couple of potshots at the target, then switch back to the front to take evasive action and the gunner will keep shooting.

Thank you very much!

Quick flight tests in the Ju-88 confirms this is not the case. Cycling through all slots de-activated all my gunners, and the Ju-88 don't dogfight so good :(

To me this feels like cheating ;)

How can it be cheating. Its not like you have an edge when doing this. The game just allows you to play as a gunner. Its only the same as being able to switch between positions in a tank sim etc.

It can be disabled in realism settings by the server :)

How?

You have to cycle to pilot, bombardier and pilot again.

I thought it worked in the 88 but i didn't specifically test it because i thought it held true for all bombers after seeing it work in the Blenheim.

I cycled through both directions, set up a mission with 4 Hurricanes attacking (so there'd always be 1 within range of the gunners). Either way I cycled, gunners were limp after I returned to pilot position. Maybe it will work different on a server?

Actually that's a good point. Maybe AI takes over when connected online, as part of the whole "jump into crew position" feature (eg, what happens when the player who was manning your guns disconnects?).