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This might be a bit too extreme. Some planes flying solo really did shoot down multiple enemy aircraft - or at least damage them seriously enough that they were "probables" and out of the action. So, aerial gunners weren't completely useless - especially the tail gunners who accounted for a majority of the 8th Air Force gunner aces. It's also worth mentioning that the USAAF kept tailgunners long after they ditched every other gunner position (last tailgunner kill was over Vietnam).
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Most of the stories we hear about a solo aircraft's gunners managing to destroy or damage attacking single engine fighters usually turns out to be apocryphal if we try to investigate; about 20 years ago, I was commissioned to build a 1/72nd scale B-24J with the markings of a Foggia based aircraft that was shot down in the sort of circumstances you describe for one of the surviving aircrewmen. I was invited to the presentation, and the honoree confessed to all present that the claims of four or five enemy fighters destroyed in their heroic last fight (over Turin, I think) were all bulls**t (his word, used as he pointed right at the Groups' former Public Information Officer), but he wasn't giving his Air Medal back.
As for the B-52's stinger, the 'gunner' operated a radar aimed gun remotely, with the help of a slightly more advanced stabilization system than that used on late-WWII era battleships's guns. It took shameless advantage of the limited range and acquisition cone of early Warsaw Pact heat guided missiles like the Atoll.
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But, as you said, the USAAF (and every other Air Force) had problems with overclaiming kills. Often, when some hapless Bf-109 diving through a formation B-17 or B-24 coughed up smoke because pilot mishandled the fuel mixture, every gunner in the formation would claim it as a kill because they saw the 109 coughing up black smoke were sure that their gun was the one that "hit." With claims like that, even the most skeptical debriefing intelligence officer was likely to believe that the fighter was a "probable" even if the Luftwaffe plane wasn't scratched.
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Almost any Allied fighter pilot in the theater for more than two days (i.e., long enough to visit the Officers' Club bar) could have told them that German fighters tended to belch black smoke whenever the throttle was shoved forward or back too quickly, and the Allies' commanders were well aware that the Luftwaffe wasn't taking even a tiny fraction of the losses the the gunners claimed to be inflicting. "Morale" was the only justification for awarding the overwhelming majority of gunners' claims for destroyed enemy aircraft, and they beat it to death.
cheers
horseback