An air gunner (AG) a.k.a. aerial gunner is a member of an air force aircrew who operates flexible-mount or turret-mounted machine guns or autocannons in an aircraft. Modern aircraft weapons are usually operated automatically without the need for a dedicated air gunner, but older (World War II and earlier) generation bombers used to carry up to eight air gunners.
Most modern air gunners are helicopter door gunners, who typically have other primary roles such as crew chief or observer in addition to their air gunner role. Others fly as members of aircrews on gunships where their duties can include loading ammunition into guns and can manually fire the guns if computer systems fail.
Famous quotes containing the word air:
“Every living language, like the perspiring bodies of living creatures, is in perpetual motion and alteration; some words go off, and become obsolete; others are taken in, and by degrees grow into common use; or the same word is inverted to a new sense or notion, which in tract of time makes an observable change in the air and features of a language, as age makes in the lines and mien of a face.”
—Richard Bentley (1662–1742)