On 18 December 1972, during Operation Linebacker II (also known as President Richard Nixon's, "Christmas Bombing"), USAF B-52 Stratofortresses of the Strategic Air Command conducted a maximum effort bombing campaign against North Vietnam.
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Avro Lancaster (introduced 1942) – heavy bomber; 4-gun Nash & Thompson tail turrets: some late-war aircraft received Village Inn automatic radar aiming and others were fitted with a Rose turret.
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In the autumn of 1944, the British began deploying Lancasters fitted with the Automatic Gun-Laying Turret, this was a fitted with a 9.1 cm (3 GHz) radar.
tail | Gunner Palace | Brown-tail | tail rotor | Serpent's Tail | An American Tail: Fievel Goes West | An American Tail | V-tail | Tiger by the Tail | John Gunner | Iron Tail | Fee tail | Fairy Tail | crested dog's tail | 'V' or butterfly tail | The Dragon's Head and Tail, from Guido Bonatti | Tail Spin | Tail rotor | Tail of the Bank | tail gunner | Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner | Peter-No-Tail in Americat | Perham Township, Otter Tail County, Minnesota | Otter Tail River | Otter Tail County, Minnesota | Leaf Mountain Township, Otter Tail County, Minnesota | I've Got a Tiger By the Tail | Gunner's view; 25-pounder on display at Edinburgh Castle | gunner's daughter | Gunner McGrath |
Weiss served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II, but his training as a tail gunner ended when the plane he was in crashed and severely injured his legs.
Though out of print for a long time, interest in this narrative, dealing with the war experience of a B-24 tail gunner in Southern Europe during W.W.II, was rekindled when it was suggested that it inspired Joseph Heller while writing his well-known war novel Catch-22.