Dad talked a little about his Navy areal gunner training during WW2. He said that the rig he trained on was a tripod mounted semi automatic Remington shotgun like in this picture. At the end of the areal gunner training Dad came in second, breaking 24/25 targets. The guy that broke 25/25 became an areal gunnery instructor. Dad was sent to aircraft mechanics school. Although when he got to the Pacific theater, due to the shortage air crewmembers he eventually spent time as a rear gunner in TBMs and as a flight engineer in PBYs.
Dad did mention that he felt the time spent with the tripod mounted shotgun had little practical correlation with trying to fire a machine gun from a moving aircraft. The force of the wind against the barrels was tremendous!
I should mention that Dads family were amazing wing shots. The family story was that Grandad would not waste the money on shotgun ammo for the boys to learn shooting. They started hunting with a 22 caliber Stevens Favorite. When they could drop a quail on the wing with the 22 they moved up to the shotgun. My dad and uncles each had their story about lining up The Shot that earned them the right to hunt with a shotgun.
As a young kid I was skeptical about these stories until I actually started hunting with them and saw them in action. My Uncle Grady hunted with a Browning A5. More than once I watched him drop 4 quail from a covey with 5 shots , hip shooting. He would laugh at me wasting time putting my sxs to my shoulder to shoot.
