As a aside, most of the P-61As and about one fourth to half of the P-61Bs were built without turrets-the B-29 took precedent. Some were retrofitted with four 0.50 cals fixed forward and fired by the pilot.They used a hand-made cover over them. Again no gunner needed. Not until the 61C did they all have a turret. Thanks for the Stuka information. Did they remove any equipment from the gunners area like the guns, ammo, seat, etc. or did the just eliminate just say 100kg by leaving the equipped gunner behind? Just curious.

Hey Sturmvogel,

i own the first two books you mentioned. Apart from these being no serious sources for research (btw none of the osprey books) there's nothing mentioned in these sources regarding service without a gunner. Where exactly is your info from, which source, which page??
All KIA or MIA loss lists of stuka crews (all variants) are including the pilot (FF=Flugzeugf?hrer) and the Bordfunker (BF). There's no exception with the R-variants.
The gunner was the radio operator (Bordfunker) and observer (Beobachter) as well, so he couldn't just 'left behind' for weight reasons!
When flying with droptanks the bomb load was oftenly reduced to a single 250 kg bomb. that's true. There were no other ways to save weight!
I own a lot of (mostly expensive) luftwaffe expert books and i'm an active member in three wellknown luftwaffe (historian) forums (TOCH, LEMB and Luftarchiv) for several years now and i've never heard or read a stuka gunner was left behind for weight reasons. This is complete nonsens. So do yourself a favour by not spreading such nonsens - especially if you can't name a concrete source for this.

@Oldanddecrepit
sorry for hijacking your thread but as Sturmvogel posts his statements here i had to reply here as well.

ATB
Armin

Sorry to jack up your P-61 thread....Will take it to general.... Welcome to A&A...this is not normal, so please don't be offended...