Dear God, I'm getting all teary eyed there thanks for the life changing advice 
The first clue to the crew not being modelled as a crew would be...they aren't actually there, ever wondered how someone got an instant pilot kill on an aircraft? thats because it hit the pilot right in the head, there are hit zones mapped onto the 3d model, now lets look at the location of the crew. The only place I can imagine a round possibly not killing a member of the crew is a centre strike on the gun from the front at a low angle, every other angle from the top or a round pentrating the turret is going to kill at least one of the crew
(Image removed from quote.)
You could say if it was modelled with a crew that even a chuted guy with a .45 could headshot the crew completely disabling the wirb, I find it interesting that in your passage you also seem to be in denial of the need for a crew. You could say that vehicle supplies for a wirb fixing the gun also proves the non existence of the crew in the modelling, or you could look at it for what it is a concession for GVers (air supplys anyone?), or a clandestine person resurrection kit.
You might regret that 
but I'll take you up on that offer Eat when I have the time I will test it and post the results here. Maybe I'm wrong and they are modelled like people but just invisible I guess we will find out.
Lets look at the picture below for a moment shall we.
Ask yourself what would this Wirbel be doing in this particular instant if it was in real life combat? Shooting at planes? I think not. It would be in a ground attack situation & not because of the obvious that the guns are not pointing up.
The problem is we have a ground mode attack vehicle in AHII all the time that happens to shoot at aircraft as well. So let me explain that with a few flack vehicle photos.
Air attack mode.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxmLdSgI8wUSee a pattern?
The vehicles are always stopped & they always have people standing near the gunners & outside of the turret looking for targets. Why?
Because all the speed call outs & ranges were communicated to the gunner & the people who may have had to adjust the sight based off of those call outs so it could hit said targets.
In the AHII Wirbel we have this sight.
One problem with this is no Wirbel ever had them they had this sight.
As you can see knobs & dials to adjust so the target could be hit. I think that adjustments were done by the gunner & possibly may have been done by some one standing outside of the turret making adjustments as so the gunner could just keep the target in his sight.
Ground attack mode.
Not a lot of photos when these things are in ground attack mode. That aside you can see every one is inside the turret & no one with range finding binoculars standing outside.
So what to do with this info
Well maybe a crew should be programmed in to the Wirbel
& some of that crew should be outside of that flack panzer turret as well. Kill the crew outside no main gun. Crew standing outside of the turret gun is working. The only time the crew is visible is when the Wirbel stops & also the only time when the quad 20MM's can fire when in the AA gun sight. If the flack panzer has engine damage then & only then will the Wirbel smoke. Also since the Wirbel & Ostwind had two gun sights one for the ground war & one for air warfare the option of both being available could also determine if outside spotter crew is seen or not.
My two cents worth.
