Ty, believe me from experience, ball turrets don't do much when you've got an enemy surging upwards to shoot you. Sure, a guy can get underneath a 26, but it takes time because of its speed. Then, when you finally get the shot, you lose all your E and have to reset. Most people just break off at that point.
But the fact is still there that the b24 has a Ball turret to defend itself from attacks from below, and the b26 doesn't. not counting the accuracy of the gunner, that fact would put it ahead of the b26 simply because the b26 has a glaring weakness, the b24 does not.
And true about the b26, but assuming the attacking plane is a good shot, and packing decent firepower, that unchallenged underneath attack could be all he needs to take out a b26, from personal accounts i find the b26 to be rather fragile, its the reason i fly the b25 over it. i guess maybe statistically the b26 is more armored, but from personal experience i find it to be rather weak.
Also the b24 can carry more ammo in all vital gun positions than the b26 can i believe, which ranks it higher in survivability also.
I don't care if you have a damn 5" AA gun mounted in the tail position, it won't save you if your plane will blow up from a single 7.7mm. B-24 has more firepower, but less armor. I personally think B-24's are the second safest heavy bomber to attack (second to the lancaster, which has very weak firepower, but slightly more durable wings)
And concider this: fully half of your firepower in the B-24 is unusable. effectively, you only have about 5 guns covering any one direction in the B-24.
Low 6: ball gun, tail gun, and MAYBE one of the waist guns
High 12: top gun, nose gun, and again, MAYBE one of the waist guns.
low 3/9: ball gun, waist gun
High 3/9: top gun, waist gun
And it doesnt matter how much armor you have on a bomber if you have no guns that can reach a planes favorite position of attack, sooner or later that armors gonna get chewed up.
and 5 guns on a target is still more guns than a b26 can put on target. Plus the b24's ball turret is 360 degrees, meaning no matter what amount the plane is under you, you can still hit him. The b26 can not.
Think about this, what if you have someone right below your b26, planning on ramming you down? yea ik, it sounds stupid. "why ram a bomber?" but people do it, i personally had my b29's wing rammed in half by a ta152 before.
But anyways, imagine that guy hovering right under your b26, planning on pulling up to ram you. because you lack a ball turret you have no way to defend yourself against that rammer. other than possibly ACM's, But while your in the cocpit trying to pull them off, that plane can pull up on your six and unload into you while your still in the cockpit thinking he's gonna ram ya.
In a b24, you have the ball turret which atleast gives you a fighting chance against that rammer.
