Not as many as you might think. 
Ah.
Lancasters did not, and could not, have ball turrets to help, either, not without giving up half their bomb bay volume. RAF crewmen were told they would know if a night fighter had spotted them by the bullets coming up through the cockpit floor.
The tail gunner was in a turret, and there was a dorsal turret.
German night fighters would approach from underneath, where the Lancaster was most blind, to get their upward-pointing “jazz music” guns aimed. A top-turret gunner couldn’t help.
I’m trying to remember if the night fighter of Len Deighton’s Bomber was British or German.
I would think the Infantry would be pretty bad.
After all, most of the people who are killed in the army are in the Infantry.
German. The book is about a Lancaster raid in Germany.
Yes, 
but I thought there was a British aircraft that takes out the German before it hits the protagonists.
Wings of Freedom is at my local airport at the moment, those turrets look like bad news from any angle.
Bombsight station looks just as bad
The guy hitting the beach with the biggest gun.
Instantly the prime target with no cover or chance to dig in before coming under well-entrenched fire.
That’s for “life expectancy in seconds” worst.
I don’t care to try to image the biggest horror a person could encounter, so no entry for “Can’t Un-See”.
I heard somewhere that merchant marine casualty rates were very high. A quick search turned up this:
Service Number serving War Dead Percent Ratio
Merchant Marine 243,000* 9,521** 3.90% 1 in 26
Marines 669,108 19,733 2.94% 1 in 34
Army 11,268,000 234,874 2.08% 1 in 48
Navy 4,183,466 36,958 0.88% 1 in 114
Coast Guard 242,093 574 0.24% 1 in 421
Total 16,576,667 295,790 1.78% 1 in 56
So that might be something to think about if considering which branch of service was the riskiest. I don’t know, however, what would be the riskiest of the riskiest jobs for a mariner.
OK, found a better source – quotes 1 in 29 casualty rate for WWII from the 2000 House Congressional Record.
Interesting thing is that guys in the merchant marine were all civilians.
I presume a lot of those killed died when their ship was sunk. That has to be an awful way to go.
Would these guys count as fighting soldiers?
My w.a.g. is that the Army, Navy and Marines presumably had X number of non-front line servicemen whose relative safety lowered the overall casualty rate. While the merchant marine consisted overwhelmingly of active duty sailors, and when a ship was sunk it took it’s toll.
Interesting. Was there an expectation that a large number of German weapons would be captured and available for troops, or were they more or less waiting for a comrade to fall in order to take their gun?
Good point. By comparison, a 9mm Glock pistol is a great gun to carry for personal protection around town, but it would be a terrible choice as a primary infantry weapon. Crap accuracy beyond short range, marginal stopping power against body armor, and a relatively small magazine mean you’re likely to get pulverized by goons with AK-47’s or whatever sensible infantry weapon your opponent is using.
I may have already posted that in the first World War, the second wave of Russians were unarmed, and instructed to pick up weapons from the fallen. This was not good for morale.