WW 2 bomber flights in movies were always in tight formation. The aircraft themselves were bristling with guns, so the question arises did they ever shoot each other, or even themselves down?
The Flying Fortress (I think) especially had a gunner mounted in a bubble on the top of the fuselage with a perfect shot of his own tail while engaging fighters coming from the 6 o’clock position.
I don’t know the range of these guns but if all the aircraft flying in a tight formation could they not have shot each other down?
Well a few .50 cals aren’t going to knock down a B-17 unless you damage multiple engines or spray the cockpit so you might get an occasional hit but not shoot down a friendly bomber.
The problem with movies is that they always depict aircraft far closer than they actually were, that includes dogfights too. If you look on Youtube there are some combat footage clips where you get an idea of how far apart airborne attacks took place.
Flying in close formation is a relative thing, they would be over 400 yards apart, and at differant altitudes.
Every aircraft had to have enough room to turn, and manoeuver, and flying too close could make them more vulnerable to AA fire.
Some formations were spread out over as much as 2 miles, and that’s just for 6 aircraft. These formations were tightened up considerably, but the idea would be that you aircaft would be looking for enemy incoming from one direction only, unless alerted by other aircraft in the formation that enemy aircraft had broken into the ‘box’ - basically most of your attention would be pointing outwards from your formation.
Look at the images on that wiki page, give you some idea of how spread out they were.
It has to be said that defensive weapons were at best, a distraction to enemy fighters, there are lots of reason for the limited effectiveness of the onboard gunners and it wans’t until the development of long range fighter escorts that bombers were reasonably well protected.
The point of flying in formation was to have mutually protective fields of fire. I imagine any number of boo-boos happened, such as the well known footage of a bomber releasing a bomb that accidently smashes through the wing of a bomber below it.
The success of strategic bombing in WW2 was mixed at best.
B-17 Flying Fortress: Yes it had a top turret gunner, but the cannons did not have the ability to lower its firing angle to a degree where the rear airfoil was in any trouble. That’s why the aircraft had a tail gunner and side gunners, too.
As for shooting “friendlies” down (other aircraft in your squadron), this unfortunately did happen from time to time. Sad but true. Not as often as depicted in the movies, but it did happen.
Side note: As a WWII airman on a B-17, you had plenty of other things to worry about besides friendly fire or blasting one’s self from the sky. Namely: The Luftwaffe, and flak. Although the B-17 was famous for being able to remain airborne even after nearly being shredded by enemy fire and flak, the same cannot be said for the humans flying inside. As a crewman aboard a B-17, you were unfortunately thousands of times more likely to be killed by flak than you were by another B-17’s cannons.