I enjoyed reading this article so much that I reblogged it. Originally it was written by “atcDave” and what I found especially interesting was the idea that in this particular case, history may have to be written by the losers. In the Comments section, the link provided by Pierre Lagacé is very good.
One of the ubiquitous aircraft types of World War II, the Il-2 Sturmovik was used in mass formations over the eastern front to wreak havoc on German armor.
Let’s take a brief look at this key close support type.
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John Knifton 
That rear gun looks dangerously like it could shoot the rear of the plane off!
You are absolutely right! In the west, they had two approaches to the problem. One was to have a wide, double tail, like the Lancaster or the Halifax. The other was to have what must have been almost primitive computers, which switched the gun off automatically when the tail was in danger.
Great reblog of a reblogged post.
A fabulous model isn’t it. My own recent post told a story of that very thing happening – shooting the stabiliser off a B-17 causing a crash. Wonder how many aircraft had this happen?
Yes, if you are at all interested in aircraft, then “Plane Dave” is the blog to follow. His skills at making kits are just fantastic. I would presume that shooting bits off your own aircraft must have been quite frequent, otherwise the double tail would not have been so common around this time…Hampden, Halifax, Lancaster, Bf110, various Dorniers, Mitsubishi “Nell” bomber. (Do we have the makings of a really good question for “Pointless” here?)