Bomber crew: the Leviathan gets a tail gunner and a top gunner
The Leviathan has always worn a tail glasshouse and a dorsal dome — painted on, guns for show. Now they're seats. One player flies the bomber; a second and third crew the tail stinger and the top turret, each a twin .50 cal modeled on a B-17's defensive blister positions. It's the game's first multi-crew aircraft, and it changes what it means to press a bomber's six.
Two seats, one airframe
Pick BOMBER CREW on the spawn screen — it sits right next to AIRCRAFT — and choose the tail or the top. You drop into a seat on a friendly Leviathan that's already flying, on one crewed by a human pilot when there is one, so crews of friends form up naturally. From the seat, your view is first person over the barrels: the tail gunner owns the rear cone, a wide arc around dead astern; the top gunner rides a full-circle ring, from the horizon to nearly straight up. Mouse slews the mount, the trigger fires both barrels, and the lead pip works just like the wing guns — deflection plus gravity drop — so leading a crossing fighter feels exactly like gunnery everywhere else in the game.
The crew shares the airframe in every sense. Rounds that hit the bomber hit the bomber — there is no shooting the gunner out of his blister — and if she goes down, pilot and gunners go down with her, each a kill for whoever did it. Your own kills are your own: a fighter that comes apart under your tracers goes on your ledger (and counts toward the manned-gun daily missions). Bail out with F anytime; die with the ship and the sticky seat choice re-forms the crew on the next friendly bomber that's flying.
Your gun is bolted to the plane
The mount is aimed relative to the airframe, not the world: zero yaw is straight over the nose, and your traverse and elevation arcs travel with the bomber. So when the pilot banks into a turn, your point of aim rides with the plane instead of sliding away across the sky — you keep the bead you had. And your rounds are born moving with the bomber, its speed added to the muzzle velocity, just like real defensive fire.
Your view answers the mouse instantly, with no lag between your hand and the barrels. And when the top turret swings to track a fighter across a formation, that's another player's hands doing it, and everyone in the sky can see the turret move.
Why a bomber, why now
The Leviathan flies straight and level by doctrine — it's the only plane with a bombsight, and its whole job is holding a run while the flak hunts it. That made it the game's most defenseless ride and its most natural social hook: the pilot is busy walking the pipper onto the target, which is exactly when a fighter parks on his six. Now that parking spot has two .50s waiting in it, and the counter-play writes itself — attack from the low front quarter where neither arc reaches, or pay for the lazy saddle-up. A crewed bomber with an escort is a flying strongpoint; an empty one is the same fat target it always was. Man the guns.
The best seat in a bomber isn't the pilot's — it's the one behind the guns, next to a friend you talked into the sortie.