Put 4 of those bad boys together in VN and you had
a quad 50,if you had a brave man in the seat it was
astounding what it`d do when there was incoming.
The `45 Colt,Ma Deuce ,B-52,some things just seem to work
All but the current model B-52s were armed with a quad .50. Old Ma flies too. The current model original had an M-62 Vulcan in the same "tail stinger" location. They've taken it off. While MA just keeps on keeping on, the tail gun fire control system didn't fare so well, and was rarely used anyway.
Shortly before I went on active duty with the USAF, the loggies were trying to get rid of the thing, and then some sergeant shot down a Mig over Hanoi with it. SAC wasn't going to let it go after that. Years later I worked on a proposal, peripherally at least, for a replacement for the fire control radar. That went nowhere in the era of Mr. Peanut, it couldn't be done for the peanuts they had allocated to the program.
Finally just a few years ago, the finally took the guns off altogether, about the same time they sent the -G models to the bone yard to be converted into aluminum foil and to satisfy one of the SALT treaties with the old Soviet Union.
The earliest model BUFFs had manually controlled guns, with the gunner in the tail, which got to be a pretty lonely place on long missions or when things went into the toilet.