What is "tail gunner"

Gunner \Gun"ner\, n.

1. One who works a gun or cannon, whether on land, sea, or in the air; a cannoneer.

2. A warrant officer in the navy having charge of the ordnance on a vessel.

3. (Zo["o]l.)

   1. The great northern diver or loon. See Loon.

   2. The sea bream. [Prov. Eng. or Irish]

      Gunner's daughter, the gun to which men or boys were lashed for punishment. [Sailor's slang]
      --W. C. Russell.

      tail gunner (Mil.) A member of the crew of a bomber airplane who operates the defensive gun at the rear of the airplane.

n. 1 One who operates the gun or guns in the tail of a military aircraft, usually a bomber. 2 (context colloquial English) One whose function in an organization is to defend it from attackers, for example, in public relations or public affairs.

Tail Gunner is a monochrome vector arcade game created by Vectorbeam in 1979. The premise of the game is that the player is the tailgunner of a large space ship. Enemy spacecraft attack the vessel in groups of three, and the player must aim a set of crosshairs and shoot the enemies before they slip past the player's cannons. Because of the game's depicted viewpoint, instead of appearing to fly into the starfield, the stars move toward the center of the screen.

In addition to shooting down the enemy ships, the player is also given limited use of a shield that can block ships from passing. The game ends when ten ships slip past the player's cannon. The game was sold as Tail Gunner II in a sit down cabinet and its controls consisted of a single metal joystick with fire button integrated to the tip.

Tail Gunner's sound card was more complicated than any Cinemaware/Vectorbeam game before it. The cabinet uses the monitor's DAC to translate input from the joystick, so other games cannot necessarily be mounted in a Tail Gunner cabinet.