&gt; It would probably have been better to omit those heavy guns and turrets and to leave those gunners on the ground to save weight, lives, and resources.<p>Yep.  The Mosquito was the safest (for the crew) bomber of the war, hugely more accurate and effective than the heavies.  But heavies were the dogma of the politically influential in the air forces of Britain and the US, so much as battleships kept being considered the key asset long after they were actually irrelevant, thousands of young men were strapped into pointless flying coffins.