No PS, the Russians really didn't succeed at anything airborne in WWII except full throttle balls to the wall 10000 feet or less, shoot everything at anything in the way no matter who's side it was on, in the air or on the ground on the way out and on the way back!
(Which is ONE of the reasons their most loved fighter, the one given only to the Guards (Aces) was the Bell P-39, what they called "The Little Shaver" ....it was perfect for that kind of "combat."
And oh yeah the Sturmovik wasn't so bad at ground attack either....kind of the first "Flying Tank..."
As far as the B-25 "Gunships," yeah they used a forward firing 75mm howitzer in later production "J" models but it was never a success....the recoil battered the airframe badly and the fuselage filled up with smoke and fumes quickly too...many times the 75 was removed in the field and more .50s were added in it's place.
What is cool is that the FIRST "Gunship" models were field expedient "B" and "C" models, along with the A20 "Havocs" which were just as deadly (and maybe as effective and were the unsung heroes of the war, but I digress!
) converted in the FIELD by "Pappy" Gunn (What a PERFECT name!
) in the 5th Air Force in New Guinea/Australia in 1942, where he faired over the glass nose and packed in there first 8 then 10 then later 12 .50s, with the firing solenoid on the pilots yoke...it was DEVASTATING. The hitting power of 10 fifties concentrated in such a small area was so much that just the .50s could punch a hole in the side of a freighter or Destroyer and sink it.
There are many first hand accounts of B-25 and A-20 Gunship pilots from the Kenney's 5th AF, my favorites are the ones that said the armorers were kept busy scrounging .50 barrels every day...like at the battle of Bismark Sea, one gunship coming in at wave top height at one of the troopships, hitting the "tit" they called it at about 2000 yds out, the plane feeling like it almost came to a stop from the recoil, and keeping it down for the whole run, and one by one the .50s cutting out from red hot barrels actually warping, so that when they flashed over the target they might have only one still going sounding like "putt putt putt!"
Coupled with skip bombing against shipping with 500# bombs, or against airfields using the "Kenney Cocktail" 12 pound parachute frags he developed before the war with delayed fuses, it was DEVASTATING. There is a famous picture of several of the B-25 Gunships wing tip to wing tip over the trees at Lae or Salamua airfields on a surprise raid at full throttle, with all the nose guns going, and hundreds of the "parafrags" streaming out behind ....and a BUNCH of Jap planes lined up under them that were ALL destroyed....
It was one of the few times that "Field Expediency" was adopted for production that quickly, so as many solid nose models were later produced as glass nosed ones, and "package" guns were added to the noses of just about all later models, glassed or not, and to just about every other twin engine bomber later produced, including B-26s, Lockheed Neptunes, etc, and led to the later A-26 Invader, which had the FIRST models designed as solid nose gunships....
But back to the topic, I think I just MIGHT have preferred actually FLYING in a 17 if I had to go to Berlin in either of them in 43 or 44...
While almost as many 17s were lost as 24s percentage wise compared to the number used, which is why I don't buy necessarily the claim that the 17 could "take" more damage, the fact is you don't see very many still or motion pictures of their wings folding up in a fireball from a single flak hit as you do 24s....not only were the 17s easier to fly with one or two engines out, it was easier to bail out of a plane going down if it still had BOTH wings....