1A member of the armed forces who operates or specializes in guns.

1. 1.1 (in the British army) an artillery soldier (used especially as an official term for a private).
   Example sentencesExamples

   • Finally, British gunners had perfected the ‘creeping barrage’ - an advancing line of gunfire behind whose cover the infantry could assault to within yards of the enemy positions.
   • Some time in the late afternoon of 9 September 1513, it had been fired by English gunners against the army of James IV of Scotland, who himself was to die before the day was done.
   • So, after gaining an insight into the School of Artillery, it seems making a good gunner involves much tenacity, endurance and substantially more than a desire to watch things explode.
   • If McBride was a gunner - a private soldier in the Royal Artillery - he possibly came from Newry.
   • Although the gunners may have a restricted field of fire, the flash, smoke or dust from the weapon firing will not be seen from outside.
   • For Gray, Kate Buckingham said he had won commendations during his long service in the Army as a gunner.
   • A British gunner died after his light armoured vehicle slid down a crumbling bank and overturned.
   • They will be joining nearly 150 Territorial Army gunners from across the country to form 220 Battery which is being sent to guard the Shaibah Logistics Base, eight kilometres south-west of Basra.
   • A total of 515 Royal Marine Commandos and gunners from RM Condor in Arbroath will spend the winter in Pristina helping the population to rebuild their country and restore a degree of normality.
   • More than 300 gunners from seven artillery units lined the road outside the cathedral.
   • In 1939 he joined the Territorial Army as a gunner, rising to the unlikely rank of Iroop Sergeant Major - apparently on the strength of his commanding voice.
   • Stuart Mason, 19, was due to fly out to Iraq next month to help the allied security forces as a gunner with the Territorial Army.
   • The Cape Corps provided gunners for the Coast Garrison Force.
   • Tom Dwyer, a gunner in the army, remembers driving onto Sword beach, on WW2 People's War.
   • Janey, a retired weaver, said John, who served in the Territorial Army as a gunner in the Second World War, would be looking down on the thieves in disgust.
2. 1.2 A member of an aircraft crew who operates a gun, especially (formerly) in a gun turret on a bomber.
   Example sentencesExamples

   • He flew 27 missions as a gunner on board Lancaster bombers before being selected in March 1943 for the now legendary 617 Squadron.
   • The flights were in trail, too far away from any gunners in our particular flight.
   • Meanwhile, Doug Sample, a Canadian veteran of the war, who served as a gunner in Halifax bombers of the Canadian 415 Squadron, has made his 20th visit to York.
   • His medical studies were interrupted by the second world war, during which he was a rear gunner on Lancaster bombers.
   • But the 17th mission proved to be the last the gunner and his 10 fellow crew members would fly.
   • He crawled back into the Mitchell and found the badly-injured turret gunner still inside.
   • This method had its dangers since the P38 was subjecting itself to antiaircraft fire from defenders as well as gunners aboard the Japanese bombers.
   • The tail gunner rotated the turret and opened fire on a dark shape less than 300 yards out.
   • Reg was the rear gunner in a Wellington bomber when it crashed while returning from a bombing mission in France.
   • My top turret gunner tracked him and kept firing until he saw him smoking, then bursting into flames and spinning toward the earth and then crashing.
   • Even though the ball turret gunner forgot to level his guns, we crash landed with out incident.
   • The gunner's ejection seat, however, was retained and can be occupied by an instructor or flight examiner.
   • The pilot, navigator, and the gunner lived in three entirely separate social worlds.
   • My boyhood dream was to be a tail gunner in the Royal Air Force.
   • He flew 56 dangerous missions over Germany as a rear gunner on a Lancaster bomber.
   • About the same time, the tail gunner calmly reported that he had been hit.
   • In World War II, anxious bomber crewmembers advised their gunners to use up the entire 27-foot-long machine-gun ammo belt on a persistent target.
   • Allied fighters could not touch it, and it presented bomber gunners with a near impossible leading aim calculation.
   • The visibility was limited for this gun and the top turret gunner provided adequate coverage of that area anyway.
   • There are several roles players can take on such as a fighter pilot, turret gunner, bomber, ship captain and base defender to name a few.
3. 1.3historical A naval warrant officer in charge of a ship's guns, gun crews, and ordnance stores.
   Example sentencesExamples

   • He stayed aboard with his first mate and a naval gunner.
   • Eric saw action in the Second World War as a ship's gunner in Burma, Malaya and the Middle East, before returning to the market.
   • But the ship's gunners were experienced and past their initial confusion and surprise.
   • A Royal Navy gunner remembers action on board HMS Ramillies on WW2 People's War.
   • Within three minutes, those of her 48 crew and the ship's gunner who had not managed to get into the lifeboats were in the water and swimming to them.

2A person who hunts game with a gun.