Is there a way to use the turret on the Thunderbolt? I can't find anything in the controls that says how to, but I see that my allies (and the enemy) can use theirs.
You can't take manual control of your turret, however, it does fire automatically, I think, at your target if it is in its line of sight. I your enemy is behind you, it should fire, even though you can't hear it.
EDIT - to clarify: by default, you can't hear your own turrets in the FSO engine. Now the feature exists in FSO 3.6.14, but it would need to be ported to the WCS engine, which I am not sure how difficult it is to do.