>>10068066>The Russians had good guns with VERY high fire rate. >Placed in the nose.Indeed! The Russian UBs (12.7mm and 20mm) were some of the best aircraft guns ever made, and much better then the American M2, which was just a stripped-down version of the M-2 infantry machine gun; so it was much too heavy and fired too slow.
However, Russian fighter pilots used the M-2 to great effect without any complaint; when they got lend-lease P-40 Warhawks (earlier models,) they stripped the .30 caliber guns out of the wings and only used the two M-2 .50s in the nose (cowling mounted,) and were perfectly happy with the effectiveness. It was in large part because of their doctrine and the real nasty, close-in nature of the fights on the Eastern front.
>wing-mounted gunsYeah, wing-mounted guns need a set "convergence" point; which can cause problems. How many depends on the kind of aircraft you've got and how its likely to fight.
German fighters, for example - they were tiny, compared to American fighters, and had thin wings, and accelerated extremely fast. They'd come blasting in at extremely high closure rates, with narrow firing windows, and then zooooom past the target. So they'd open fire at 300 yards and break off at 50 yards or less - and they'd cover that distance in a second or two, at most. With wing-mounted guns (that they didn't have wing room to do in the first place) 90% of the firing pass would be outside or inside convergence.
American fighters, on the other hand, were huge hulking motherfuckers with lots of horsepower and room to spare; were more likely to take long tracking shots where volume of fire is more important, and were much more likely to "saddle up" on a target for the kill. Especially with the volume of fire all those guns put out, even if a target was inside or outside of convergence, it'd still get hosed.
