and how come american designers never mounted weapons on the cowling for single-engines? the germans obviously regarded a line-of-sight -firing weapon to be so essential they were willing to make sacrifices for their me-109G series and the ta-152. when they interviewed saburo sakai, his favorite feature in the zero was not the maneuverablity (he missed the claude fighter,) not its rate of climb, but rather the twin 7.9mm cowling-mounted MGs. it seems he liked to take a snap shots right at the enemy's cockpit within 50 meters if possible --without cannon fire. sort of like hunting wild geese with an air gun.