The forgotten hero of the Battle of Britain: How ridiculed WWII RAF fighter plane was far deadlier than it was ever given credit for, claims new book

From Wikipedia: The 4 rear mounted .303’s could be fired forward, sorta. The turret was simply rotated into a forward firing position. Insulated cut off points in the turret’s rings prevented the guns from firing if they were aimed at the propeller blades or facing rearward at the plane’s tail. The guns function could be transferred to the pilot’s if/when desired but was not done often.

Chennault used the high speed diving attack and pass through on the Japanese. But at lower altitudes, below 16,000 feet, the P-40 could literally out-turn and out roll a 109.

And a lot gets made of how it couldn’t outmaneuver a Zero or Oscar, but that didn’t make the P-40 bad. There was no other fighter on earth including the Spitfire that could maneuver with those Jap planes.

But the P-40 was used throughout the war in both the Pacific, Europe, and Russia.

Germans used the same concept in their night fighters; usually pairs of cannon fixed to fire forward and up at 30 degrees. Took advantage of poor ventral defensive armament in British bombers.

They developed the "Kammhuber Line", named after its inventor, and used those aircraft to combat the British night bombers.

Military Wiki has a good explanation.

“Didn’t we have a twin engine night fighter that looked kind of like this?

Black Widow?” [blueunicorn6, post 21]

Northrop built the P-61 Black Widow for USAAF. Similar in configuration to Lockheed’s P-38, it had a central pod fuselage and twin booms to the outside, each mounting an R-2800 two-row radial engine turning out 2000 hp.

The P-61 was the first US warplane built expressly for night fighting, and the first designed to mount radar. It was armed with four 20mm cannon under the crew stations, fixed to fire forward, and four 50-cal machine guns in a turret atop the fuselage. The latter could traverse full-circle in azimuth and be elevated to 90 degrees, thus enabling attack from behind and below termed “zero deflection.” In actual operation, it proved unsuitable for a number of reasons and was often removed.

The reputation of Bolton Paul’s Defiant suffered because it wasn’t able to mix it up with single-seat fighters. In actual action it proved successful against bombers and other aircraft that also could not vie with single-seaters. And when airborne radar was installed, it enjoyed renewed success for a time.

But radar-equipped night fighters enjoyed only moderate successes until two-engine designs appeared. The extra power of two engines helped compensate for the additional weight of the second crewmember and the radar equipment.

Single-seat fighters were also handicapped even after radar was installed: night air combat is very different from day air combat, and operating the radar on top of all the pilot had to do already quickly led to task saturation. Despite their outsize egoes, fighter pilots were overworked at night and simply couldn’t cope.

“An interceptor with no capability for firing forward. Brilliant.” [ClearCase_guy, post 2]

‘Interceptor” and “fighter” were in 1940 two different types of aircraft. Performance characteristics barely overlapped at all.

An interceptor had to possess a high rate of climb and high speed, to be launched against an attacking force, which it was expected to reach quickly. A large load of heavy weapons had to be carried, as it was assumed the attackers would be heavy bombers.

A fighter was intended to meet hostile fighters in flight and to contend against them in air-to-air combat. High top speed was useful but maneuverability was at least as important. Typically, this dictated lighter weapons and smaller loads of munitions, because heavy airplanes couldn’t maneuver so easily.

The distinction between the two aircraft types carried through into the 1970s. Since then, constraints have lessened some but will never be removed entirely. Thus highly maneuverable aircraft like the F-16 can’t carry much and can’t fly very far.

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