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The gun was mounted on a hydraulically-powered pedestal--essentially, it was a turret with no rotating glass. You can find photos of the only surviving mount online at a museum web site.The hood the flipped up in front of the gun station was an air brake--or rather, a wind break. The slipstream was so strong that the gunner couldn't operate without something to break up the airflow. You see a more extreme version of this Hawker Demon turret fighter, where they put an almost cylindrical windshield around the gunner.The point was to clear the 6 o'clock line for the cannon. The LeO451 and the Am35 series were supposed to be so fast that fighters would only be able to make relatively slow approaches from astern. The best tactic for that fighter would be to hide in the blind spot caused by the tail.There were at least two problems with achieving a much wider firing arc. First, the narrow fuselage of the LeO451 simply didn't have enough space for everything to rotate much further. The gunner's seat was attached to the rotating pedestal, so there has to be enough space on both sides for him to be swung around. Of course, there's all sorts of junk on the front of the pedestal as well. Second, the long barrel of the HS.404 created increasing drag as it swung further to the side. The British attempts to build twin-engine bomber-destroyer turret fighters with quad Hispano-Suizas failed in great part because the hydraulics couldn't manage to be both powerful enough to overcome the immense drag and precise enough to aim toward the rear when there wasn't a huge load on the system. The Germans eventually modified the 20mm mounts in the Am451s for a much wider arc of fire, but only for use on the ground as flak! Since they were firing up, some problems went away.
The gun was mounted on a hydraulically-powered pedestal--essentially, it was a turret with no rotating glass. You can find photos of the only surviving mount online at a museum web site.
The hood the flipped up in front of the gun station was an air brake--or rather, a wind break. The slipstream was so strong that the gunner couldn't operate without something to break up the airflow. You see a more extreme version of this Hawker Demon turret fighter, where they put an almost cylindrical windshield around the gunner.
The point was to clear the 6 o'clock line for the cannon. The LeO451 and the Am35 series were supposed to be so fast that fighters would only be able to make relatively slow approaches from astern. The best tactic for that fighter would be to hide in the blind spot caused by the tail.
There were at least two problems with achieving a much wider firing arc. First, the narrow fuselage of the LeO451 simply didn't have enough space for everything to rotate much further. The gunner's seat was attached to the rotating pedestal, so there has to be enough space on both sides for him to be swung around. Of course, there's all sorts of junk on the front of the pedestal as well. Second, the long barrel of the HS.404 created increasing drag as it swung further to the side. The British attempts to build twin-engine bomber-destroyer turret fighters with quad Hispano-Suizas failed in great part because the hydraulics couldn't manage to be both powerful enough to overcome the immense drag and precise enough to aim toward the rear when there wasn't a huge load on the system. The Germans eventually modified the 20mm mounts in the Am451s for a much wider arc of fire, but only for use on the ground as flak! Since they were firing up, some problems went away.
