Originally Posted by
boisbrule
I have understood for many years that the person responsible for persuading the RAF to move to an 8 gun fighter armament was Air Marshal Sir Ralph Sorley, a squadron leader in 1934. The Wikipedia article on Sorley mentions that Captain Hill helped with the calculations. It's nice that a 13 year old girl was involved and is now recognized, but I reckon that the Sorley would have gotten *someone* to do the calculations regardless. I don't much like journalists bending a story to make it more saleable.
Sorley was certainly involved in conducting firing tests on old airframes to assess actual damage 4 v 8 guns. This must have been quite convincing because both Hawkers and Supermarine had to adapt the wing design and gun heating system to suit and only 8 gun versions went into production. Hawkers had little problem with the thick Hurricane wing and ended up with a concentrated group of 4, but Supermarine had far more engineering to do with their 'racer', not only with the fit, but also heating. I suspect the practical trials were the game changer, and we did not have an 'in house' canon at the time. I suspect the Mig 15 large canon fit was more to do with it being able to clobber B29's rather than dog fight with American fighters.