I recall an anecdote from WWII...US bombers in the Pacific could not hit the small, flat-bottomed boats the Japs (can we still call them that?) were using to ferry materials and supplies from island to island. They had lead motor-boats pulling trains of flat-bottom boats. The US troops took the matter in their own hands, producing racks of .50 Brownings which they mounted in the noses of B-24/B-25s. With a ton of forward-firing fifty-cals, the pilots had only to point their planes at that which they wished to destroy, see where they were hitting, adjust, and that fucked the jap boat-trains right up. This design was then reported widely, it went back the USofA, where engineers professionalized the design and handed it to factories. It was mass-produced to specs, shipped back over to the bomber crews, who promptly put them in every plane they could to stop the supply trains going from island to island. It was a rare example of a feedback loop from the front to the manufacturing base and back.
I recall an anecdote from WWII...US bombers in the Pacific could not hit the small, flat-bottomed boats the Japs (can we still call them that?) were using to ferry materials and supplies from island to island. They had lead motor-boats pulling trains of flat-bottom boats. The US troops took the matter in their own hands, producing racks of .50 Brownings which they mounted in the noses of B-24/B-25s. With a ton of forward-firing fifty-cals, the pilots had only to point their planes at that which they wished to destroy, see where they were hitting, adjust, and that fucked the jap boat-trains right up. This design was then reported widely, it went back the USofA, where engineers professionalized the design and handed it to factories. It was mass-produced to specs, shipped back over to the bomber crews, who promptly put them in every plane they could to stop the supply trains going from island to island. It was a rare example of a feedback loop from the front to the manufacturing base and back.