The Corsair prototype has the cockpit mounted nearer the front of the plane (91 cm more forward precisely).
Europe reports showed that the production Corsair would require additional gunpower, so they fitted six .50 calibre machineguns in the wings. Where the machine guns are now located, the wing fuel tanks occupied. To compensate for the loss of fuel capacity necessitated expansion of the tank at fuselage, this necessitated the movement of the cockpit backward in order to provide space for the engine.
Found this photo here; Quora in another answer.
The negative about flying the cockpit backwards’ was that the pilots view towards the front wing of the plane was impaired thus it was a very awkward plane to fly on aircrafts.
Edit: Wow has ever had that many views and upvotes in such a short time frame, thank you. :)
Armament of the prototype:
Two calibre .50 in the wings (one of which is on one wing, one on the other).
One .50 calibre and one .30 calibre behind the engine and firing through the propeller ring.
Odd armament consisting of one .30 and three .50.
Another Edit:
Why not shift the fuel tank back of the pilot to give him a better view? A fuel tank loses fuel in flight and by doing so this means that its weight alters with change of weights the plane’s center of gravity moves. The pilot would have to adjust the trim of his plane at intervals of a few minutes or the planes nose would slowly pitch downward. By keeping the fuel tank near the centre of lift the result of the centre of lift was minimised by avoiding unnecessary trims of the plane.
A little more research was done on wing fuel tanks. In wings in F4U-1A (primarily used in aircraft carriers) they had the additional fuel tanks of 235 litres capacity. They were missing on other models of the F4U.
These prototypes of P-13 had fuel tanks mounted on forward section of outer wings which were removed when the armament increased.
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