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Interesting weapons history
Back in the 1930s, the Army experimented with semi auto versions of the Browning M-2, meant as portable tank-killers. Back then, armor was thin enough to be punctured by guns of this class (the Pazer I's armor ran from a quarter inch to a half inch), and the great weight even of a relatively light M2 could be handled by a cavalry horse. Soon, of course, tank armor got thick enough to make .50 attack useless (except, as one British source writes, to alert the tank's crew to the fact that someone was annoying them and motivate them to go looking for their tormentor).
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The U.S. Army Air Corp discovered that they could bounce enough lead from the 6 M2s in the Thunderbolt off of a road behind a German Panzer to disable the engine on occasion. I'm guessing that was a pretty harry ride for the pilot considering the angle, altitude, and range were probably pretty small for each.
Interesting attempt there! It's great seeing the history of weapons like these.
Mustang had 6 and the Thunderbolt had 8, but who's counting?
Of course for a while there in the 1950s to 1980s the British favored coaxial ranging machine guns: tracer hits, send sabot. Which means the .50 ranging round could be followed immediately by its big brother.