"Wasn't there a British pilot in WWI who had a flex-mounted forward firing MG on top of the wing, before the synchronization came into use?"
Not too sure about pre-syncronization, but Albert Ball was the most famous of the Allied airmen to use an upward slanting Lewis on the Foster mount on his se5 to shoot down enemy aircraft.
This concept was later dusted-off and re-introduced by the Germans in WW 2 in their slanted weapon 'schrage musik' installations. When RAF bomber crews started to report terrifying mid-air explosions on their trips over Europe, Bomber Command dismissed these as 'scarecrow' shells incorporated with the flak to frighten the aircrews. In the end of course it turned out that there were no such thing as scarecrow shells. It was really British bombers exploding in mid-air after being hit but schrage musik equiped night fighters that were causing the pyrotechnics displays.
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