Just to put it a bit into retrospect, this dumb video
shows a 7.62 (.30
mini gun that fires at 3000 rounds per minute. I would certainly think that this baby would saw with ease through the tail section of a ME 109.
Now, if you look at
http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/BoB.htm you’ll see that the Hurricane and Spitfire equipped with .303s had a firing rate of 9600 rounds per minute. That’s more than 3 of these mini guns. Cleary they would do a lot more structural damage then what is being depicted.
Interestingly enough, in the article they also say that the Germans moved away from AP to HE for the reason of causing large structural damage which was more affective then targeting components. Clearly structural damage is being down played a lot more to what was actually happening.