Re: I've known a few folks ...
Other way round. The problem is the recoil cancelling out the forward mechanism causing the plane to plummet to the ground (or at least leading to a significant loss of control). The movement of the gun won't affect the way the bullet behaves – from a physics point of view the moving gun is just another inertial frame of reference (look it up).
As for rise that is entirely dependent on how the barrel is positioned with respect to the plane's centre of mass and its aerodynamic surfaces. I'm not an aeronautical engineer but I suspect that there was one on the team who new what they were doing since the plane isn't doing any backflips that I can see.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
