In early 1944 with things not going very well on the Eastern Front, the Luftwaffe found itself in dire need of a heavily armed attack aircraft that could destroy armored vehicles including tanks with something other than bombs. Germany had not developed weapons systems that would allow light fighter aircraft to be adapted to this role. This meant a trial and error method of finding the correct weaponry. One of the trials was labeled the Fw-190-8/R3 that along with the regular machine guns in the nose and wing roots, had two 30 mm Rheinmetall-Borsig MK 103 cannons mounted in under-wing pods.
There were only two of this variant produced because recoil of the cannons were so great that it would over stress the wing structure and cause it to break apart.
