“His designs”? Don’t you mean Howard Hughes designs?
For years the name Mitsubishi was changed to the English, Three Diamonds Brand so they could sell “fancy” tuna in the United States.
Remarkable man, that Hughes. All those planes that couldn’t take off or fell down on the first try..
It has been claimed that the Zero’s design showed clear influence from American fighter planes and components exported to Japan in the 1930s, and in particular the Vought V-143 fighter. Chance Vought had sold the prototype for this aircraft and its plans to Japan in 1937. Eugene Wilson, President of Vought, claimed that when shown a captured Zero in 1943, he found that “There on the floor was the Vought V 142 [sic] or just the spitting image of it, Japanese-made,” while the “power-plant installation was distinctly Chance Vought, the wheel stowage into the wing roots came from Northrop, and the Japanese designers had even copied the Navy inspection stamp from Pratt & Whitney type parts.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Zero
Of course Kalashnikov borrowed design elements from Schmeisser, Browning and others too.