Machine gun synchronizer in slow motion - GIF

[rdarrylb]

Meyer77, Thanks for the heads up on that show! I do have Amazon Prime, so I will check it out. I have read extensively on WW1, especially the air war, but all other aspects, too. Continues to fascinate me. Yes, The Blue Max was a pretty good movie. Been several years since I've watched it.

(later today) I looked on Amazon Prime and it is called the Aces War. Watched the first episode. Learned a couple things, but also picked up two flaws. They say that the first plane to have synchronized machine guns was the Fokker D2 (in 1916). It was the Fokker E series that first carried a synchronized machine gun (in 1915). They also stated that Oswald Boelke was brought down by friendly fire from a squadron mate. All sources I have ever read say it was a mid air collision, specifically the landing gear of another plane hit his top wing. Still, I love to watch or read anything about WW1 aviation, so I will watch the second episode.
Cheers!

[TheElderBrother]

Why didn't they just mount the guns above the propellers? I've always found that intriguing. I know you probably needed them in the pilot's line of sight so he could aim properly, but surely they could have mounted guns on the wings above the props and worked out a system to help the pilot aim them at his quarry...

Then again, it's not like no one thought of that, so it must not have worked out.

[gatz]

The Blue Max was a good movie, indeed.
Ursula Andrews made it all the more enjoyable

[neilbourjaily]

Why didn't they just mount the guns above the propellers? I've always found that intriguing. I know you probably needed them in the pilot's line of sight so he could aim properly, but surely they could have mounted guns on the wings above the props and worked out a system to help the pilot aim them at his quarry...

Then again, it's not like no one thought of that, so it must not have worked out.

https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1369.htm

The British were first to mount forward-firing guns on the upper wing -- shooting over the propeller. But that made aiming hard, and it put the guns out of the pilot's easy reach when they jammed. The French took the next step. They put metal deflectors on the propeller so the pilot could fire straight through the blades, with a bullet glancing off now and then. That worked until crankshafts deformed under the hammering of their own pilots' bullets.

Enter now Holland's Anthony Fokker. The year before WW-I began, Fokker was only 23 and building airplanes. Germany contracted with him to build ten airplanes, and he went to work. War broke out months later, and Fokker was suddenly Germany's man-of-the-hour. By 1915 his monoplane, the Eindecker, was doing frontline scout work. Then the Germans brought him a captured French plane with metal plates on the propeller. Could he do that with the Eindecker? Fokker tells what happened next, in his autobiography:

They handed him the plane late on a Tuesday afternoon. Fokker said, "Wait a minute!" The way around the problem is to let the propeller fire the gun. The propeller turns at 1200 rpm, and the gun fires 600 times a minute. Put a cam on the shaft and let it fire the gun every other turn. Then no bullet will ever hit the prop. Fokker came back with a synchronized machine gun that Friday.

[rdarrylb]

They did. It was mounted on the upper wing of the Nieuports (11? and I know the 17, and probably other aircraft) to fire above the propeller arc. It was a Lewis machine gun which fired from a circular drum magazine. To change the drum. one would have to stand up and somehow steady the craft with the joystick between the knees. Some one finally came up with the Foster mount (probably a Mr. Foster), which was a curved rail that allowed the gun to be pulled back to shoot upwards into the belly of an aircraft, and made changing the drums easier. The later SE5a had a synchronized Vickers gun through the prop and a Lewis gun on a Foster mount.