"Successful Air-To-Air Combat " Topic
4 Posts
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Tango01 | 21 Jun 2016 9:22 p.m. PST |
"The key to successful air-to-air combat was first discovered by the French and then refined by the Germans. In late 1914 Roland Garros, one of the leading prewar French airmen, began work on a synchronizing gear to prevent the machinegun from firing when the propeller blades passed in front of it; because the synchronizing gear did not work all the time, he shielded the propeller with deflector blades. Garros shot down three German aircraft in an eighteen day period from 1 April 1915; but on 18 April he himself was shot down by anti-aircraft fire, and both he and his aircraft fell into German hands. As was so often the case in the First World War, the Germans took a first-class French idea and refined it. They were already working on such a device, but now they were spurred on by knowledge that the French were also working on the problem. A Dutch entrepreneur in Germany, Anthony Fokker, and his design team evolved a successful interrupter gear that prevented the machine-gun from firing when the propeller was directly in front of it. Offered the chance to test the mechanism, Fokker declined at the last moment and left it to German pilots to test the new technology. Beginning in August 1915 the Germans, flying the Fokker Eindekker, took an increasing toll of British and French aircraft in the west. Because the Germans were on the defensive in that theater, the Eindekkers remained over German-held territory and none fell into Allied hands. Allied pilots attempted various makeshift devices to get round the propeller problem. Captain Lanoe Hawker strapped a machine-gun on the side of his Scout with a slightly downward trajectory in order to miss the propeller. In late July 1915 he actually shot down a German reconnaissance aircraft flying straight and level, for which action he received a Victoria Cross – deserved more for his flying skill than for his bravery…" Full text here link Amicalement Armand |
Fish | 21 Jun 2016 11:08 p.m. PST |
Wasn't the Eindekker era called "The Fokker Scourge" because of the effectiveness (of the weapon system)? |
Tango01 | 22 Jun 2016 11:35 a.m. PST |
Part II here… link Amicalement Armand |
Sailor Steve | 22 Jun 2016 5:02 p.m. PST |
I see several mistakes in those articles, though the basic premise is sound. First, Roland Garros did not work on a synchronizer gear. Garros contacted synchronizer patent holder Raymond Saulnier. Saulnier's system probably would have worked just fine except the Hotchkiss gun, like the American-designed British Lewis gun, did not have a consistent rate of fire and was not amenable to synchronizing. The deflector-wedge system was developed by Saulnier, Garros and Garros's mechanic Jules Hue. Anthony Fokker's team were almost certainly working from the design patented in 1913 by Swiss engineer Franz Schneider. link "…deserved more for his flying skill than for his bravery…"? Hawkers VC was for attacking three German two-seaters in formation at the same time. He shot two of them down and the third escaped. These were Albatros C.Is, the "C" designation meaning they were armed, and shooting back. From the VC citation: "The personal bravery shown by this Officer was of the very highest order, as the enemy's aircraft were armed with machine guns, and all carried a passenger as well as the pilot." link |
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