Propeller-coordinated machine gun

The invention: A mechanism that synchronized machine gun fire
with propeller movement to prevent World War I fighter plane
pilots from shooting off their own propellers during combat.
The people behind the invention:
Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker (1890-1939), a Dutch-born
American entrepreneur, pilot, aircraft designer, and
manufacturer
Roland Garros (1888-1918), a French aviator
Max Immelmann (1890-1916), a German aviator
Raymond Saulnier (1881-1964), a French aircraft designer and
manufacturer
French Innovation
The first true aerial combat ofWorldWar I took place in 1915. Before
then, weapons attached to airplanes were inadequate for any
real combat work. Hand-held weapons and clumsily mounted machine
guns were used by pilots and crew members in attempts to
convert their observation planes into fighters. On April 1, 1915, this
situation changed. From an airfield near Dunkerque, France, a
French airman, Lieutenant Roland Garros, took off in an airplane
equipped with a device that would make his plane the most feared
weapon in the air at that time.
During a visit to Paris, Garros met with Raymond Saulnier, a French
aircraft designer. In April of 1914, Saulnier had applied for a patent on
a device that mechanically linked the trigger of a machine
gun to a cam
on the engine shaft. Theoretically, such an assembly would allow the
gun to fire between the moving blades of the propeller. Unfortunately,
the available machine gun Saulnier used to test his device was a
Hotchkiss gun, which tended to fire at an uneven rate. On Garros’s arrival,
Saulnier showed him a new invention: a steel deflector shield
that, when fastened to the propeller, would deflect the small percentage
of mistimed bullets that would otherwise destroy the blade.
The first test-firing was a disaster, shooting the propeller off and
destroying the fuselage. Modifications were made to the deflector
braces, streamlining its form into a wedge shape with gutterchannels
for deflected bullets. The invention was attached to a
Morane-Saulnier monoplane, and on April 1, Garros took off alone
toward the German lines. Success was immediate. Garros shot
down a German observation plane that morning. During the next
two weeks, Garros shot down five more German aircraft.
German Luck
The German high command, frantic over the effectiveness of the
French “secret weapon,” sent out spies to try to steal the secret and
also ordered engineers to develop a similar weapon. Luck was with
them. On April 18, 1915, despite warnings by his superiors not to fly
over enemy-held territory, Garros was forced to crash-land behind
German lines with engine trouble. Before he could destroy his aircraft,
Garros and his plane were captured by German troops. The secret
weapon was revealed.
The Germans were ecstatic about the opportunity to examine
the new French weapon. Unlike the French, the Germans had the
first air-cooled machine gun, the Parabellum, which shot continuous
bands of one hundred bullets and was reliable enough to be
adapted to a timing mechanism.
In May of 1915, Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker was shown
Garros’s captured plane and was ordered to copy the idea. Instead,
Fokker and his assistant designed a new firing system. It is unclear
whether Fokker and his team were already working on a synchronizer
or to what extent they knew of Saulnier’s previous work in
France.Within several days, however, they had constructed a working
prototype and attached it to a Fokker Eindecker 1 airplane. The
design consisted of a simple linkage of cams and push-rods connected
to the oil-pump drive of an Oberursel engine and the trigger
of a Parabellum machine gun. The firing of the gun had to be timed
precisely to fire its six hundred rounds per minute between the
twelve-hundred-revolutions-per-minute propeller blades.
Fokker took his invention to Doberitz air base, and after a series of exhausting trials before the German high command, both on the
ground and in the air, he was allowed to take two prototypes of the
machine-gun-mounted airplanes to Douai in German-held France.
At Douai, two German pilots crowded into the cockpit with Fokker
and were given demonstrations of the plane’s capabilities. The airmen
were Oswald Boelcke, a test pilot and veteran of forty reconnaissance
missions, and Max Immelmann, a young, skillful aviator
who was assigned to the front.
When the first combat-ready versions of Fokker’s Eindecker 1
were delivered to the front lines, one was assigned to Boelcke, the
other to Immelmann. On August 1, 1915, with their aerodrome under attack from nine English bombers, Boelcke and Immelmann
manned their aircraft and attacked. Boelcke’s gun jammed, and he
was forced to cut off his attack and return to the aerodrome. Immelmann,
however, succeeded in shooting down one of the bombers
with his synchronized machine gun. It was the first victory credited
to the Fokker-designed weapon system.
Impact
At the outbreak of World War I, military strategists and commanders
on both sides saw the wartime function of airplanes as a
means to supply intelligence information behind enemy lines or as
airborne artillery spotting platforms. As the war progressed and aircraft
flew more or less freely across the trenches, providing vital information
to both armies, it became apparent to ground commanders
that while it was important to obtain intelligence on enemy
movements, it was important also to deny the enemy similar information.
Early in the war, the French used airplanes as strategic bombing
platforms. As both armies began to use their air forces for strategic
bombing of troops, railways, ports, and airfields, it became evident
that aircraft would have to be employed against enemy aircraft to
prevent reconnaissance and bombing raids.
With the invention of the synchronized forward-firing machine
gun, pilots could use their aircraft as attack weapons. Apilot finally
could coordinate control of his aircraft and his armaments with
maximum efficiency. This conversion of aircraft from nearly passive
observation platforms to attack fighters is the single greatest innovation
in the history of aerial warfare. The development of fighter
aircraft forced a change in military strategy, tactics, and logistics and
ushered in the era of modern warfare. Fighter planes are responsible
for the battle-tested military adage: Whoever controls the sky controls
the battlefield.