"and manoeuvrability. Designed as a fighter, a Lewis machine gun was installed above the pilot, placed above the propeller disc, with an eye level sight. The first synchronization devices, which allowed a weapon to shoot with confidence through the blades of a propeller in motion, would not make their appearance until the Fokker ""Eindecker"" during 1915, although many experiments had been conducted by the French since 1913. Only a single Caproni Ca.20 was ever built, because the Italian government rejected the design in favor of bomber aircraft. The prototype was stored in a barn on Giovanni Battista Caproni's property for"
"feature of the forward-firing synchronised machine gun to the embryonic force of ""Fliegertruppe"" pilots of the German Empire. The first successful engagement involving a synchronised-gun-armed aircraft occurred on the afternoon of July 1, 1915, to the east of Lunéville, France when ""Leutnant"" Kurt Wintgens, one of the pilots selected by Fokker to demonstrate the small series of five Eindecker prototype aircraft, forced down a French Morane-Saulnier ""Parasol"" two seat observation monoplane behind Allied lines with his Fokker M.5K/MG Eindecker production prototype aircraft, carrying the IdFlieg military serial number ""E.5/15"". Some 200 shots from the synchronised Parabellum MG14 machine gun on"
"Air Service. The final solution was the synchronization gear, more properly known as a gun synchronizer, developed by Anthony Fokker and fitted to the Fokker E.I monoplane in 1915. The first British ""tractor"" to be specifically designed to be fitted with synchronization gear was the Sopwith 1½ Strutter which did not enter service until early 1916. Other solutions to avoiding the propeller arc include passing the gun's barrel through the propeller's hub or spinner (the nose of the aircraft) – first used in production military aircraft with the World War I French SPAD S.XII – or mounting guns in the"
"a copy. The Fokker company produced the (push rod controller), a genuine synchronisation gear. Impulses from a cam driven by the engine controlled the firing of the machine-gun so it could fire forwards without damaging the propeller. Unlike earlier proposed gears the was fitted to an aircraft and proved in flight. In a postwar biography, Fokker claimed that he designed and built the gear in 48hours but it was probably designed by Heinrich Lübbe, a ""Fokker Flugzeugbau"" engineer. Among several pre-war patents for similar devices was that of Franz Schneider, a Swiss engineer who had worked for Nieuport and the"
"Franz Schneider (engineer) Franz Schneider was a Swiss engineer and aircraft designer. Although he designed several aircraft types, initially for the French aircraft manufacturer Nieuport, and later for the German LVG company, he is chiefly remembered for his work in the field of aircraft armament. Schneider was granted the first patent (on 15 July 1913) for an interrupter gear allowing a machine gun to fire between an aircraft's spinning propeller blades. Full details of Schneider's patent were published in the aviation periodical ""Flugsport"" in September 1914 but the Prussian War Ministry chose not to pursue the idea. The concept of"
"Synchronization gear A synchronization gear, or a gun synchronizer, sometimes rather less accurately called an interrupter, is attached to the armament of a single-engine tractor-configuration aircraft so it can fire through the arc of its spinning propeller without bullets striking the blades. The idea presupposes a fixed armament directed by aiming the aircraft in which it is fitted at the target, rather than aiming the gun independently. There are many practical problems, mostly arising from the inherently imprecise nature of an automatic gun's firing, the great (and varying) velocity of the blades of a spinning propeller, and the very high"
"the late spring of 1915, the Germans invented the gun synchronizer that allowed a machine gun to fire through the propeller, but at the time of Roser's death the British had not developed a similar system. So Lanoe Hawker put a Lewis Gun at the side of his plane firing at an angle forwards and sideways, so that it could not shoot the blades of his own propeller. On 25 July 1915 three German planes flew over Allied territory. Hawker was flying alone, but took on all three. The first plane he tried to shoot at was seen to spin"
"Raymond Saulnier patented a practical device in April 1914, but trials were unsuccessful because of the propensity of the machine gun employed to hang fire due to unreliable ammunition. In December 1914, French aviator Roland Garros asked Saulnier to install his synchronization gear on Garros' Morane-Saulnier Type L. Unfortunately the gas-operated Hotchkiss machine gun he was provided had an erratic rate of fire and it was impossible to synchronize it with a spinning propeller. As an interim measure, the propeller blades were armored and fitted with metal wedges to protect the pilot from ricochets. Garros' modified monoplane was first flown"
"could be aimed by ""aiming the aircraft"". It was also important that the breech of the weapon be readily accessible to the pilot, so that he could clear the jams and stoppages to which early machine guns were prone. However, this presented an obvious problem: a percentage of bullets fired ""free"" through a revolving propeller will strike the blades, with predictable results. Early experiments with synchronised machine guns had been carried out in several countries before the war. Franz Schneider, then working for Nieuport in France but later working for L.V.G. in Germany, patented a synchronisation gear on 15 July"
"1921 Lübbe purchased the bankrupt Friedrichshafen naval yards which had manufactured aircraft during the war. In 1925 he renamed the company Arado but his refusal to join the Nazi Party in 1936 led to his removal when Arado was nationalized. Heinrich Lübbe Heinrich Lübbe (, 12 January 1884, Nienburg, Province of Hanover – 14 March 1940 in Berlin) was a German engineer working for Dutch aircraft designer Anthony Fokker during the First World War, devised the pioneering ""Stangensteuerung"" gun synchronizer which enabled a machine gun to fire through the arc of a fighter aircraft's propeller without the bullets striking the"
"numerous bullets strike. Synchronization gear A synchronization gear, or a gun synchronizer, sometimes rather less accurately called an interrupter, is attached to the armament of a single-engine tractor-configuration aircraft so it can fire through the arc of its spinning propeller without bullets striking the blades. The idea presupposes a fixed armament directed by aiming the aircraft in which it is fitted at the target, rather than aiming the gun independently. There are many practical problems, mostly arising from the inherently imprecise nature of an automatic gun's firing, the great (and varying) velocity of the blades of a spinning propeller, and"
"machine gun firing through the propeller, which was fitted with metal plates to deflect any bullets that struck it. This was flown with success by Roland Garros, who would later be considered to be the first French Ace. A similar system was fitted to the Type N pending the arrival of other machine guns, which made the system workable. While flying his modified Type L, Garros crashed on the German side of the lines and the wreckage was examined by Fokker just prior to Fokker producing a similar system. After the war, Morane-Saulnier produced a number of designs for training"
"mechanism for synchronising the firing of a machine gun with the blades of a moving propeller, followed quickly by the widespread adoption of synchronisation gears by all the combatants in 1916 and 1917, the tractor configuration became almost universally favoured and pushers were reduced to the tiny minority of new aircraft designs that had a specific reason for using the arrangement. Both the British and French continued to use pusher configured bombers, though there was no clear preference either way until 1917. Such aircraft included (apart from the products of the Farman company itself) the Voisin bombers (3,200 built), the"
"descent from the 1½ Strutter. The Pup and 1½ Strutter were the first successful British tractor fighters equipped with a synchronisation gear to allow a machine gun to fire through the rotating propeller. This gear was known as the Sopwith-Kauper gear from its designers, although several other designs were used later. The Pup was widely used on the Western Front by the RFC and from ships by the RNAS from the autumn of 1916 to the early summer of 1917, and was considered a delight to fly by its pilots. It continued in use as an advanced trainer for the"
"guns were being tried for use on aircraft, the Lewis gun was found not to be usable with a gun synchronizer for forward firing through the propeller, due to its firing cycle starting with an open bolt. The Maxim style arms used by both the Allies, as the Vickers machine gun and Central Powers, as both the rectangular-receiver lMG 08 and lightened-receiver LMG 08/15 Spandau gun, and Parabellum LMG 14 gun — as well as the improvements introduced by Swedish armaments designer Carl Gustave Swebilius to the American M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun for aircraft use, creating the M1917 and M1918"
"Nieuport 17 The Nieuport 17 C.1 was a French sesquiplane fighter designed and manufactured by the Nieuport company during World War I. An improved development of the Nieuport 11/16, it was a little larger than its predecessors, and better adapted to the more powerful engine of the N.16. It also incorporated innovations such as the newly-developed Alkan-Hamy synchronization gear, permitting the use of a fuselage-mounted synchronised Vickers gun firing directly through the propeller arc. At the time of its introduction in March 1916, the type's outstanding manoeuvrability and excellent rate of climb gave it a significant advantage over other fighters"
"weeks later Garros force-landed behind German lines. His aeroplane was captured and sent to Dutch engineer Anthony Fokker, who soon produced a significant improvement, the interrupter gear, in which the machine gun is synchronised with the propeller so it fires in the intervals when the blades of the propeller are out of the line of fire. This advance was quickly ushered into service, in the Fokker E.I (""Eindecker"", or monoplane, Mark 1), the first single seat fighter aircraft to combine a reasonable maximum speed with an effective armament. Max Immelmann scored the first confirmed kill in an ""Eindecker"" on 1"
"Foster mounting was specifically designed for this kind of application, fitted with the Lewis Machine gun, which due to its design was unsuitable for synchronizing. The need to arm a tractor scout with a forward-firing gun whose bullets passed through the propeller arc was evident even before the outbreak of war and inventors in both France and Germany devised mechanisms that could time the firing of the individual rounds to avoid hitting the propeller blades. Franz Schneider, a Swiss engineer, had patented such a device in Germany in 1913, but his original work was not followed up. French aircraft designer"
"speed at which any gear synchronizing the two has to operate. Design and experimentation with gun synchronization had been underway in France and Germany in 1913–1914, following the ideas of August Euler, who seems to have been the first to suggest mounting a fixed armament firing in the direction of flight (in 1910). However, the first practical—if far from reliable—gear to enter operational service was that fitted to the Eindecker monoplane fighters, which entered squadron service with the German Air Service in mid-1915. The success of the Eindecker led to numerous gun synchronization devices, culminating in the reasonably reliable hydraulic"
"""fire the gun direct without the gear, and get the normal rate of fire of the ground gun"". Macmillan claimed that propellers with up to twenty hits nonetheless got their aircraft home. Some aspects of this information are hard to reconcile with the way a synchronized gun actually worked, and may well be a matter of Macmillan's memory playing tricks. Another ""field made"" synchronizer was the ARSIAD: produced by the Aeroplane Repair Section of the No.1 Aircraft Depot in 1916. Little specific seems to be known about it; although it may have been fitted to some early R.E.8s for which"
"plane by burning it. The wreckage was brought to Anthony Fokker, a Dutch designer who built aircraft for the Germans. Fokker decided that the wedges were much too risky, and improved the design by connecting the trigger of an MG 08 Maxim machine gun to the timing of the engine. The Germans acquired an early air superiority due to the invention of the synchronization gear in 1915, transforming air combat with the Fokker E.I, the first synchronized, forward firing fighter plane. On the evening of July 1, 1915, the very first aerial engagement by a fighter plane armed with a"
"synchronized, forward-firing machine gun occurred just to the east of Luneville, France. The German Fokker E.I was flown by Lieutenant Kurt Wintgens, earning the victory over a French two-seat observation monoplane. Later that same month, on July 25, 1915, British Royal Flying Corps (RFC) Major Lanoe Hawker, flying a very early production Bristol Scout C., attacked three separate aircraft during a single sortie, shooting down two with a non-synchronizable Lewis gun which was mounted next to his cockpit at an outwards angle to avoid hitting the propeller. He forced the third one down, and was awarded the Victoria Cross. Battles"
"of popular aviators. The Fokker E.I ""Eindecker"" (monoplane) was a hasty response to these first air to air victories achieved by French fliers. The nose of the ""Eindeckers"" were each fitted with a forward-firing air-cooled Parabellum machine gun slaved to Fokker's pioneering ""Stangensteuerung"" design gun synchronizer that prevented bullets from accidentally hitting the Fokker's propeller. Now when a pilot pointed his Fokker at an enemy aircraft, that aircraft became a potential target. The ""Eindecker's"" machine gun could spew hundreds of bullets from its belted ammunition without reloading; those few British Lewis guns in use had to reload after 47 shots."
"a working gun synchronizer enabled a period of German air superiority on the Western Front known as the Fokker Scourge. The German high command was protective of the synchronizer system, instructing pilots not to venture over enemy territory in case they were forced down and the secret revealed, but the basic principles involved were already common knowledge, and by the middle of 1916 several Allied synchronizers were already available in quantity. By this time, the Fokker ""Stangensteuerung"" gear, which had worked reasonably well for synchronizing a single gun, firing at a modest cyclic rate through a two-bladed propeller driven by"
"machine gun used was also changed — an lMG 08 machine gun, the so-called ""Spandau"", replacing the Parabellum used with the prototype gear. At this time the Parabellum was still in very short supply, and all available examples were required as observers' guns, the lighter and handier weapon being far superior in this role. The first victory using a synchronized gun-equipped fighter is now believed to have occurred on 1 July 1915 when ""Leutnant"" Kurt Wintgens of ""Feldflieger Abteilung 6b"", flying the Parabellum-armed Fokker M.5K/MG aircraft ""E.5/15"", forced down a French Morane-Saulnier Type L east of Lunéville. Exclusive possession of"
"or Birkigt gears. French and British combat aircraft ordered for the American Expeditionary Force in 1917/18 were fitted with their ""native"" synchronization gears, including the Alkan-Hamy in Nieuports and French-built Sopwiths, the Birkigt gear in SPADs, and the C.C. gear for British types. The C.C. was also adopted for the twin M1917/18 Marlin machine guns fitted to the American built DH-4, and was itself made in America until the Nelson gear appeared in numbers. The Marlin gas operated gun proved less amenable to synchronization than the Vickers. It was found that ""rogue"" shots occasionally pierced the propeller, even when the"
"model of the synchronization gear first developed for the Fokker Eindecker. With the press of a button, guests can see how the propeller and rotary engine would move and coordinate the trigger action so pilots wouldn't shoot off their own propellers in combat. Along the long back stretch of this gallery are many aircraft both on the deck and hanging from the ceiling. Aircraft in this section include a Lincoln Standard J-1, Consolidated PT-1 Trusty, Aeronca C-3 Collegian, Ryan M-1 (replica), Fleet Model 2, Curtiss B-1 Robin, Gee Bee R-1, Bowlus SP-1 Albatross (reproduction), Ryan B-5 Brougham, Ryan STA, Piper"
"guns (rifles or machine guns) to fire around the propeller arc, either at an angle to the side – which made aiming difficult – or on the top wing of a biplane so that the bullets passed over the top of the propeller. The first system to fire through the propeller was developed by French engineer Eugene Gilbert for Morane-Saulnier and involved fitting metal ""deflector wedges"" to the propeller blades of a Morane-Saulnier L monoplane. It was employed with immediate success by French aviator Roland Garros and was also used on at least one Sopwith Tabloid of the Royal Naval"
"impossible to fire them through the spinning propeller of one's own aircraft without destroying one's own plane. Roland Garros, working with Morane Saulnier Aéroplanes, was the first to solve this problem by attaching steel deflector wedges to the propeller. He achieved three kills but was shot down by ground fire and landed behind German lines. Anthony Fokker inspected the plane's wreckage and learned to improved the design by connecting the firing mechanism of the gun to the timing of the engine, thus allowing the gun to fire through the propeller without making contact with the propeller. As technology rapidly advanced,"
"Sopwith 1½ Strutter The Sopwith Strutter was a British single- or two-seat multi-role biplane aircraft of the First World War. It was significant as the first British two-seat tractor fighter and the first British aircraft to enter service with a synchronised machine gun. It was given the name Strutter because of the long and short cabane struts that supported the top wing. The type was operated by both British air services and was in widespread but lacklustre service with the French ""Aéronautique Militaire"". In December 1914, the Sopwith Aviation Company designed a small, two-seat biplane powered by an Gnome rotary"
"was eventually purchased by Aérospatiale. The company and Saulnier himself had a significant role in the development of the concept of synchronising machine gun fire through an aircraft's propeller. Morane-Saulnier Aéroplanes Morane-Saulnier was a French aircraft manufacturing company formed in October 1911 by Raymond Saulnier (1881–1964) and the Morane brothers, Léon (1885–1918) and Robert (1886–1968). The company was taken over and diversified in the 1960s. Morane-Saulnier's first product was the Model A, a development of a monoplane design produced by the Morane company (sometimes called Morane-Borel, from the brothers partnership with Gabriel Borel). Using a wing-warping mechanism for control, this"
"Sikorsky S-16 The Sikorsky S-16, or RBVZ S-XVI (named after its manufacturer), was a Russian equi-span single-bay two-seat biplane designed by Igor Sikorsky in 1914-15. Conceived in response to demand for an escort fighter for the Ilya Muromets bombers, it was noteworthy in that it was one of the first aircraft to possess synchronisation gear for its 7.7 mm machine gun. The first S-XVI was completed on 6 February 1915 with an 80 hp engine instead of the intended 100 hp because of supply problems. On 17 December 1915, the Russian government placed an order for 18 aircraft, these being"
"gear was properly adjusted and otherwise functioning well. The problem was eventually resolved by modifications to the Marlin's trigger mechanism, but in the meantime the engineer Adolph L. Nelson at the Airplane Engineering Department at McCook Field had developed a new, mechanical gear especially adapted to the Marlin, officially known as the ""Nelson single shot synchronizer."" In place of the push rod common to many mechanical gears, or the ""pull rod"" of the Sopwith-Kauper, the Nelson gear used a cable held in tension for the transmission of firing impulses to the gun. Production models were largely too late for use"