How did they shoot machine guns through propellers?
Machine guns were mounted on the top of the fuselage, directly in front of the pilot, but that position placed the gun directly behind the propeller. The gun had to be designed to fire through the propeller without hitting it, which was not an easy task.
What invention allowed the bullets of a mounted machine gun to be synchronized with the propeller?
interrupter
However, if the machine gun was mounted at the front of the plane, the propeller would get in the way of the bullets. An invention called an “interrupter” was invented by the Germans that allowed the machine gun to be synchronized with the propeller. Soon all fighter planes used this invention.
How do propellers work?
The propeller works by displacing the air pulling it behind itself (the action), this movement of air then results in the aircraft being pushed forward from the resulting pressure difference (the opposite reaction). The more air that is pulled behind the propeller the more thrust or forward propulsion is generated.
How do gun mechanisms work?
In the most basic sense, guns work like this: A bullet is loaded into the rear of the barrel, which is a tube connected to the firing pin. That explosion ignites the gunpowder, which is tucked inside the shell casing surrounding the bullet.
How did planes not shoot the propeller?
The aircraft had a mechanical linkage to prevent the gun(s) from firing when the propeller blade would be in the bullets’ path. The use of metal “armor” on the propeller blade was dropped when machine guns changed to fire larger bullets with more force/mass/velocity, like the . 50 caliber (0.5 inch diameter) bullets.
Did they use gas in ww1?
One of the enduring hallmarks of WWI was the large-scale use of chemical weapons, commonly called, simply, ‘gas’. Masked soldiers charge through a cloud of gas. Several chemicals were weaponized in WWI and France actually was the first to use gas – they deployed tear gas in August 1914.