Syncopated Fire Control, The

DESCRIPTION: "In F.E.s you can sit at east, The trigger squeeze, just as you please, Because you've got two guns To bring down lots of Huns." Of course, one might jam. Both might jam. Or you might shoot out your propeller with the syncopated fire control
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1967 (Ward-Jackson/Lucas-AirmansSongBook, which claims it dates from 1917)
KEYWORDS: pilot technology
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Ward-Jackson/Lucas-AirmansSongBook, p. 49, "The Syncopated Fire Control" (1 text, tune referenced)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Kipling Walk" (tune)
NOTES [253 words]: The military used aircraft in World War I from the start -- but initially they expected to use them only for reconnaissance; they were not designed to fight each other. So air crew started trying to dream up ways to fight, by carrying hand weapons or rifles. Later, machine guns were mounted for use by the observers in two-seater planes (a somewhat dangerous and inefficient proposition). What was wanted was a mechanism which would let the pilot automatically fire guns from the front of his plane while facing the enemy.
The solution was the interrupter gear, also called the synchronizing gear, which timed the firing of a machine gun so that it could fire *through* the propellor of a plane. I've seen various claims for who first designed such a thing, but, according to Stephen Pope and Elizabeth-Anne Wheal, Dictionary of the First World War, 1995 (I use the 2003 Pen & Sword paperback), p, 240, it was the Germans who first implemented it -- instantly making their planes by far the deadliest in the sky, and forcing other nations to scramble to create and install their own gears. Some of the first Allied models were not very successful, perhaps explaining this song.
It is interesting to note that the interrupter gear mostly went out of service after World War I; most World War II fighters had wing-mounted guns, and some, like the ME-109, had guns that fired through the center of the propeller. But the interrupter gear still qualifies as one of the more deadly inventions of World War I aviation. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: WJL049

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