.My mom grew up with a Landcaster chicken coop just north of Winnipeg.
Picture of the day
- Thread starter jwhc
- Start date
A lot of utility wagons were built with landing gear components.
My dad was a founder of the CATPM museum in Brandon, and spent a lot of the 1980's recovering old planes from farms in MB and SK. We have a glider that was transformed into a camper, a fuselage used as a smokehouse, and all kinds of other planes in various stages of "salvage". The Bolingbroke in front of the Travelodge on the highway is what I played in when I was young, it was in really good shape.
My dad was a founder of the CATPM museum in Brandon, and spent a lot of the 1980's recovering old planes from farms in MB and SK. We have a glider that was transformed into a camper, a fuselage used as a smokehouse, and all kinds of other planes in various stages of "salvage". The Bolingbroke in front of the Travelodge on the highway is what I played in when I was young, it was in really good shape.
- Location
- West Quebec
Wasn't there a system where the motor rotated along with the guns..when fired as an assembly?
That was with single engine fighter planes, where a machine gun was shooting through the propeller blades.
They used special ammunition. We had some after the war, in both 303 British and 30-06 calibres. It was marked on the boxes, "For synchronised guns."
You know, that's the first time I ever actually considered that point. I was always aware that the synchronised gearing was originally developed by Antoine Fokker for the German fighter planes in early WW1.
Pilots and observers had started out taking pistols and rifles up and shooting at each other, then they mounted MGs for the observers - especially useful on planes with pusher propellers like the Vickers "Gun Bus", because the observer sat in front of the pilot with a clear field of fire to the front. But except for Roland Garros, nobody had managed at first to figure out a way for the pilot of a single-seater "scout plane" with a normal "pulling" propeller to use a machine gun - because the propeller was in the way. (Garros solution was to weld steel armour plate onto his propeller and then just go ahead and fire a MG through it without worrying about any bullets that hit his own propeller blade. This did allow him to become the very first fighter ace of WW1, but (a) everybody else seems to have agreed that Garros was totally nuts, and (b) either the odds - or metal fatigue on his propeller - caught up with him within about a month, which didn't exactly encourage many other pilots to imitate him anyway.)
But Fokker realised that if he connected an interrupter gear from the propeller shaft to a fixed MG's trigger, he could regulate the MG so it would only fire when the propeller blade was out of the way of the bullet stream. This allowed him to mount a single fixed Maxim machine gun in front of the pilot of the Fokker D1, making it the pre-eminent fighter plane in the sky with an unbeatable advantage over the French and British planes - until one landed in the wrong place in the fog, the Allies captured it and then copied the interrupter gear.
But until you mentioned the special ammunition, it never ever occurred to me that the interrupter mechanism also had to be calibrated very precisely to the MG's ammunition - ignition speed, speed down the barrel, and muzzle velocity upon exit - to ensure that during the exact fraction of a second when a bullet was passing through the spot 18 inches in front of the gun(s) where the propeller was whirling around at several hundred rpm, the blade wasn't there.
You couldn't just use any old ammo to do that, could you? It would have to be ammo manufactured to very very fine tolerances for variations in muzzle velocity.
It really makes the development of the synchronized guns by Fokker in 1915 even more remarkable.
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Dark Alley Dan
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Darkest Edmonton
This is an interesting view:
Two 7.92 MG through the propeller arc, and a 20MM cannon firing through the hub. I've never seen the layout sans engine before.
Two 7.92 MG through the propeller arc, and a 20MM cannon firing through the hub. I've never seen the layout sans engine before.
A few only.
The Brits were never happy with the Fokker-type (patented in Switzerland in 1913) mechanical synchronisers, plumped for the Constantinescu type just as soon s it came out (1916). Constantinescu type was based on a hydrostatic line with bleed-off compartment. Push the lever and the line is pressurised again, allowing the cam plate on the back of the engine to trigger the guns when it was safe to fire them.
CC gear actually was used in Viet-Nam. Nobody has come up with anything more RELIABLE.
The Brits were never happy with the Fokker-type (patented in Switzerland in 1913) mechanical synchronisers, plumped for the Constantinescu type just as soon s it came out (1916). Constantinescu type was based on a hydrostatic line with bleed-off compartment. Push the lever and the line is pressurised again, allowing the cam plate on the back of the engine to trigger the guns when it was safe to fire them.
CC gear actually was used in Viet-Nam. Nobody has come up with anything more RELIABLE.
I believe that a number of WWI two seaters had a stop on the scarf ring to prevent shooting off one's rudder. Seems to me I recall a Bugs Bunny cartoon where Yosemite Sam does just that in a dog fight with Bugs.
O'Kelly's Boys
Regular
- Location
- Grande Prairie
Classic stuff. I believe he shoots his plane apart with a hand-held MG08 until he's just standing on a unicycle in the air! Bugs Bunny is the best.
Dark Alley Dan
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Darkest Edmonton
Those are some seriously historic markings. If only they could talk...
Semis were a possibility, too. As long as you found a way to keep brass out of the works:
Semis were a possibility, too. As long as you found a way to keep brass out of the works:
Dark Alley Dan
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Darkest Edmonton
Speaking of WW1, here's something you don't see every day:
The U118, washed ashore at Hastings, 1919. Big ol' thing, ain't she?
Backstory here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM_U-118
The U118, washed ashore at Hastings, 1919. Big ol' thing, ain't she?
Backstory here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM_U-118
This is an interesting view:
Two 7.92 MG through the propeller arc, and a 20MM cannon firing through the hub. I've never seen the layout sans engine before.
Yes, interesting. A lot of unnecessary complication to have interrupter gear for just two 7.92mm MGs though. They would have been better off with one 30mm and drop the MGs altogether. Must have used a very fast propellant to keep the fouling down. The complications of isolating a cannon firing through your engine, literally down the center of your crankshaft are huge, and of course you're limited to only one barrel. Much more difficult to service and maintain as well. But the old love of complication rising to the fore again!
Yes, I know that's the theory, but the trajectory is not the same, ruling out longer distances and only by using tracer in the MGs can you tell where they are shooting, and when your target sees the tracer flying past him, he tends to go into violent evasion manoeuvres. I guess it's significant that when they did move up to 30mm, they didn't put them through the engine IIRC. What's better and simple: one cannon through the prop boss or two or four cannon in the wings? In fairness though, it was a pre-war design, based more on WWI experience than anything else I suspect.
