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How did machine guns not shoot through propellers?

How did machine guns not shoot through propellers?

A synchronization gear (also known as a gun synchronizer or interrupter gear) was a device enabling a single-engine tractor configuration aircraft to fire its forward-firing armament through the arc of its spinning propeller without bullets striking the blades.

What is machine gun fire?

Machine gun, automatic weapon of small calibre that is capable of sustained rapid fire. Most machine guns are belt-fed weapons that fire from 500 to 1,000 rounds per minute and will continue to fire as long as the trigger is held back or until the supply of ammunition is exhausted.

What machine guns are used on planes?

The 30mm GAU-8/A Gatling gun is used on the U.S. Air Force’s A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft and the Navy’s Goalkeeper Close-In Weapon System. The GAU-8/A provides a reliable, high-rate-of-fire, combat-proven weapon for close air support and shipboard defense missions.

Did machine guns shoot 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.

How many bullets could a Spitfire shoot?

The wing used in the Mk 21 Spitfire was significantly redesigned. The leading edge lost its curve, running straight out to the guns. Armament was standardised at four 20mm Hispano Mk II cannon, with 175 rounds for the inboard gun and 150 for the outboard gun.

What happens if u fire a gun in space?

Fires can’t burn in the oxygen-free vacuum of space, but guns can shoot. In space, “it would be an expanding sphere of smoke from the tip of the barrel,” said Peter Schultz an astronomer at Brown University who researches impact craters.

How does a gun fire through a propeller?

What kind of guns were used in fighter planes?

Between the wars, machine-guns improved and the way they were mounted on planes changed. Multiple guns were carried, often in the wings of the aircraft. Air forces upgraded the weapons they were using. For example, the British went from firing 750 rounds per minute from a Lewis gun to 1200 from a Browning.

Why did Saulnier invent a forward firing machine gun?

He was in fact wrestling with the same problem confronting Schneider: The structural design of front-engine aircraft restricted the use of machine guns to a three-quarter rear field of fire by an observer sitting behind the pilot. Saulnier knew the solution lay in inventing a device that allowed the pilot to operate a forward-firing machine gun.

Who was the first pilot to down an airplane with a machine gun?

It made the airplane as important a war machine as the naval dreadnought.” Garros was 26 when he became the first pilot to down an enemy airplane with a machine gun firing through the propeller.

How many rounds per second did the aircraft gun fire?

Although the eight guns between them fired no fewer than 160 rounds per second (rps), they were initially adjusted to concentrate their fire at the long range of 365 m which led to the bullet strikes being spread across the target at shorter ranges.