Machine guns

[Guest Sieben]

How did WW1 pilots fire their machine guns, especially the ones mounted on top of the wing? How did they change the magazines on those wing-mounted guns? I could research this myself, but you regulars seem to enjoy educating the ignorant so I thought I'd ask here first. Thanks in advance!

[Creaghorn 10]

How did WW1 pilots fire their machine guns, especially the ones mounted on top of the wing? How did they change the magazines on those wing-mounted guns? I could research this myself, but you regulars seem to enjoy educating the ignorant so I thought I'd ask here first. Thanks in advance!

 

 

look here. from 3:15 on you can see how it was like to change drums of lewis guns

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JpIrNB2N-w&feature=related

[Olham 164]

Creaghorn: look here. from 3:15 on you can see how it was like to change drums of lewis guns

 

 

The Bordeauxred Baron: Crumpet technolodgy! Mmuahahahahahaaaa!!!!

[Guest Sieben]

OK, you guys didn't take my ignorance literally enough. I've never seen the inside of one of these aeroplanes. Button on top of the joystick, like in the movies? Joystick trigger like we sim pilots use? Switch on the dashboard? Foot pedal? I'm serious (-ly ignorant).

[gaw 5]

OK, you guys didn't take my ignorance literally enough. I've never seen the inside of one of these aeroplanes. Button on top of the joystick, like in the movies? Joystick trigger like we sim pilots use? Switch on the dashboard? Foot pedal? I'm serious (-ly ignorant).

 

reasonable question.....all I can remember is from The Blue Max where old Stachel pulls a lever mounted between the two guns that I suppose activated the triggers mechanically...........or do I mistake. One hand on the stick, the other on a trigger bar????....there must have been something better....

[Creaghorn 10]

reasonable question.....all I can remember is from The Blue Max where old Stachel pulls a lever mounted between the two guns that I suppose activated the triggers mechanically...........or do I mistake. One hand on the stick, the other on a trigger bar????....there must have been something better....

 

that was wrong and reason it was this way is probably that the AC in blue max are more modern replicas or whatever. also when looking into blue max cockpits inside you could see there were more modern gauges etc. german AC mostly had a stick with a grip on each side wich you had to hold with both hands. trigger button was at the thumb on each side. so you could fire both guns by pushing both thumbs, or a single gun by pushing the apropriate button under the thumb.

[RAF_Louvert 101]

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Sieben, in the Camel there was a cocking lever for each MG, "A", and a single thumb button at the top center of the yoke to fire both, "B".

 

 

 

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Many of the planes, such as the DR1, had a trigger lever on the yoke for each MG, as has been mentioned here earlier.

 

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[RAF_Louvert 101]

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Quite right uncleal, they were either mechanical or hydraulic systems used to control the firing of the guns.

 

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[RAF_Louvert 101]

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Here is a diagram of how the Fokker mechanical system operated:

 

 

 

(From Wikipedia): Diagram of Fokker's synchronization mechanism. Pulling the green handle lowers the red cam follower onto the cam wheel attached to the propeller shaft. When the cam raises the follower, the blue rod is depressed against the spring, enabling the yellow trigger plate to be reached when the purple firing button is pressed. This image shows a side view of one of the original Spandau LMG 08 guns, somewhat different in appearance from the LMG 08/15 that later German fighters used.

 

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[RAF_Louvert 101]

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And for the best outline on how the hydraulic system worked, go here:

 

Firing Between The Props

 

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[Bullethead 12]

OK, you guys didn't take my ignorance literally enough. I've never seen the inside of one of these aeroplanes. Button on top of the joystick, like in the movies? Joystick trigger like we sim pilots use? Switch on the dashboard? Foot pedal? I'm serious (-ly ignorant).

 

I believe the top-wing Lewis was always fired mechanically via a cable. On the gun itself, there was a small gizmo bolted to the trigger guard. Inside this gizmo was some moving part with the cable attached on 1 end and the other end in contact with the trigger. Thus, a pull on the cable depressed the trigger and fired the gun. IIRC, they had a couple of different designs of gizmos but they all operated on this principle.

 

At its lower end, the cable couldn't be attached to the joystick because that would make make the gun fire when you pulled the stick back. But they couldn't let it hang loose or the wind would blow it back. So it was fastened to the airframe, IIRC near the throttle. You can sometimes see it in cockpit photos. Anyway, it appears the usual drill was to let go of the throttle and push or pull forwards or backwards anywhere on the cable above its lower fastening, which resulted in a pulling action at the trigger gizmo.

 

As for reloading the Lewis, in 1915-1916 the gun was in a fixed mounting so there was nothing for it but to stand up in the cockpit as shown in the video. This was seen as highly dangerous so a guy named Foster invented a sliding track to bring the gun to the pilot. This was fitted in later Nupes, the SE5, nightfighters, etc. The Foster mount was also operated by cables, but I'm not quite certain how they were rove. There was 1 cable for sure that unlocked the mechanism so the gun could slide, and there was quite certainly another cable that pulled the gun back up and forward to firing position. In many photos, you can see a 3rd cable attached to the butt of the Lewis, evidently for pulling it down and backwards.

 

I'm pretty sure the slide latch consisted of a springloaded pin that stuck through holes in the slide track. If you didn't pull its cable, then the pin would push itself into any hole encountered. Thus, if there were multiple holes in the track, to lock the gun at intermediate positions, you'd have to keep this cable pulled the whole time you were sliding the gun, so that's 1 hand occupied full-time during movement.

 

The main question to me is, how did they get the gun back up and forward? I figure the cable for this had to have gone to a reel, because when the gun was in firing position, there would have been several feet of this cable whipping around in your face otherwise. Also, Lewis guns weighed 20-odd pounds and you're trying both to lift it and move it forward against the slipstream. Thus, some sort of mechanical advantage seems necessary.

 

So, this is just a guess, but I figure that getting the gun back up to its forward position involved flying along level with the stick between your knees. Then 1 hand kept the latch pin pulled back while the other cranked hard on the cable reel, winching the gun back into position. Of course, if there was only the 1 hole for the forward, level gun position, then you could fly with 1 hand while reeling with the other.

[RAF_Louvert 101]

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BH, they used a Bowden cable to control the trigger rather than simply a single open "wire". The Bowden cable is just like a choke cable in the old cars: a stiff wire running inside a wrapped spring wire outer sheath. This could be mounted anywhere and would not be affected by the movement of the yoke.

 

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[Bullethead 12]

BH, they used a Bowden cable to control the trigger rather than simply a single open "wire".

 

Yeah, but that was a later innovation. With those, often the Bowden cable went through the back of the pistol grip and pulled the trigger itself from behind, rather than operating some moving part to push the trigger from the front. But originally, they had a bare cable fixed to the airframe.

 

I'm still curious as to how they got the gun back up into its forward position.

[RAF_Louvert 101]

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Couldn't of been too much later BH as I've seen mention made of the Bowden cable in this type of application in tech manuals published as early as 1915.

 

 

As to sliding the Lewis up along the Foster mount rail and getting it back in place, it looks to me from the following photo that about all you could do was have your seat belts loose enough to allow you to stretch up and push it into place. I assume the locking pin was spring-loaded so that it would snap back into the dentent once the sweet spot was hit. However they did it, it doesn't look like it was any too easy while trying to survive a dog fight.

 

 

 

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[UK_Widowmaker 571]

Everything you wanted to know about WW1 aviation...but were too afraid to ask!..hahaha...brilliant read guys..thanks!

[Guest Sieben]

Everything you wanted to know about WW1 aviation...but were too afraid to ask!..hahaha...brilliant read guys..thanks!

 

I'm always impressed with the knowledge on tap here - thanks, all. I'm amazed the pilots could fly with all that "stuff" in front of their faces.

 

I understand why some early aeroplanes put the MG on top of the wing, but not why they continued such an aardvark arrangement in the SE5, the more so since the Lewis gun had limited ammo and was hard to reload. Why not just add a second gun firing through the propeller?

[RAF_Louvert 101]

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They did just that Sieben. The SE5 had one fixed Vickers firing through the prop and the Foster mount Lewis up top. BTW, that pic I posted is not an SE5 but rather an Avro 504K Home Defense kite.

 

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[RAF_Louvert 101]

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hee, hee, that's the truth uncleal. If you couldn't throw at least a few rounds into a Zep even with that set-up you should be flying a desk.

 

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[Guest Sieben]

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They did just that Sieben. The SE5 had one fixed Vickers firing through the prop and the Foster mount Lewis up top.

 

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Sorry, I didn't write clearly. I meant, why put a Lewis gun on top of the wing instead of adding a second Vickers firing through the prop?

[RAF_Louvert 101]

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As I recall there were a variety of reasons: mounting issues, synchronization issues, belt feed and spent shell issues, and the fact that in some applications having the ability to shoot "up" was considered a good thing. More than anything it was probably resistance to change. The Brits seemed to hold on to "tried and true" ideas far longer than other air services in WWI.

 

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[Flyby PC 23]

Thing that strikes me about the positioning of machine guns, why couldn't they mount them in a similar location to more modern fighters - out on the wing. No interruptor issues, relatively easy to aim, and I'm sure it wasn't a wing load issue.

 

Seems such an obvious solution, and surely no more complicated to engineer a firing mechanism.

[RAF_Louvert 101]

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While it may not have been a wing load issue Flyby PC, I can think of a slew of other concerns. First of all, given the habit of these early MG's jamming, you would have no hope of clearing it if they were located out on the wings. Secondly, the Lewis would have been out as a choice since the biggest ammo drum available was the 97-round unit, which proved to be even more prone to jams than the 47-round unit. At least the Vickers could handle a 250-round belt, which of course would present its own issues of where to stow it in the wing. Also, I have a bad feeling that the repeated recoil shock the outboard wing structures would have suffered from the MG's being mounted out there may well have led to some killer problems...literally.

 

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[Guest Sieben]

Thing that strikes me about the positioning of machine guns, why couldn't they mount them in a similar location to more modern fighters - out on the wing.

 

 

As has been pointed out, the wood and fabric wings probably wouldn't have taken the shock of machine guns firing and the wings were too thin to store the ammo belts. Plus, if the flight model is accurate, they don't do aileron rolls worth a d**n and putting that extra weight out on the wings would have made them even worse.

[Olham 164]

Here is one of Mark Miller's great detail graphics of an Albatros D V cockpit.

(For more, go to "The Aerodrome" website).

 

You see, that the Albatros had TWO separate gun buttons, one for each 08/15 "Spandau".

They could fire them single that way, as I just recently learned from our Creaghorn here.

 

 

[Bullethead 12]

As has been pointed out, the wood and fabric wings probably wouldn't have taken the shock of machine guns firing and the wings were too thin to store the ammo belts. Plus, if the flight model is accurate, they don't do aileron rolls worth a d**n and putting that extra weight out on the wings would have made them even worse.

 

The wings were up to it, no problem. After all, they could support usually at least 5x, and sometimes up to 9x, the weight of the entire plane, beside which a few dozen pounds of thrust from an MG firing was nothing.

 

The real problems were 1) lack of ammo stowage space, and 2) in accessiblility in flight. #1 precluded everything except the Lewis, which was the only magazine-fed MG with a large enough magazine to make it worthwhile. #2 was a major problem in WW1, where pilots demanded their MGs close enough to them to be able to try to clear the all-too-frequent jams. As a result of this, wing guns in WW1 were regarded as langiappe, always providing extra firepower to the fuselage guns and never being the only armament.

 

There were quite a few WW1 planes with wing guns. Besides all the early Nupes, there were BE12s with as many as 3 Lewises and various nightfighters with a pair. The Austro-Hungarians lacked synchronizers even longer than the Brits so had Schwartzlose guns on the upper wing even into early 1918. But what you're talking about is guns out to the sides. That happened also. Sopwith Dolphins sometimes moved their 2 Lewis guns from the cockpit to out under the lower wings. SPADs in Corps de Armee squadrons (instead of Groupes de Combat) sometimes mounted Lewises on their inner interplane struts for ground attack work, and I believe this idea was used on several other planes as well.