Just remember Ross, the “Spitfire I” had the Ball lever, the rectangular one was Mk II.

Actually the adjective “Historic” refers to anything AFFECTING history. So an aircraft like say, the Fokker Eindecker or the Me 262 were HISTORIC from day one, as they represented a quantum shift in the particular area of interest to history.

“Historical” refers to something significant from the past which is really only significant to the viewer through the passage of time. Brown Bess, Sliced bread.

It certainly did, yes. As with everything in the air..it will never kill you, until it does 🙂

Most often it was badly adjusted gear or, on the later electrical types, I believe, sometimes “shorts”. My knowledge of the gear is really WWI based, so I can’t really comment on Spain. But in the majority of cases, failure will be failure to fire 14-18, rather than lost prop. During WWI structural failures, engine fires and engine failures were so common place that they do not even rate special mention. It was perfectly feasible to set a rotary on fire just by blipping for a bit too long whilst landing. The danger of shooting your prop off was small in comparison and provided you got shut down straight away, relatively harmless…just one more forced landing. The Camel, as an example, killed as many RFC pilots in training and active service accidents as it did enemy in action!
I think that could also be the rational behind lack of ground testing… I mean airmen fell into the props they were swinging so often, it also hardly gets a mention other than as a casualty. Pilots drank rum and milk before flying to ward off the effects of castor oil injested from the exhaust in rotaries, A different attitude, at least in the First War.

I have several CitARs that discuss it from memory but it is a long time since I have spooled up that microfilm machine. I will have a look at a couple of references on the weekend because I am almost certain it happened to both Max Immelmann and Boelke at least once each.

Buried in 27 years of OTF and C&C are several stories about sync gear, CC gear and plans etc. If anybody has a record of the issue numbers, by chance, I’ll be happy to pull them out.

With a blade passing the muzzle 2400 times every minute there is no way that a Vickers machine-gun could keep-up with a cam-operated synchronising-gear. Several blades must pass the muzzle, the ‘trigger’ being pulled by the synchronising-gear for each one, while the machine-gun is in the middle of its cycle (and therefore unable to fire).

That makes a lot more sense than the 200 RPM demonstration in the video (which seems to fire after every passing blade); at anything over 600 ‘passing blades’ a minute a Vickers machine-gun will effectively revert to its maximum cyclic rate of fire.

Precisely. Effectively the weapon becomes a semi automatic, being fired each time the action is ready AND a hydraulic pulse, mechanical pull or electromagnetic contact is made. That gives the maximum practical rate of 600 rounds per minute at any point the rpm are over 300. I say “over” not “at least” because there is some “wastage” of opportunity when a blade passes at a point that the gun action isn’t ready. Not a problem, as during combat it is extremely unlikely that a 1200rpm engine will be much throttled. Usually, then, the practical rate achieved is close to 600… Something north of 550.

It is interesting that two guns are really not any more complicated to manage than one if you fire the guns with the engine. Another advantage of firing, not interrupting, is that failure of the gear generally has the effect of stopping the guns hitting the propellor anyway. Failure of an interrupter gear has the opposite, unfortunate effect!!

CC Gear is an absolutely marvellous bit of engineering and very interesting to see. Being hydraulic, it was extremely reliable .

Great video, thanks!

(And SO nice to see it called Sync gear rather than incorrect “interupter gear” usually used!

I could not have put that better myself. Except that for g.o.o.g.l.e also insert w.i.k.i.p.e.d.i.a.

I’d stick to Great War Forum: it’s a rare thing these days: a place of calm and knowledge.

🙂 🙂 🙂