GUNS OF THE FIGHTING PLANES

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 64, 10 December 1918, Page 6

GUNS OF THE FIGHTING PLANES

(By John Steel, in tho "Daily Mail.")

The fighting 'planes of 19H carried armouries. Nobody believed that one 'plane could bring down another except by such heroic expedients as ramming. Everyone wanted to. try his hand. _ So one pilot would take up a crack sniper with a Service rifle in the observer's seat. Another would buy ah automatic pistol and stick a few spare dips of cartridges in the map box. A third pinned his faith to bombs, and earried two or three, hand grenades. Before long we lost all hope of hitting our elusive targets with imy single shot weapon. The niachinc-guu, with its cone-shaped hose of bullets, was obviously "tho goods" for the job, if anything w.ould do. So there was a craze for "pusher scouts." Their nose is like the side-car of a motor-cycle. The propeller is behind tho wings and. the gunner is stuck out in front all by himself, with a lovely field of fire. Also he is rather exposed. When a few of these front gunners had been killed we could see that behind the engine was the "pukka" place for the pilot. From two feet to six feet of iron and steel make a good shield. So some genius invented a gear which enables the gun to fire between the wooden propeller blades as they pass the gun muzzle. The pilot retired Isehind the engine and felt much cosier, thank you. Next, someone had a brain wave and introduced two guns. They are fixed to the fuselage, and you aim by pointing your "bus" bodily at the target till you get Jerry's head or petrol tank nicely ringed in the gun-sights. That's where the good pilot scores. Imagino you've been stalking an Albatross for twenty minutes. You're played hide and seek in and out' of the fleecy clouds. You've kept the sun at your back and in his eyes. You're a bare fifty feet behind his tail, and he doesn't know you're there: You cock your eye at the gun-sights. There's, his brown helmet just outside the ring,* an inch too high'and'half an inch to the left, You finger your controls/ with tho silkiness of a butterfly's wing. You think your guns are lined up, and you press tho trigger. You seo your bullets strike the Hun fuselage six inches low on the right. You have to correct* tho false \aiin in a fraction of a second, and you can only do it by tilting the aeroplane bodily in two directions simultaneously— a mnttor of inches each way. Meantime she's moving at 150 miles an hour. No room for leg-of-mutton fistwork here —it is more like a baby's kiss. ' The last word is tho third gun, beloved of tho late Captain Ball, V.C.-a Lewis gun, hinged on a pivot above tho top 'plane. As you slide under tho Hun you switch your hands lightningwise away from; the trigger of the twin if/out guns apd away from the controls of the 'plane. They fly up to tho butt of the Lewis, and—if you're an uncommonly good man—a burst perforates the Hun petrol (auk from beneath.

But it is not everyone who is quick enough to make good with tho third gun; and it also takes fivo mil& an hour off tho speed. Why? Just wind resistance: it doesn't take much to hold up a machine which is doing its two and a half miles per minute.