We're talking about aviation. We often talk about the development of aircraft, especially often about the development of combat aircraft.
It must be said that none of the branches and branches of the armed forces has followed such a path of development as aviation. Well, perhaps the rocket troops, but you must agree, how can you talk about some kind of missiles, completely soulless gizmos, even if they have eroded to an impossible size, as about airplanes.
Airplane … The airplane still has a peculiar, but soul. But since its inception, the airplane, and then the airplane, for some reason, were considered by progressive mankind as excellent weapon platforms. However, this is common knowledge.
Today I want to talk about a rather inconspicuous contraption, which, nevertheless, had a tremendous impact on the transformation of an airplane into an airplane. Into a combat plane.
From the title it is clear that we are talking about a synchronizer.
We use this word very often in our aeronautical surveys and comparisons. Synchronous, non-synchronous, synchronized, and so on. Whether a machine gun or a cannon is not so important. The stages of development are important.
So, it all started in the First World War, when airplanes could take off and fly a certain number of kilometers and even make some evolutions in the air, called aerobatics.
Naturally, the pilots immediately dragged into the cockpits all sorts of nasty things like hand grenades that could be thrown at the heads of ground troops, pistols and revolvers, from which they could shoot at colleagues from the opposite side.
What is most interesting - they even got it.
But someone was the first to take a machine gun in flight … And then progress rushed headlong. And the plane from a reconnaissance or artillery spotter turned into an instrument of attack on the same airplanes, bomb carriers, airships and balloons.
But then the problems began. With a main rotor, which actually became an insurmountable obstacle in the path of bullets. More precisely, quite surmountable, but here's the problem: in the confrontation between wood and metal, metal always won, and an airplane without a propeller turned, at best, into a glider.
Before pushing the machine gun into the wing, it was still 20 years old, so it all started with the installation of a machine gun on the upper wing of the biplane. Or the use of a design with a pusher propeller, then it was easier to figure this out and land the shooter in front of the pilot or next to him.
In general, the rear engine layout also had advantages, as it provided a better view and did not interfere with shooting. However, it was immediately noticed that the pulling propeller in front provided a better rate of climb.
Among other things, firing a machine gun on the upper wing from outside the plane swept by the propeller was that still balancing act for a lone pilot. After all, it was necessary to get up, abandon some of the controls (and not all cars allowed such liberties), somehow steer if necessary, and then shoot.
Reloading the machine gun was also not the most convenient procedure.
In general, it was necessary to do something.
The first to come up with the innovation was Rolland Garros, a French pilot. It was a cutter / reflector in the form of steel triangular prisms, which were attached to a screw opposite the cut of the machine gun barrel at an angle of 45 degrees.
According to Garros's plan, the bullet should ricochet from the prism to the sides without any harm to the pilot and aircraft. Yes, about 10% of the bullets went nowhere, the life of the propeller was also not eternal, the propeller wore out faster, but nevertheless, the French pilots got a huge advantage over the Germans.
The Germans staged a hunt for Garros and shot him down. The secret of the reflector has ceased to be a secret, but … It was not so! Reflectors on German cars did not take root. The secret was simple: the Germans fired more advanced and harder chrome bullets, which easily blew both the reflector and the propeller. And the French used ordinary copper-plated bullets, which were not so hard.
The obvious way out was: somehow make sure that the machine gun does not fire when the propeller closes the fire director. And the development was carried out by all the designers in the countries participating in the First World War. Another question is who did it earlier and better.
Dutch designer who worked for the Germans, Anton Fokker. It was he who managed to assemble the first full-fledged mechanical synchronizer. The Fokker mechanism made it possible to shoot when the propeller was not in front of the muzzle. That is, it was not a breaker or a blocker.
Here's a great video to see how it works.
Yes, the model has a rotary engine, in which the cylinders rotate around the shaft, which is firmly fixed. But in a conventional engine, everything happens in exactly the same way, only the synchronizer disk does not rotate with the entire engine, but on the shaft.
The convex part of the synchronizer circle is called a "cam". This cam, in one full revolution, presses once on the thrust and fires one shot immediately after passing the blade. One turn - one shot. You can make two cams on the disc and fire two shots. But usually one was enough.
The rod is connected to the trigger and can be in an open or closed position. The open position does not transmit an impulse to the trigger, moreover, it is possible to interrupt contact with the "cam" altogether.
There are, of course, some downsides here. It turns out that the rate of fire directly depends on the number of engine revolutions. As I said above, one turn is one shot.
If the rate of fire of the machine gun is 500 shots, and the rpm is also 500, then everything is fine. But if there are more revolutions, then every second contact of the thrust and the cam falls on a shot that is not yet ready. The rate of fire is halved. If the revolutions are 1000, then the machine gun will again give out its 500 per minute, and so on.
Actually, this is exactly what happened 30 years later with the American large-caliber Browning machine guns, which were initially not very rapid-fire, and the synchronizers ate half of the bullets fired through the propeller.
That is why these machine guns were placed in the wings, where the propeller did not interfere with the realization of their dignity.
But everyone liked the idea. Designers race to master synchronizers and create their own models. We also made the blocker the other way around. The mechanism was called an interrupter, it worked the other way around, not activating the trigger mechanism of the machine gun, but blocking the drummer if the screw is currently in front of the barrel.
Mark Birkigt (Hispano-Suiza) developed an excellent mechanism that allowed two shots to be fired per revolution of the crankshaft.
And then, later, when systems with electric descent appeared, the issue of synchronization became much easier.
The main thing is that the machine gun has an appropriate rate of fire. And the direct hands of the technicians who set up the synchronizers, since by the end of the war whole batteries were firing through the propeller (for example, 3 20-mm cannons at La-7).
During the First World War, 1-2 machine guns on an airplane (the second usually fired backwards) was the norm. Back in the 1930s, 2 synchronous rifle-caliber machine guns were the perfect norm. But as soon as World War II began, a motor-gun and 2 synchronous (sometimes large-caliber) machine guns became the norm. And a lot of things could be placed in the "stars" of air cooling.
In addition, the Germans on the Focke-Wulfs synchronized the cannons, which they placed at the root of the wing, bringing the second salvo of the FV-190 Series A with four 20-mm cannons to record values.
And in fact - well, a very simple mechanism, this synchronizer. But he has done things in history.
