Aircraft Machine Guns of WWII
Today when two or more warplanes mix it up over the skies in combat, they usually do it with air-to-air missiles. Nevertheless, back in World War Two, when one aircraft met another in combat over the battlefield, the duel was carried out with guns.
Just nine years after the Wright Brothers proved that a heavier than air vehicle could even fly, the US Army put on gun on one in an experiment. Captain Charles de Forest Chandler, shown above seated in the passenger seat of a Wright Model B Flyer, fired the Lewis light machinegun from the airplane in flight on June 7 and 8, 1912. This is thought to be the first time, other than random rifles and pistols carried by pilots, that a gun was fired from an aircraft in flight. This was just in time because just two years later, World War 1 brought about a completely new era of flying terror.
When the Fokker Eindecker, one of the first purpose-built fighter planes, took to the sky in 1915 armed with a single DWM Spandau MG14 Parabellum machine gun, synchronized to fire through the plane’s propeller, appeared, it was terrifying to the British and French pilots. This started a steady arms race that continued until the end of the war where most fighter, bomber, and scout aircraft were armed with as many as three .30 caliber machine guns whereas huge German Zeppelin dirigibles carried up to five.
By 1944, this would be considered well underarmed….
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