Planes in the Romanian aviation in 1925

[Florin]

When World War One started, the aviators considered themselves as members of elite. When the opponents met in the air, they used to salute each other. Very soon the salutes evolved into exchanges from pistols and hand held rifles.

The very first aviator who wanted to make his plane "100 percent fighter" installed a fixed machine gun on the engine and attached steel plates on the wood propeller to deflect occasional bullets that may hit the propeller. He was a French aviator.
In 1915 Fokker introduced the first mechanical gear able to synchronize the frequency of the machine gun with the speed of the engine. This offered a great advantage to Germany.
Later the Allies caught up. The Romanian George (Gogu) Constantinescu invented a hydraulic machine-gun synchronizer. It was first used operationally on the D.H.4s of No. 55 squadron R.F.C. starting with March 1917.
Because of him, the Allies got the upper hand in the matter.

This post has been edited by Florin on January 08, 2013 10:46 pm

[Radub]

Gogu Constantinescu's device was not hydraulic. Constantinescu's device used sonic impulses. "Sonicitatea" (theory of sonics) was his obsession, he also invented other devices based on this principle, including an automatic car gearbox.
The first British interrupter gear was the Wickers-Challenger device put into production in late-1915, six months after the Fokker device was put into operation. Constantinescu's CC device introduced in 1917 was more reliable.
That propeller is a grave marker. There is no way that such a propeller could work on a plane, it would simply shatter seconds after starting the engine.
Radu