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Synchronization gear
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{{Short description|Device to synchronise the firing of a warplane's automatic guns with its spinning propeller}} [[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-2006-0002, Flugzeug Messerschmitt Me 109, Justieren des MGs.jpg|300px|thumb|The synchronization gear of a [[Messerschmitt Bf 109]]E1 is adjusted (January 1941). A wooden disk attached to the propeller is used to indicate where each round passes through the propeller arc.]] A '''synchronization gear''' (also known as a '''gun synchronizer''' or '''interrupter gear''') was a device enabling a single-engine [[tractor configuration]] aircraft to fire its forward-firing armament through the arc of its spinning [[Propeller (aeronautics)|propeller]] without bullets striking the blades. This allowed the aircraft, rather than the gun, to be aimed at the target. There were many practical problems, mostly arising from the inherently imprecise nature of an [[automatic gun]]'s firing, the great (and varying) velocity of the blades of a spinning propeller, and the very high speed at which any gear synchronizing the two had to operate. In practice, all known gears worked on the principle of actively triggering each shot, in the manner of a [[semi-automatic weapon]]. Design and experimentation with gun synchronization had been underway in [[French Third Republic|France]] and [[German Empire|Germany]] in 1913–1914, following the ideas of [[August Euler]], who seems to have been the first to suggest mounting a fixed armament firing in the direction of flight (in 1910). However, the first practical{{snd}}if far from reliable{{snd}}gear to enter operational service was that fitted to the [[Fokker Eindecker fighters]], which entered squadron service with the [[Luftstreitkräfte|German Air Service]] in mid-1915. The success of the Eindecker led to numerous gun synchronization devices, culminating in the reasonably reliable hydraulic Romanian [[George Constantinescu|Constantinesco]] gear of 1917. By the end of the [[First World War]], German engineers were well on the way to perfecting a gear using an electrical rather than a mechanical or hydraulic link between the engine and the gun, with the gun triggered by an [[electro-mechanical]] [[solenoid]]. From 1918 to the mid-1930s the standard armament for a fighter aircraft remained two synchronized rifle-calibre [[machine gun]]s, firing forward through the arc of the propeller. In the late 1930s, however, the main role of the fighter was increasingly seen as the destruction of large, all-metal [[bomber]]s, for which this armament was inadequate. Since it was impractical to fit more than two guns in the limited space available in the front of a single-engine aircraft's [[fuselage]], guns began to be mounted in the wings instead, firing outside the arc of the propeller so not requiring synchronising. Synchronizing became unnecessary on all aircraft with the introduction of propellerless [[jet propulsion]].
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