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The beginning of World War I marked the beginning of the first serious attempts to turn the airplane into a useful weapon.
It quickly became obvious that they should be armed and that the best position for a machine gun was just in front of the pilot, so he could aim by pointing the plane’s nose at the target. In this position, he could also easily reach the gun reload and clear the frequent jams; but this location required the gun fire to travel through the propeller blades.
Initially, synchronization devices were not available. This led to a vexing quest for a reliable way to mount a forward-firing machine gun. Some biplanes carried a gun mounted on the upper wing to fire over the propeller arc (hard to reload) while others fired at an angle off to the side (hard to aim).
The British tried pusher designs, with the engine in the rear pushing the plane forward so the pilot could operate a forward-firing machine gun, but attaching the tail surfaces was awkward.
***image1***Frenchman Roland Garrios put steel plates on the propeller blades and took his chances that they would deflect the bullets; he scored three kills before he shot his propeller off and crashed behind German lines.
None of these was entirely satisfactory, but probably the most unsatisfactory design was the French SPAD A.1 and its successor, the A.2 – the first military aircraft developed by SPAD’s chief designer, Louis Béchereau.
The front part of the A.1/A.2 was a “pulpit” – a nacelle with a gazebo-like frame where a gunner manned a forward-firing machine gun in front of the engine and spinning propeller. The nacelle folded down to service the engine and was then attached by struts to the upper wing. The rest of the aircraft was a conventional biplane.
This arrangement gave the gunner an excellent view with a clear field of fire forward, but proved to have numerous disadvantages. While the gunner was “protected” from the propeller by a wire mesh screen, his position was precarious, especially since the weight of the pulpit made the A.1/A.2 prone to nosing over on landing on soft World War I airfields, with unfortunate results for the gunner. The arrangement also seriously limited the pilot’s forward view, especially during landing, and made it virtually impossible for the two to communicate.
While the speed and handling of the A.1/A.2 were satisfactory, it was understandably unpopular and the French quickly dropped it from their active inventory. Some were offered to the Americans of Lafayette Escadrille but were politely turned down, so the French fobbed the A.2s on the Russian Air Force, where they were fitted with skis and served without distinction on the Eastern Front.
The introduction of synchronizing gear for forward-firing machine guns made the A.1/A.2 concept obsolete, but the design had provided Béchereau and SPAD with valuable experience. They later produced two of the finest fighters of World War I – the famous Spad S. VII and S. XIII.
