# WW II airplane question **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 4, 2003, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-ii-airplane-question/199522 "2003-09-04T14:14:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2003, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-ii-airplane-question/199522/21 "2003-09-04T22:33:17Z")
> [@](#): > > Anthony Fokker was brought to examine the captured plane, and was not impressed (seeing the inherent problem), but it got him to thinking about the synchronizer that he eventually invented. However that didn´t kept the old Fokker 😛 from copying Garros plane almost exactly; Roland Garros was flying a Morane Saulnier N “Bullet”, and Fokker´s offspring was the Fokker Eindecker, they look exactly the same seen from above/bellow. ---
**Author:** ![UncaStuart](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/uncastuart/32/404_2.png) [@UncaStuart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncaStuart)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2003, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-ii-airplane-question/199522/22 "2003-09-04T22:39:50Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ale \* > DAMN YOU UNCASTUART! 😛 > > The hamsters ate my post where I listed the same planes as you. Once there´s a topic where I can show off and I´m so unlucky as to be beaten to post a reply :mad: Heh, well if you look at my post count, you can guess how many topics I can show off with too.🙂 > [@](#): > > OK, cool down Ale… I still have something to defend my honour… > > The SBD Dauntless had nose guns too. 😃 D’oh!:smack: ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2003, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-ii-airplane-question/199522/23 "2003-09-05T01:41:59Z")
> [@](#): > > Heh, well if you look at my post count, you can guess how many topics I can show off with too. 185 posts since March 1999… yeah, you have a point there. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![wolfstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d6d6ee/32.png) [@wolfstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfstu)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2003, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-ii-airplane-question/199522/24 "2003-09-05T03:22:13Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by vl\_mungo \* > \*\*The main fault, and the reason that his plane was captured by the Germans, was that the vibrations from the bullets being deflected eventually adversely effected the engine of the plane forcing him to land behind enemy lines. > > Anthony Fokker was brought to examine the captured plane, . . . but couldn’t bring himself to actually shoot down a plane. \*\* Actually, I knew that story, but I wasn’t completely sure that it was true. Thanks for confirming it. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2003, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-ii-airplane-question/199522/25 "2003-09-05T03:34:41Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by wolfstu \* > \*\* > > The original design in WWI was by the Dutch aircraft designer Anthony Fokker (working for the Germans). It was called the “Fokker Synchronised Machine Gun”, or occasionally referred to as an ‘interrupter mechanism’. > > The big improvement, was that the airplane became a point-and-shoot weapon. > \*\* That’s one smart Fokker! ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2003, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-ii-airplane-question/199522/26 "2003-09-05T03:48:51Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by David Simmons \* > \*\*Actually, they weren’t flown by US pilots in WWII, but by Philippine AF pilots. \*\* ACTUALLY, there were nine P-26s protecting the Canal Zone at the time of Pearl Harbor and the last one left US hands in 1943. 🙂 [http://home.att.net/~jbaugher1/p26\_6.html](http://home.att.net/~jbaugher1/p26_6.html) Boresighting would also be useful when attacking heavy bombers in formation (David’s target that is “stationary or moving slowly”). Bringing one of them down generally required a lot of mass hitting a small area and to do so with small caliber (.30 especially, though also .50) non-explosive ordinance meant that the pilot would attempt to fire at the convergence range. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2003, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-ii-airplane-question/199522/27 "2003-09-05T15:30:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by dropzone \* > \*\* > Boresighting would also be useful when attacking heavy bombers in formation (David’s target that is “stationary or moving slowly”). Bringing one of them down generally required a lot of mass hitting a small area and to do so with small caliber (.30 especially, though also .50) non-explosive ordinance meant that the pilot would attempt to fire at the convergence range. \*\* My only point is this. Air to air gunnery is far from precise. When you take into account the dispersion of the guns I think that boresighting guns to converge at any particular range comes under the category of, “Well, they have to be boresighted someplace and it doesn’t take much longer to converge them; it can’t do any harm and might do some good.” ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2003, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-ii-airplane-question/199522/28 "2003-09-05T16:22:39Z")
Even if boresighting isn’t much use for air to air (thanks for all the info btw, **David** ), it has to be helpful for ground strafing where you can hold your altitude fairly precisely. ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2003, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-ii-airplane-question/199522/29 "2003-09-05T16:23:24Z")
About those boresighted guns: Somewhere at home I have a fine book on P-51 Mustangs (not the subject matter here, I know, but it’s all I have), and the author stated that the boresignting was done to personal preference of the pilots: some guys set them up to converge on a single point some distance out; others set pairs of guns to converge at different distances; still others fanned the guns slightly, hoping for a shotgun effect. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2003, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-ii-airplane-question/199522/30 "2003-09-05T19:22:05Z")
If he didn’t want to demonstrate his invention on a live aircraft, couldn’t he have used a model Fokker? ---
**Author:** ![wolfstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d6d6ee/32.png) [@wolfstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfstu)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2003, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-ii-airplane-question/199522/31 "2003-09-05T21:05:36Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ludovic \* > \*\*If he didn’t want to demonstrate his invention on a live aircraft, couldn’t he have used a model Fokker? \*\* I don’t know if you mean to be funny, and maybe this is a whoosh, but the point is that Fokker was asked to demonstrate that his invention gave pilots an advantage in air combat. The point of air combat is to shoot down the enemy plane. He couldn’t bring himself to shoot down a plane (with a man in it). They didn’t have drones or unmanned planes back then that he could have shot at, and of course, they wouldn’t have sufficed. The point was to have an advantage in dogfighting another plane (and planes were piloted by men). Shooting up a model in the air was thus impossible. Shooting one on the ground was useless - all it would show was that the interrupter mechanism prevented destruction of the propellor on its aircraft. And this can be shown without shooting bullets into a plane. Whatever the case, they got an experienced German pilot (Boelke, says **vl\_mungo** ) to show that yes, it is a useful thing in a dogfight. And Fokker went back to designing flying machines, if not actually using them to kill. Hmm… on second thought, I’ll take ‘whoosh’, or maybe some kind of play on Fokker’s name. :rolleyes:😕 ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2003, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-ii-airplane-question/199522/32 "2003-09-06T00:14:44Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ElvisL1ves \* > \*\*Even if boresighting isn’t much use for air to air (thanks for all the info btw, **David** ), it has to be helpful for ground strafing where you can hold your altitude fairly precisely. \*\* Actuall, in order to strafe the ground you have to lower the nose which has an adverse effect on altitude control. There is an excellent show about a P-47 group that comes on the History Channel now and then. Ground strafing was an exceedingly hazardous occupation. Pilots misestimated their ability to pull out in time; were hit by debris from ammunition trains or trucks that blew up in their faces; and were exposed to a lot of ground fire on the run-in, all of which resulted in a relatively high casualty rate. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2003, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-ii-airplane-question/199522/33 "2003-09-06T03:51:01Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by David Simmons \* > **My only point is this. Air to air gunnery is far from precise.** Heck, how those guys hit ANYTHING is beyond me. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-ii-airplane-question/199522.md?page=1)