Roland Garros not shot down

Here's somthing I don't think has been done before. I'm reading Air Power by John Batchelor and he describes a story I've heard before on how Garros being shot down in 1915 led to Fokkers interupter gear.
Roland Garros developed Garros wedges which deflected bullets from a forward facing machine gun in 1914. In April 1915 he was shot down and his plane was captured by the Germans. The Germans took the Garros wegdes to Anthony Fokker and asked him to make a German equivalent, rather then this Fokker developed the far supperior interupter gear system and starting the "Fokker Scouge" of 1915-16.
What would have happened if Roland Garros is not shot down in April 1915? Does this impact the developement of interupter gear and air warfare?
 

MacCaulay

Banned
I find it hard to believe that the interruptor gear wouldn't have been invented, especially since the plated propellors and the gear were essentially different inventions for dealing with the same problem.

I seem to remember that the plates were the stop-gap solution until interruptor gear was perfected, but hey: you're the one with the book in front of you.
 
They were to a point. Apparently the reason Fokker finally went and developed full on interupter gear was that the Germans told him to reverse engineer Garros wedges and he knew he could make somthing far better.
 
At best it would delay the development of interrupter gear for a time and probably extend the life of pusher fighters as well,since they were the other method of allowing forward firing weapons.
 
There is a degree of mythology that has arisen from this event. Fokker wrote his own history claiming full credit for the design, but he was also noted for delegating and claiming credit for everything his company produced. Maybe he did.
Several aircraft featured machine guns mounted on the upper wing firing over the airscrew arc. The Foster mount featured on the SE-5A allowed the pilot to point the gun upwards for schrage musik effect. The Camel night fighter featured two guns on the wing because the cowl guns' muzzle flash would have blinded the pilot at night. The nieuport 17 also had an upper wing gun in some variants.
The major drawback to these weapons was the requirement to change ammo drums in flight, an exciting adventure. Cowl guns were belt-fed Maxim derivatives.
 
One thing I wonder with this is the effects on German aircraft as I've never seen anything like a Foster mount on German fighters and the Germans lacked a gun light and handy enough to use on such a mount.
Might we see a Nieuport Scourge rather then a Fokker Scourge in 1915 as Foster type mounts give the French and British aircraft a firepower edge?
 
I don't believe the German Air Service was as generous at offering up inferior aircraft to the British as were the British were to the Germans. They would have waited to copy a captured example of the Foster mount as they did with Garros' Morane. The existing Parabellum Machine gun could have been mounted above the wing, although it was not nearly so effective as the Lewis. Incidentally, captured Lewis guns were never wasted. Every example found a new home on some German aircraft or in some cozy trench.
 
Did German aircraft use captured Lewis guns in OTL? If they did can you show some sources, I've never heard of it.
I knew about there use by Stasstruppen, my Osprey WWI Soldiers book has a photograph of a column of Stormtroopers carrying captured Lewis guns during Operation Michael.
Does anybody know how hard it is to use a belt fed gun on a Foster type mount? Thats the one thing I thought would hold back the Germans, the only gun I knew the Germans had light enough and with a magazine feed for somthing like that was the Madsen and the 20mm Becker cannons on Zeppelins.
 
The machine gun fired by observers on two seat machines was a Maxim- derivative MG08/14 weighing in at 10 kg. It was flexible mounted. The belt magazine was enclosed in a drum to facilitate feed in the airstream. I don't keep records of all my sources but I recall there was a book of aerial weapons by Williams. I'll try to confirm. Incidentally, the Foster mount wasn't the only method of fixing the gun atop the wing. The first Nieuports used a fixed mount. Then, they got syncronized single Vickers, and then the Foster mount was installed on some. The installation of both guns was attempted but performance was degraded severely.
 
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