Deflector Gear
Updated - Sunday, 13 October, 2002

Pre-dating the development of an aircraft 'interrupter gear', the so-called 'deflector gear' was a French mechanism designed to allow a fighter pilot to operate a forward firing machine gun.

In such a configuration the machine gun was thus fired through the rotating aircraft propeller.  Steel plates were attached to the propeller blades in order to prevent the latter being shot off by bullets upon impact.

The champion of the deflector gear was the renowned French air ace Roland Garros who used it to successful effect when attached to his Morane-Saulnier L monoplane from March 1915.  The French device remained a short-lived secret however.  Crash-landing over German lines the following month Garros was taken captive while in the act of burning his aircraft.

The remains of the aircraft were passed to aircraft designer Anton Fokker who subsequently devised the vastly superior interrupter gear, a device which ensured that machine gun bullets were only ever fired between the propeller blades, thus removing the necessity for protective steel blades - although it is interesting to note that the French had also investigated the use of interrupter gears as early as 1914.

In slang a "beetle" was a landing craft for 200 men.

Original Material © Michael Duffy 2000-07, SafeSurf Rated