World War One fighters

The machine gun, even when mounted, still wasn't fully effective. The most effective position to mount a machine gun is directly in front of the pilot, so that the sighting plane forms a direct line through the aircraft. This simplifies targeting. This wasn't an option in most aircraft, however, because that's where the propeller sits, and mixing a propeller with bullets causes sudden altitude loss, or complete loss of control. There were several solutions. The most obvious was to mount the gun somewhere that it didn't fire through the arc of the propeller. The top of the upper wing, just in front of the pilot, was the preferred spot, but this introduced problems of its own, as the gun now had to be bore sighted for a certain range, because if it was mounted exactly in line with the fuselage of the airplane, it would be firing above the intended target. Also, sighting became somewhat more difficult, as any sights the pilot could use were nowhere near the gun.

Another solution was serendipitous, in that the British DH 2 had its propeller and engine mounted behind the pilot. This allowed simple mounting of the gun and sights, but the layout of the aircraft was never popular, probably because it adds weight and complexity to the design.

Another, partially effective method, was to bolt steel wedges to the portion of propeller that bullets would strike. The wedge was too thick to take serious damage from the bullets, and had the effect of 'batting' them away from the prop. This method wasn't fully satisfactory because it cut down on your firepower.

The final method became the normal solution for prop driven fighter planes up until after the beginning of WW II. An additional cam on the crankshaft was connected to the firing mechanism and timed so the gun could only fire at those times that the prop was not in front of the muzzle. This allowed all the variables involved in aerial gunnery to be brought into closer relation, to minimize errors in aiming.

Scouts slowly became divided into those that still scouted, and those that hunted. The scouts were usually armed with both a forward firing machine gun and one firing to the rear, manned by the observer. The fighters, (though they were still called scouts) were normally armed with one or two forward firing guns and spent their time looking for something to shoot, or

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