The Armaments Officer 07

I came to the conclusion that in certain cases gun failure might be caused by the firing gear being put out of alignment or held up by some alteration in the shape of the machine. The theory might seem a little far-fetched, but it did seem possible that when the machine was in the air, particularly if stunting, the strains on rigging would be quite different from those operating when the machine was at rest on the ground, and so tend to throw certain connections out of truth. Some of the gun failures were so

difficult to account for that there seemed no other possible explanation.


I made as many enquiries as I could regarding the amount of gun failures in our Allies’ aeroplanes, and those of the Germans and their Allies, and found that they all had immense trouble in this respect; I believe much greater than in the case of English aeroplanes. I have mentioned failures and jambs rather freely up to this moment, but am not going to admit inefficiency in the Armament Section of No. 8 Naval, either during my time or that of the other armament officers connected with the Squadron. The number of successful aerial combats and strafes on kite balloons and other offensives is sufficient proof to the contrary. It would not be fair to the unflagging and excellent work done by all the armourers if I did not say that I honestly think no other squadron could claim any superiority to ours in the matter of gun failures.


Failures we did have, but there were periods when things seemed to go well, and at those times we received a full mead of recognition from the C.O. and the pilots. When things were not so good, they blamed the ammunition, the lubricant, and anything else they could think of which did not include myself. If I had not known them so well, I might have considered this a piece of cunning on their part, for nothing could have given the Armament Section a more potent spur than to assume that they were doing their job all right, and that the troubles lay elsewhere. I never expressed my thanks properly because it was impossible to do so. Incidentally, I visited as many other Naval and R.F.C. squadrons as I could, and it did not take me long to discover that the sun did not always shine uninterruptedly elsewhere.


Without being unkind or untruthful, I can say that I learned very little from the Army on the subject of machine guns and their jambs. I visited as many squadrons as I could, particularly those which I heard at conferences were having a bad time with gun failure. Their pilots told me nothing,

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