Whether or not you already knew why a WWI fighter airplane’s machine gun never strikes its own propeller, this video will leave you completely satisfied. Why? Because, slow-mo. Yes. It is The Slow Mo Guys, the dudes who just can’t stop making slow-motion videos on just about everything imaginable and this time, the duo explores the science of an ingenious invention of WWI. We know it is by the virtue of a meticulously timed synchronized gears that enabled this miraculous feat, but up till now, we have never seen it action in slow-motion.
For this video, The Slow Mo Guys stuck an era-accurate machine gun on top of a replica front fuselage of a WWI airplane like as it was done during that time and captured the glorious moments of those leads whizzed past the spinning blades. The result, as we have said, was oddly satisfying to watch. Finally, what’s a Slow Mo Guys video without some destruction? However, minor it might be. And so, the dudes concluded the video by disengaging the synchronisation gear and immediately, the propeller starts to collecting random holes which is a testament of the ingenuity of the synchronisation gears perfected by German aviation pioneer Anthony Fokker.
And this is what happens when the synchronization gears were disengaged:
I don’t know about you, but for me, I have been totally fascinated by war machines of earlier era since my junior years and I have always been intrigued by this amazing war technology that enabled an nose-propeller driven airplane with a front mounted machine gun to perform the way it did. So, again, it was one heck of a satisfying video.
Images: Screengrab from YouTube video.
via Sploid