Roland Garros shoots down an aircraft through the propeller

On 1 April 1915, over Flanders, the French airman Roland Garros shot down a German two-seat reconnaissance aircraft, an Albatros. Shooting an aircraft down was nothing new in itself, as aircraft had been falling in air combat since the autumn of 1914. What was new was the method. Garros had no observer with a flexible gun; he fired a machine gun fixed in front of the cockpit himself, through the arc of the spinning propeller, aiming with the whole aircraft. According to most aviation historians this was the first aircraft shot down in this way, and his machine is regarded as one of the first true fighter aircraft.

Even before the war Garros was one of the most famous airmen in the world. Born in 1888 on Réunion, on 23 September 1913 he became the first to fly non-stop across the Mediterranean, from Fréjus to Bizerte in Tunisia, in just under eight hours. After the outbreak of war he flew as a reconnaissance pilot in a squadron of Morane-Saulnier monoplanes based near Dunkirk (sources give its designation as MS 26 or MS 23). Airmen on both sides already knew that the easiest way to hit an opponent was to fly straight at him, but in front of the aircraft spun the propeller. A bullet fired through its arc could shoot through a blade and wreck the shooter’s own aircraft.

The solution came from Garros’s collaboration with the designer Raymond Saulnier. Even before the war Saulnier had worked on a mechanism to time the gun’s shots to the propeller’s rotation, but with the Hotchkiss machine gun, which fired at an uneven rate, the device did not work reliably. Garros therefore turned to a simpler idea. Steel wedges were fitted to the propeller blades at the point where the line of fire crossed them, deflecting the bullets that struck the propeller. According to accounts, he prepared them together with his mechanic, Jules Hue. The solution was crude: some bullets ricocheted sideways, and the wedges reduced the propeller’s thrust. On the Morane-Saulnier L monoplane, however, it proved effective.

On 1 April Garros spotted a German reconnaissance aircraft and attacked it head-on. The German airmen did not expect a single-seater to be able to fire in the direction of flight. A burst from Garros’s gun hit the pilot and the Albatros crashed to the ground. Accounts differ on the exact place where it fell and the fate of the observer. In the following days Garros claimed further victories, of which those of 15 and 18 April are regarded as certain. The French press made him a hero, and his score, several victories in less than three weeks, was then unheard of.

His success was short-lived. On 18 April his engine cut out, according to various accounts because of a clogged fuel line or a hit from the ground, and Garros had to land on the German side of the front, north of Kortrijk in Belgium. He tried to set the machine on fire, but the damp fabric and wood would not burn. The airman was taken prisoner, and the aircraft with the wedges on its propeller fell into German hands. It was examined by specialists of Anthony Fokker’s works, which within a few weeks built a true synchronisation gear and fitted it to the Fokker E.I monoplane. Garros spent almost three years in captivity. In February 1918 he escaped, returned to the fighting and was killed in the air near Vouziers on 5 October 1918, a month before the end of the war.