MvR's 102/17 Spandaus, Live for the camera?

Dave_Watts · 4 May 2007, 07:11 PM

Hi all,

Here is a good short movie to look at;

YouTube - Manfred von Richthofen

Manfred von Richthofen

It shows F.I 102/17 with MvR getting on board, starting up, and flying off. This snip-it is from a longer film that's link was posted on another thread a few days ago. This shortened section is much clearer than the longer film.

I found of interest, the "cocking" of the guns immediately previous to takeoff.

These guns are outfitted with an early version of what is termed as a "Segenhebel". I often call it a cast base with a "flip-flop" arm. It flips towards the pilot and in the other position, away from the pilot. This little gadget is key as to what you are doing when you "cock" the gun.

In the flipped toward-the-pilot position, the gun, when manually cycled with the "cocking arm", will recharge with a new bullet fresh from the ammo belt and it will advance the ammo belt forward so you can continue shooting. This is how you would expect the gun to be set for "action" flying. It allows a pilot to clear a dud round and continue shooting.

In the flipped away-from-the-pilot position, the gun, when manually cycled with the "cocking arm", will recharge with a new bullet fresh from the ammo belt, but it will NOT advance the ammo belt, so if you were to shoot the gun it would fire one shot, cycle, but NOT pick up a new bullet since the belt didn't advance beforehand, and that would be it....gun empty. And most likely the ammo belt would have dropped out of the gun and back down into the ammo box, making it impossible to recharge the gun...out of commission!

So here's the thing, if you TWICE manually cycle the gun with the Segenhebel arm flipped in the away-from-the-pilot position, you will have totally cleared the gun...empty, no chance of firing!

In the above film we see MvR TWICE manually cycle each gun with the Segenhebel arm flipped away from himself, so therefore he is making certain the guns are cleared and empty.

He then waves his arms and is most likely yelling to let go of the plane, and he takes off.

Years before I knew how these guns worked, I had always thought he was charging the guns, but alas he was clearing them for the rehearsed camera show.

Just some fun facts!

Best,
Dave W.

tcrean7828 · 4 May 2007, 09:38 PM

Hadln't thought of that in that way.

Thanks for the info.

cul

tcrean7828

tom

Richard_Schrader · 5 May 2007, 07:25 AM

Dave;
Thank you for that interesting information.

Richard

tcrean7828 · 5 May 2007, 10:12 AM

Hi all,

so if this is the way to unload the Mg's, how did one ensure that the guns were ready for action, with one in the chamber and the rest would follow?

cul

tcrean7828

tom

Dave_Watts · 5 May 2007, 12:47 PM

Hi all,

Thanks for the comments Tom and Richard.

To answer your question Tom, I've posted some photos, albeit not the best.

Here is a photo from the Repligun website that shows the Segenhebel in its early form. The device is on the side of the gun and bright gold. You can see what I term as the charging handle at the rear of the gun, technically, this is a charging/clearing handle.

As mentioned from the last posting, this "gold" Segenhebel has an arm with a round roller disc that flips towards or away from the pilot. In the above Repligun photo, the arm is flopped away from the pilot.

Here is the second photo. It is more of the curved ejection chute, but to the left of the image you can see the Segenhebel, again it is in the flopped away from the pilot position. Note the device is much more of a steel color, which is accurate as compared to the all gold color utilized by Repligun, (the base casting for the Segenhebel is bronze, but not the arm nor the roller, they are steel).

I have better photos, but due to a temporary glitch I'm unable to get them hosted.

To surmize;

When you are in combat, you want the Segenhebel flipped towards the pilot. Whenever you would incur a dud round, you would simply cycle the gun and continue firing.

When you land and want to clear the guns, you flop the arm away from the pilot and cycle the gun twice rendering the gun completely empty.

The other thing you would notice would be the safety levers on the butts of the guns flipped up when the aircraft was on the ground, so the mechanics would know the safety was engaged and they would not have to worry about a misfire while rotating the motor, (remember the rotation of the motor, with the trigger clutch engaged, causes the gun to fire).

Best,
Dave W.