Capt. Charles deForest Chandler fired five rounds at the target over the course of three passes while flying a Wright Flyer Type B at about 48 mph, marking the first time a machine gun had ever been fired from an aircraft
The Wright brothers did not merely invent the airplane. Even before the field existed, they were aeronautical engineers. They conducted research, developed tests, and evaluations on sub-scale technology demonstrators such as gliders, kites, and airfoil models. They created test rigs and a wind tunnel and used them. The brothers not only invented flying; they also provided a template for aircraft design and testing for aeronautical engineers.
After 1903, the “firsts” continued, as Richard P. Hallion explains in The Wright Flyers 1899-1916. The Wrights’ were the pioneers of the fully maneuverable, passenger-carrying, cross-country, and machine gun-firing aircraft.
Col. Isaac N. Lewis, the creator of the Lewis machine gun, went to the Signal Corps Aviation School at College Park on Friday, June 7, 1912, and asked the pilots if they would be willing to fire his brand-new machine gun from an airplane. Capt. Charles deForest Chandler, the school’s commander, quickly agreed. Within minutes, he had strapped the Lewis gun, which weighed just over 25 pounds and fired 500 bullets per minute from a circular drum, onto the right seat footrest of a Wright Type B. (S.C. 4). The ground in front of the hangars was covered with a small ground target that was cut out of cheesecloth and measured 6 feet by 7 feet.
Chandler strapped into the Wright’s right seat while holding the Lewis gun close to his body and between his legs. He could not spin or elevate it, but he could alter the trajectory by moving the gun a little to the left or right. Similarly, the machine gun had no sights, so Chandler had to “guesstimate” the right firing line. Captain Thomas Milling piloted the plane, getting out to pick up a firing track pointing north that ran parallel to the hangars and the Baltimore and Ohio Railway Line. The aircraft performed three firing passes while aloft at a height of 250 feet.
Chandler fired five rounds at the target over three passes while flying at 48 mph, marking the first time a machine gun had ever been fired from an aircraft. Type B went over the target in a little under a tenth of a second. In order to measure the separation between the bullet splashes, he also fired into fishponds that were located on the perimeter of the flying field.
On June 8, Saturday, there was a longer trial that day. Milling and Chandler attacked a larger cotton target that was 6 feet wide by 54 feet long that had been set up by Signal Corps mechanics from a height of 550 feet, striking it with 14 of 44 shots fired, or 32% of them, for a hit rate. Years later, Chandler recalled that the War Department’s General Staff’s spokesperson responded to reporters’ inquiries by making the very clear declaration that airplanes should only be used for reconnaissance and that any idea of aerial combat was the product of the fertile imagination of the young officers attending the flying school.
The Wright Flyers 1899-1916 is published by Osprey Publishing and is available to order here.
Photo by U.S. Air Force