(The image above shows the positions of two machine guns at the nose of the aircraft)
Gallieni raised his head high, looking at the members of the assembly below with a disdainful gaze, and made a decisive concluding speech:
"Gentlemen, please leave it to those who have truly fought on the battlefield and know what war is to judge which equipment is useful and which is not on the battlefield."
"Just like farmers cannot discuss legal issues, and lawyers do not know how to farm!"
"The military is a special profession. It is not as simple as you imagine, and we should approach it with caution."
"Instead of trying to teach others to shoot without ever holding a gun, or even attempting to instruct others on how to fight a war and tell them what should or shouldn’t be purchased!"
"Doing so yields nothing but self-humiliation!"
With that said, Gallieni didn’t bother to look at the assembly members again. He walked off the stage with his chest held high in their awkward gazes, always maintaining a smile on his face.
Gallieni had never been so glorious as he was today. He had given these assembly members a resounding slap in the face, and they had no words to counter it because Shire had indeed won a battle, turning the "impossible" into "possible"!
In fact, it wasn’t just the assembly members who didn’t believe it. When Shire first mentioned the "machine gun firing coordination mechanism," Gallieni didn’t believe it either.
"That’s impossible!" Even though Gallieni, well-informed as he was, couldn’t help but exclaim when he heard Shire’s idea: "The airplane propeller spins so fast that we can’t even see its blades. How could bullets possibly pass through without damaging the propeller blades!"
"We don’t need to see it, General!" Shire explained: "We just need to add a small device that prevents it from firing when the blades are in front of the muzzle. It’s not difficult at all!"
The key to many inventions is not whether they’re "difficult," but whether they’ve been conceived.
Once conceived, the realization process might just involve piecing together a few existing elements, such as how the "machine gun firing coordination mechanism" uses a pre-existing hydraulic device.
Gallieni still looked puzzled. He might excel in military theory or command, but he knew nothing about mechanics, which is why he had stubbornly chosen the Saint-Cyr Military Academy.
However, a few hours later, when Shire actually had this thing made, Gallieni had no choice but to believe it.
The test was conducted at the flying club, using two Vickers Machine Guns. They were mounted left and right on the nose of an almost-scrapped "Aphro" aircraft, which had become unsafe to fly due to frequent engine malfunctions, making it perfect for testing.
The pilots placed a wooden target in front of the aircraft. It was later found that the wooden target was of no use at all, as it was shattered into pieces before they could even see if the bullets had hit the target, rendering it a pile of splintered wood scattered across the ground.
Of course, that wasn’t the main point.
The main point was that 500 rounds of bullets from the two machine guns were all fired, but the propeller remained unscathed.
Looking at the halted propeller in amazement, Carter even reached out to touch the blades, then exclaimed: "My God, there isn’t even a scratch! The bullets perfectly avoided the blades!"
"It wasn’t the bullets avoiding the blades, Uncle Carter!" Shire said: "It was the blades avoiding the bullets!"
According to Shire’s understanding, the movement of the blades played an active role, so it should be placed in front.
"Does it make any difference?" Carter retorted: "I just want to know how they did it?"
"That’s the charm of mechanics!" Shire glossed over: "Mechanical reactions are much quicker than our human ones. We can’t comprehend mechanics with human thinking!"
Gallieni watched the propeller and then looked at the shattered wooden target with a stern face for a while. The next second, he ordered his guards sharply: "Dispatch a Guard Battalion to seal off the club. From now on, no one is allowed to leave without permission!"
"Yes, General!" The guard quickly went to make a call.
Gallieni then turned to the pilots and said, "Congratulations, from now on, you are soldiers!"
Confused, Carter asked: "Who do you mean by ’we,’ General?"
"All of you!" Gallieni replied: "Everyone in the club, including the cooks!"
Carter stared blankly at Gallieni’s departing figure, then turned his gaze to Shire: "Lieutenant, you mentioned this before, but I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly!"
Shire was also somewhat surprised. He had thought they would at least need to practice some military drilling, firing, or cut their hair short enough to wear a military cap.
Who could have imagined that Gallieni would directly declare them as "soldiers"?
After thinking about it for a moment, Shire understood why.
His newly invented "machine gun firing coordination mechanism" had revolutionized air combat, bringing it from nothing to the end of the era of aircraft throwing bricks, flying needles, or colliding, elevating it directly to machine gun strafing, and with two machine guns at that.
Perhaps to Shire, this was a "simple little gadget," but to this era, it was "top secret."
Gallieni might not understand mechanics or aeronautics, but he understood the military and knew that this invention had to remain absolutely secret.
Shire realized he had been careless, as he should have "invented" this in secrecy. Now, he could say he had implicated these pilots, causing them to skip the adjustment period entirely.
Gallieni consistently exercised enough caution, personally leading guards to set up the club’s blockade, only easing up and taking Shire back to headquarters once the Guard Battalion had arrived.
On the car ride back to headquarters, Gallieni asked Shire a question: "Do they need any other training?"
Shire understood that Gallieni referred to preparing the pilots for air combat.
After contemplating for a moment, Shire replied: "Almost none; they don’t even need to learn to shoot. Everything is prepared by the Mechanical Division! If there’s anything they need to be aware of, it’s bringing a hammer!"
"A hammer?" Gallieni looked at Shire with confusion.
"Yes!" Shire answered: "When the machine gun jams, hit it with a hammer. Apart from that, there seems to be nothing else they can do!"
Gallieni laughed: "Then, what they lack is merely the courage to pull the trigger!"
Shire nodded, agreeing with Gallieni’s statement.
Pilots who had never killed or those who weren’t mentally prepared for killing might find it difficult to pull the trigger when they see German Army pilots in the cockpit after taking to the skies, even knowing the opponent is an enemy.
"But it’s okay!" Shire said with a serious expression: "Even if they can’t do it, they won’t be killed by the enemy!"
Because the enemy’s aircraft weren’t equipped with machine guns.
This was different from infantry, who often didn’t get this growth and adjustment opportunity.
Gallieni nodded with a smile: "But it won’t always be this way. They need to learn fast!"
(The image above shows the main components of the "machine gun firing coordination mechanism." It uses the meshing of a large and small gear to precisely determine when the propeller is in front of the muzzle. It then controls the hydraulic device through a cam mechanism to prevent the machine gun from firing at that moment.)