Tractor configuration

[citation needed] However, by the midpoint of the First World War, interest in pushers declined and the tractor configuration dominated.

A disadvantage of a single-engine tractor military aircraft was that it was initially impossible to fire a gun through the propeller arc without striking the blades.

Early solutions included mounting guns (rifles or machine guns) to fire around the propeller arc, either at an angle to the side – which made aiming difficult – or on the top wing of a biplane so that the bullets passed over the propeller arc.

It was employed with immediate success by French aviator Roland Garros and was also used on at least one Sopwith Tabloid of the Royal Naval Air Service.

[citation needed] A better solution was a gun synchronizer, which utilized a synchronization gear to shoot only at instants when the line of fire was unobstructed, developed by aircraft pioneer Anthony Fokker and fitted to the Fokker E.I monoplane in 1915.