Franz Gebauer

Franz Gebauer (Hungarian: Gebauer Ferenc) (1888–1958) was an Austrian inventor and weapons designer, including an early power-operated machine gun which actually saw service use.

Gebauer was born in 1888 in Gross-Herlitz, Austria. After finishing his schooling, he worked for a German car manufacturer, and later for Puch in Graz.

During World War I, he served in the Austro-Hungarian Air Force as a Waffenmeister at the Fischamend Military Airport.

Gebauer became a member of Danuvia RT's board of directors in 1926 and Technical Director in 1937. He fled to Sweden when the Soviets invaded Hungary in February 1945, where he worked for Bofors. He died in 1958.

During World War I the Schwarzlose MG M.07/12 was the standard machine gun for aircraft use. It was internally modified and air cooled to increase its firing rate to 700 rounds per minute, and normal practice was to use a pair of synchronized guns. However, although the Schwarzlose was an excellent infantry weapon on the ground, its use in aircraft had problems; at altitudes approaching 4,000 m (13,000 ft) the cartridge oiling system tended to freeze up, causing many failures during combat.

Gebauer concluded that the then-common practice of converting infantry machine guns for aircraft use was outdated. The most common problem with such converted weapons was that the position of the aircraft's propeller controlled the time of firing only, with the rest of the gun's operation depending on the force of propellant gases; a late-firing cartridge could cause damage to the propeller blades, while misfires stopped operation altogether. Gebauer had the idea to directly power a machine gun from the aircraft's engine, independently of the gas produced by the gun's cartridges. This meant that misfired cartridges would be automatically ejected and the next loaded. He called it the direct-driven motor machine gun.

In 1917 Gebauer submitted his first twin-barreled motor-driven machine gun design to his commanding officer and received approval to make prototypes. The first two were not successful, but the third improved design performed flawlessly on its trial in June 1918 at Aspern, near Vienna. The prototype was installed on an Aviatik D.II aircraft, flown by Colonel Benno Fiala.

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