how did propellor warplanes shoot their machine guns through the propellor?
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There’s a good description of the interruptor gear above so I’ll leave that off. Before the interruptor gear was figured out there were several “pusher” style fighters that had the propeller in the rear so the gun could shoot forward clearly. They also put angled metal plates on the propeller at the level where bullets would hit on conventional propeller designs.
By WWII, especially the later years, most fighters had their guns in the wings. That had its own challenge: convergence. You wanted your fire lines to converge so you were putting all your bullets at one point to do the most damage. When your guns were on the fuselage and firing forward that was automatic. But with guns in the wings your bullets came from a good way off to the side. So the guns had to be angled inward just slightly so that all of the bullets would converge at a point a certain distance ahead of the fighter. Then you would need to do your best to engage a target at that distance so you would have the most firepower possible hitting it at once.
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