He Shoots, He Scores

Gun camera footage documents the destruction of a German airplane that appears to be a Focke Wulf Fw-190 over Europe, probably in 1944. The split-second, fast-paced nature of air combat often meant that pilot memories alone were not dependable when determining what happened during encounters in the skies. Gun camera images like this provided a much more objective record. The British had tried gun cameras during World War I, but the devices came into their own during the Second World War when they were synchronized to begin filming whenever the pilot began firing his guns.