Scarff ring

In either case, the mounting was simple and rugged, and gave its operator an excellent field of fire. It was widely adapted and copied for other airforces. • Illustration — Scarff ring on an Airco DH.9 • Illustration — Scarff ring on a Bristol F.2B at the Shuttleworth Collection • Illustration — Soviet aircraft used the Scarff ring into WWII, here seen mounting a ShKAS machine gun. Perhaps the last British aircraft to use the mounting was the Supermarine Walrus amphibian prototype. Scarff was also involved in the development of the Scarff-Dibovsky synchronization gear. Although it was a seemingly simple device, later attempts to emulate the Scarff ring as a mounting for the dorsal Vickers K in the World War II Handley Page Hampden bomber were failures. Handley Page had designed a carriage with ball-bearing wheels running on a track around the cockpit. Vibration when firing shook the balls out, jamming the mounting. In the 1930s, the Germans developed a similar system called the Drehkranz D 30 (German: "slewing ring") which was used on a number of German aircraft, most notably the Junkers Ju 52. In British use the Scarff ring was replaced in the 1930s by specialised power-operated turrets such as those made by Boulton Paul or Nash & Thompson, aircraft air speeds having by then risen to the point where a manually operated gun was infeasible. The Scarff ring was also fitted to the Rolls-Royce Armoured Car vehicles of the RAF Armoured Car Companies, antecedents to the RAF Regiment.

Scarff ring is a machine gun or weapon model.