---
title: This or This! Will Your Guns Fire?
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/uk-this-or-this-will-your-guns-fire-air-diagram-1303-1940/
description: Two panels contrast a fighter shooting down a bomber marked with a swastika ('These will') with a fighter in a dive trailing smoke ('These won't').
section: Collection
---

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3. This or This! Will Your Guns Fire?

[![This or This! Will Your Guns Fire?, 1940 UK poster: Two panels contrast a fighter shooting down a bomber marked](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/uk-this-or-this-will-your-guns-fire-air-diagram-1303-1940.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/uk-this-or-this-will-your-guns-fire-air-diagram-1303-1940.jpg)

# This or This! Will Your Guns Fire?

Two panels contrast a fighter shooting down a bomber marked with a swastika ('These will') with a fighter in a dive trailing smoke ('These won't'), each beside cockpit gauges for pneumatic pressure and radiator temperature. The caption asks 'Will your guns fire?'; the tell is the paired success and failure scenes with a single prescribed remedy, checking the gauges. It is marked 'For official use only', a training diagram.

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

[Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/)

## Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
THIS or THIS!

THESE WILL
PNEUMATIC PRESSURE 280-300 LBS ""
RADIATOR TEMPERATURE 85° TO 90°

THESE WON'T

WILL YOUR GUNS FIRE?

Drawing by THE AEROPLANE
MAY, 1940  AIR DIAGRAM 1303  ISSUE NO. 1  DATE MAY, 1940
FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
```

[← They Need Spares to Use Their Wings](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/uk-they-need-spares-to-use-their-wings-1940/) [To the members of the A.E.U. →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/uk-to-the-members-of-the-aeu-savings-1940/)

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- [Miniature of Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, Les Passages d'outremer (BnF Fr. 5594, fol. 19r)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/passages-doutremer-council-of-clermont-colombe-1474/) (France · 1474 · Testimonial, Fear appeal). Content note: Medieval religious imagery and a French text describing alleged killings and captivity of eastern Christians, as used to argue for the First Crusade; the text is shown as written.
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- [Gazette of the United States, "The Jeffersoniad" no. VIII, 14 August 1800](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/gazette-us-jeffersoniad-1800/) (United States · Aug 14, 1800 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Tyrants Prostrate, Liberty Triumphant (pro-Polk cartoon on Dorr), 1844](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/tyrants-prostrate-liberty-triumphant-polk-1844/) (United States · 1844 · Name-calling, Fear appeal). Content note: Speech balloons contain anti-Catholic and nativist wording ('the ruins of Popery') in the mouths of the Whig figures, written by a Democratic cartoonist and shown unaltered.
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