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
- Date
- 1940
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- Air Ministry Air Diagram 1303; drawing by The Aeroplane (artist Leslie Carr)
- Region
- Western and Central Europe
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- State
- Regime
- Churchill Government
- Leader
- Winston Churchill
- Audience
- Own forces
- Purpose
- Warn or inform
- Theme
- War and the military
- Event
- World War II
- Leader
- Winston Churchill
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Foreign Posters, retrieved October 3, 2026
- Rights
- UK Crown copyright, 1939-1945, expired; hosted by owner decision
Air Ministry Air Diagram 1303; drawing by The Aeroplane (Leslie Carr). National Archives and Records Administration, 44-PF-65q.
Text on the object
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
