Aviation in World War I
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Up to 1914: The Early Years of War
The Dawn of Air Combat
Early in the war, canvas-and-wood aircraft were used primarily as mobile observation vehicles. This was a big improvement over the slow, vulnerable Zeppelin and the immobile observation balloon. These observation aircraft provided detailed positions of the enemy in the ground war below, but there was still no thought of a separate air war. Because of this, enemy pilots at first simply exchanged waves. This later progressed to throwing bricks, grenades and sometimes rope, which they hoped would tangle the enemy plane's propeller. This naturally progressed to pilots firing handheld guns at enemy planes. Once the guns were mounted to the plane, the era of air combat began.
Technology Improvements
Like most other technologies during wartime, the aircraft underwent many improvements (though it might be argued that the most drastic changes occurred during the so-called "Golden Age of Flight" in the between-wars period of the 1920s and 1930s). To appreciate the sense of these improvements, compare designs such as the infamous late-war Fokker Dr.1 with early war aircraft, whose designs were not much different from the original unstable Wright Flyer, which took its first flight over a decade earlier.
Aircraft
Aircraft of this early period included the Maurice Farman "Shorthorn" and "Longhorn", D.F.W. BI, Rumpler Taube, B.E. 2a, A.E.G. BII, Bleriot XI, and the Penguin.
With limited engine power, aircraft could only afford a certain amount of weight, and therefore were made of of mostly canvas and wood. Therefore, planes flown improperly, such as not cutting off the engine in a dive, would suffer structural failure due to G-forces.
Problems Mounting Machine Guns
Another major limitation was the early mounting of machine guns, which was awkward due to the position of the propeller. It would seem most natural to place the gun between the pilot and the propellor, so they would be able to aim down its sight as well as service it during a gun jam. However, this gun position presents an obvious problem - the bullets would fly directly into the propeller.
Frenchman Roland Garros attempted to solve this problem by attaching metal deflectors to the blades of his propeller, which he hoped would guide bullets away. Garros managed to score several kills with his deflector modification, yet it was still an inadequate and dangerous solution.
One of the remedies at this time was to mount the gun to fire above the propeller. This required the gun to be mounted on the top wing of biplanes and to be propped up and secured by strings on monoplanes. Yet because the gun could not be reached, it could not be serviced during a gun jam, thus making it inoperable.
Another solution was the invention of the "pusher" plane, a design which was briefly popular during 1914 to 1915. The pusher design had a propellor positioned in the rear of the plane, behind the propeller and pilot. This provided the opportunity to optimally mount the gun, which could now be reloaded and repaired in-flight. The drawback was that the plane was unstable and not very maneuverable.
Later, in 1915, Germany found a breakthrough solution to this problem in the interrupter gear. This led in part to their air dominance during this period, which was known as the Fokker Scourge by the allies because of devastating losses inflicted by Fokker aircraft.
1915: The Fokker Scourge
In 1915, Anthony Fokker designed the interrupter gear, which turned the tides of war in Germany's favor. This ingenious device mechanically linked the gun to the propeller, allowing a mounted gun to fire between propellor blade intervals. This was fitted to the Fokker E-I (1915-Germany), making it top-of-the-line in design, maneuverability, and most importantly, gun placement. The result was devastating for the Allied powers, and a solution was needed fast.
The Fokker E-I's foil came in the form of the Nieuport 17 (1916-France), a biplane with a propellor in front and, as needed, a gun placed directly behind the propeller. The key event which allowed the Allies to reverse-engineer the German technology occured when a German pilot became lost in heavy fog over France. The pilot and plane were captured when it landed in France, giving the Allies access to its technology.
April 1917: Bloody April
During the First World War, the month of April 1917 was known as Bloody April by the Allied air forces. The Royal Flying Corps suffered losses so severe it came close to being annihilated. In April the Allies launched a joint offensive with the British attacking near Arras in Artois, northern France, while the French Nivelle Offensive was launched on the Aisne and the air forces were called on to provide support, predominantly in reconnaissance and artillery spotting.
Up To 1918: The Final Years of War
The final year of the war (1918) saw increasing shortages of supplies on the side of the Central Powers. Captured Allied planes were scrounged for every available material, even to the point of draining the lubricants from damaged engines just to keep one more German plane flyable. Manfred von Richthofen, the famed Red Baron,was killed in April of that year,leadership of his men eventually passing to Hermann Goering,the future head of Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe. Germany introduced the Fokker D.VII, both loved and loathed to the point that surrender of all surviving examples was specifically ordered by the victorious allies. This year also saw the United States increasingly involved,with former Indy race car driver Eddie Rickenbacker gaining fame as America's top scoring ace with 26 enemy planes shot down.
Anti-Aircraft Weaponry
Though aircraft still functioned as vehicles of observation, increasingly it was used as a weapon in itself. Dog fights erupted in the skies over the front lines - planes went down in flames and heroes were born. From this air-to-air combat, the need grew for better planes and gun armament.
This need for improvement was not limited to air-to-air combat. On the ground, methods developed before the war were being used to deter enemy planes from observation and bombing. Anti-aircraft artillery rounds were fired into the air and exploded into clouds of smoke and shrapnel, called flak, providing enemy aircraft with an obstacle course to fly around.
Anti-aircraft artillery defenses were increasingly used around observation balloons, which became frequent targets of enemy pilots. With aircraft armed with special incendiary bullets, these observation balloons were easy targets. Even with adequate air defenses, attacks on balloons were so frequent that observers stationed in balloons were later given parachutes so that they would be able to jump down to safety. Ironically, only a few pilots themselves had the luxury of parachutes.
Bombers
Bombers were introduced to replace the more vulnerable Zeppelin.
The most famous and successful bombers of the war were the Gotha G's, which conducted bombing raids on London. Though it has been agreed that the most damage done by them was to British morale, which took a devastating turn at the thought that the bombers could so easily penetrate defenses.
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Notable Aces
(Complete list: List of World War I flying aces)
Notable Aircraft
(Listed by location of manufacturing and first year in service)
(Also see category for World War I aircraft)
| Central Powers | Allied |
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See also
External links
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This is a World War I Aviation-related article. |
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Aircraft: Allied - Central Powers - Zeppelins |
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