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.I 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 mostly canvas and wood. Still-rudimentary engineering, however, meant aircraft might suffer structural failure pulling out of dives, shedding wings or tails.
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 which allowing the gun to fire through the arc of a spinning propeller without the bullets striking the blades. 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
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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 it to fire between blades. This was fitted to the monoplane 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 11 (1915-France), a biplane with a tractor prop and, as needed, a cowl gun. The key event which allowed the Allies to reverse-engineer the German technology occurred when a German pilot became lost in heavy fog over France. The pilot and plane were captured when it landed, 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 credited with around 80 victories, was killed in April, possibly by an Australian anti-aircraft machinegunner (although Royal Air Force pilot Captain Arthur Roy Brown was officially credited), and the leadership of his outfit eventually passed to Hermann Göring, 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.
Anti-Aircraft Weaponry
Image:Bombed balloon.jpg 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 fragmentation, 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 fighters equipped with special incendiary bullets. Attacks on balloons were so frequent observers were given parachutes, enabling them to jump to safety. Ironically, only a few aircrew had the luxury of parachutes, due in part to a mistaken belief they inhibited aggressiveness (and in part to early aircraft being unable to lift their significant weight).
Bombers
The first ever aerial bombardment of civilians was during World War I. On January 19, 1915, in which two German Zeppelins dropped 24 fifty-kilogram high-explosive bombs and ineffective three-kilogram incendiaries on Great Yarmouth, Sheringham, Kings Lynn, and the surrounding villages. In all, four people were killed, sixteen injured, and monetary damage was estimated at £7,740, although the public and media reaction were out of proportion to the death toll.
There were a further nineteen raids in 1915, in which 37 tons of bombs were dropped, killing 181 people and injuring 455. Raids continued in 1916. London was accidentally bombed in May, and, in July, the Kaiser allowed directed raids against urban centres. There were 23 airship raids in 1916 in which 125 tons of ordnance were dropped, killing 293 people and injuring 691. Gradually British air defences improved. In 1917 and 1918 there were only eleven Zeppelin raids against England, and the final raid occurred on August 5, 1918, which resulted in the death of KK Peter Strasser, commander of the German Naval Airship Department. By the end of the war, 51 raids had been undertaken, in which 5,806 bombs were dropped, killing 557 people and injuring 1,358. The Zeppelin raids were complemented by the Gothaer bomber, which was the first heavier than air bomber to be used for strategic bombing. It has been argued that the raids were effective far beyond material damage in diverting and hampering wartime production, and diverting twelve squadrons and over 10,000 men to air defences. The calculations which were performed on the number of dead to the weight of bombs dropped would have a profound effect on the attitudes of the British authorities and population in the interwar years.
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Notable Aces
(Complete list: List of World War I flying aces)
Notable Aircraft
See also Category:World War I aircraft.
See also
Main articles
Other articles
References
- The Great War, television documentary by the BBC.
- Pearson, George, Aces: A Story of the First Air War, historical advice by Brereton Greenhous and Philip Markham, NFB, 1993. Contains assertion aircraft created trench stalemate.
- Winter, Denis. First of the Few. London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 1982. Coverage of the British air war, with extensive bibliographical notes.
- Morrow, John. German Air Power in World War I. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982. Contains design and production figures, as well as economic influences.
- Editors of American Heritage. History of WW1. Simon & Schuster, 1964.
External links
Italian Aircraft: