The Great War - WW1
The War in the Air
The simple statement on the outbreak of war, that 'The squadrons flew to France', marked the end of secure British isolation from Continental Europe And foreshadowed a new form of warfare.
Sixty-three fragile but inherently stable aircraft of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) accompanied the British Expeditionary Force. Their role, that of reconnaissance, was to remain the principal operational activity of the combatant air forces throughout the war. Air fighting began when bolder souls went aloft armed with carbines, darts and even bricks, to ensure their duties were uninterrupted.
In February 1915 two Frenchmen, Roland Garros and Raymond Saulnier, experimented with a forward-firing machine gun, fixing steel plates to the propeller of their aircraft to deflect the small percentage of bullets they calculated would hit it. In April, Garros came down behind German lines and his captured aircraft enabled the Dutch-born aero-engineer Anthony Fokker to produce a mechanical interrupter gear, which allowed the gun to fire only when no propeller blade was in the way. It was fitted to the Eindecker monoplane, which thus became the first true fighter aircraft.
Zeppelin
In the World crisis, Winston Churchill wrote that from the beginning of the war there was a widespread fear that 'At any moment half a dozen Zeppelins might arrive to bomb London, or what was more serious, Chatham, Woolwich or Portsmouth'.
In 1914 the German armed forces had 30 rigid airships, all of them the Zeppelin type named after their designer Count Ferdinand Von Zeppelin. Although their most effective role throughout the war was that of maritime reconnaissance, it was not long before the Zeppelins were employed on bombing operations, first on the Western Front and then against the British Isles.
In 1914 the German armed forces had 30 rigid airships, all of them the Zeppelin type named after their designer Count Ferdinand Von Zeppelin. Although their most effective role throughout the war was that of maritime reconnaissance, it was not long before the Zeppelins were employed on bombing operations, first on the Western Front and then against the British Isles.
The first effective Zeppelin raid on London was launched by the German Navy's Airship Division on the 8th of September 1915, when Zeppelin-L13 penetrated London's primitive air defences to drop its bombs in a line running from Euston to Liverpool Street, killing 26 people. Following this, and later Zeppelin raids on London, much damage to property was done in anti-German riots. By the end of the war, 51 bombing raids by airships had been made against England, killing 557 people.
In spite of their size - the 'Super Zeppelins' introduced in 1916 were 650ft long - the airships proved fragile instruments of war, difficult to navigate with any accuracy, and vulnerable both to the elements and to fighters armed with incendiary bullets. By the end of the war over 60 of the German armed forces' 88 Zeppelin's had been lost, 34 to accidents caused by bad weather and the rest to Allied aircraft and ground fire. Nevertheless, they exerted a powerful psychological effect and diverted significant resources to the air defence of Britain which would otherwise have been employed in France.
The Fighter Aces
In the hands of pilots like Max Immelmann and Oswald Boelcke, the Eindeckers took a heavy toll of relatively defenceless Allied aircraft. Boelcke, who claimed 40 victories, codified the basic techniques of air combat in a pithy set of rules for pilots, the 'Dicta Boelcke', which were still being issued, in booklet form, to Luftwaffe pilots in World War 2.
Boelcke also drew on his experience in the fierce aerial fighting over Verdun in February-June 1916 to form specialised fighting squadrons, the Jagdstaggelin (hunting flights), known as Jastas. An early recruit to Jasta 2, commanded by Boelcke, was Freiherr Manfred Von Richthofen, the top-scoring ace of the war with 80 victories.
With the arrival of new aircraft types, the Allies began to produce their own fighter aces, among them the frail-looking French Capitaine Georges Guynemer of Escadrille N3 and the RFC's youthful Captain Albert Ball, who flew with 11 Squadron. Like many aces they adopted 'lone wolf' tactics, undeterred by the frequently heavy odds against them. However, by 1917 air fighting had overwhelmingly become a matter of teamwork based on formation flying.