In the First World War, aviation was used to achieve three goals: reconnaissance, bombing and extermination of enemy aircraft. Leading world powers have achieved great results in conducting combat operations with the help of aviation.
Observation
As mentioned earlier, the reconnaissance was the first role covered by the airplane during the First World War. The skepticism of the generals regarding its operational use was mitigated by the lessons derived from the use of balloons as a vantage point for observation during the American Civil War. The plane, in fact, was seen by the few admirers as a way to extend and improve the possibilities of the ball, which was, for example, limited by the impossibility to see what was behind a hill, and by the very little flexibility of use and rapidity of movement.
Until the First World War remained a conflict of movement, the cavalry remained the weapon of choice to conduct reconnaissance of the terrain and the consistency and movements of the enemy troops. The beginning of the trench war, however, made cavalry completely useless as a tactical reconnaissance tool, and favored the expansion of the use of the plane. Air reconnaissance played an important role in several major battles of the Western Front, for example by avoiding the encirclement of British troops commanded by General John French by the German side under the orders of Alexander von Kluck during the battle of Mons ; and allowing the generalFrench Joseph-Simon Gallieni to send troops against the German side flank during the first battle of the Marne.
Also on the Eastern Front the scouts played an important role in determining the fate of the clashes. Having ignored the warnings of his pilots, for example, cost Russian general Alexander Samsonov the loss of virtually all his army by the imperial German troops of General Paul von Hindenburg during the battle of Tannenberg. After this defeat, however, even the Russians began to make extensive use of the aircraft (especially through the bomber Sikorsky Ilya Muromets) and thanks to it they obtained for example accurate maps on the disposition of the enemy forces during theoffensive Brusilov.
The aviators who carried out reconnaissance flights were in a situation of extreme danger. The missions, generally conducted by crews composed by a pilot and an observer, consisted in keeping the aircraft as much as possible in a straight and stable line, so as to be able to take clear and superimposed photographic images, useful to the aerial photogrammetric operators. This operational behavior naturally made reconnaissance planes ideal targets for enemy artillery and fighter aircraft.
Another role covered by reconnaissance aircraft was that of tactical observation in favor of the artillery. The pilots had the task of carrying out observations that would allow, once transmitted to the competent commands, to direct and re-adjust the artillery shots on the enemy positions. The particular position that was to be held by the pilots, in line with the shots of their artillery, often allowed them to see the projectile almost motionless in the air at the apex of the ballistic trajectory, with the risk of being hit by friendly fire.
The artillery fire directed by the aviation had a notable application in the First Battle of the Aisne, during which the raised positions of German artillery, invisible from the plain, were discovered, detected and mapped by the British planes, allowing the attack by the ground troops. Also the battle of Verdun saw a notable role on the part of the French aviation, which had been chosen as primary target by Falkenhayn in order to blind the enemy artillery. Despite considerable losses, French aviators continued to fly and provide tactical support to their artillery, allowing them to maintain operational effectiveness.
In addition to playing a major role in war theaters, reconnaissance aircraft were also the protagonists of actions of daring, such as the launching of psychological war flyers on enemy positions. Remarkable is the example provided by the Italian SVA 5, which on August 9, 1918, under the command of the poet and aviator Gabriele D’Annunzio, starting from the airfield of St. Pelagius pushed over Vienna and spread on the city flyers of which the same d’Annunzio was author.
Bombardment
Although the fighters and their pilots were the subject of great attention and consideration among the general public, also thanks to the robust propaganda campaigns carried out by the various countries in the press, their role in the war was essentially defensive.
As theorized by the Italian Dohuet and the Americans Billy Mitchell and Hugh Trenchard before the conflict, the bombers were instead the instrument of war that exercised a real weight on the fate of the war. The new aircraft allowed the change of the paradigm in force up to that moment, which saw the armies confront on the front line, while the territory behind the lines continued to live an almost normal existence. The advent of the bombers, and their ability to hit targets many kilometers behind enemy lines, allowed for the first time to engage the civilian population in the fighting, and to weaken their efforts to support the fighters on the front.
The difference between the bombers and the fighters was evident even if considered from the point of view of technological development. While the constant pressure exerted by the combat conditions often made hunting in obsolescent conditions within a few months, it was not so for the bombers, whose rate of development was noticeably smaller both in numerical and qualitative terms. It was from this period also the development of the two doctrines of strategic and tactical bombardment, directed one to weaken the productive capacities of the enemy war industry and the morale of those who worked there; the other to support with operations aimed at the destruction of specific objectives such as artillery posts, railway junctions and the like, the strategies of the ground forces.
Striking civilian targets and population centers was a practice initially adopted with extreme reluctance by the highest authorities in the various countries. Paradigmatic is the example of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, who only in May 1915, after considerable pressure from his military commanders, consented to hit the village of London, however, without prejudice to the historical monuments. The first deliberate bombing of civilians in history occurred on 19 January 1915, when the German Zeppelins L3 and L4 bombed the English cities of Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn, making more than 20 victims.
As mentioned earlier, the first attempts to use the aircraft as a bomber date back to the Italo-Turkish war, and they had basically been few and poorly designed experiments. The First World War instead found initially in the airships the ideal offensive air weapon to carry relatively large loads of explosives at great distances.
The German armed forces, and in particular the Navy, were the main users of these vehicles, having two specialized factories available: the Schütte-Lanz, and the one that became so well known that its name was adopted as a synonym of airship, the Zeppelin.
Strategic bombardment
The first air raid against civilians took place on January 19, 1915, when two German Zeppelin launched 24 bombs of 50 kg. about the cities on the coast of Norfolk. The attack only caused the deaths of four people, but the reaction of the public and the media was violent. There were 19 other attacks in 1915 where 37 tons of bombs were dropped, killing 181 people.
In 1916, 23 incursions of airships were carried out, dropping 125 tonnes of bombs and killing 293 people. London was bombed by mistake in May 1916 and in July the Kaiser authorized the bombing of urban centers.
As of 1917, Zepelins were supported by the Gotha GV bomber, which were the first aircraft used for strategic bombardment. These attacks did not have a great influence on the British war, but by blocking the production of British combat squadrons, they prevented them from participating in the air warfare above the front. The estimates of the number of deaths for bombs launched had a great influence on the population and the British government, who estimated that bombering would happen every day.
Little by little, the British defense improved and only 11 attacks took place between 1917 and 1918.
In total, 5,806 bombs were launched that killed 557 people.
Hunting airplanes
The first experiments aimed to arm the planes were made in 1912 by Vickers, which under the “Experimental Fighting Biplane 1”, as in “Destroyer” code, created an armed plane with a machine gun Maxim caliber.303 inches. The two-seater “thrusting” should have intended to have the ability to shoot to the entire front field, however, was underestimated the influence of the weight of the machine gun placed on the front that led to the assumption of a trim beaten at takeoff, which resulted in the destruction of the prototype on the first attempt.
At the outbreak of hostilities, as mentioned above, the reconnaissance planes were mostly on an unarmed mission, leaving the first attempts to offend to the use of individual weapons.
This situation, however, quickly changed from October 1914, when for the first time Louis Strange mounted a safety belt on his Avro 504 that allowed his observer to “stand up and shoot all around the aircraft, up and down”.
The first blast of history took place on October 5, 1914, when the observer of a two-seater French Voisin, armed with a Hotchkiss Mle 1914 machine gun, struck and crashed an Aviatik BI.
Meanwhile, Vickers had continued to work on the concept of the armed plane, trying to evolve the unfortunate “Destroyer”. The result of this work was the appearance on the western front in February 1915 of the Vickers FB5 Gunbus. The plane did not meet the hoped-for success, as the Destroyer was equipped with a “pushing” engine, and it was too slow and heavy to be effectively used as a fighter.
The growing experience of the pilots began to make it clear that the ideal configuration would be that of a “tractor” powered aircraft, in which the machine guns were in a fixed position in front of the pilot, who would thus have had the possibility to shoot in person. This type of approach would have made it possible to eliminate the observer and the related weight, and to make the planes lighter and more manoeuvrable. The only problem was represented by the fact that a machine gun in frontal position in a “tractor” aircraft would have led to the almost certainty of firing on the propeller blades, with disastrous results.
Also in this case, Louis Strange was one of the first experimenters, and he fixed a Lewis machine gun to the upper wing of his Martinsyde S.1. The solution, apparently effective, posed quite a few problems on May 10, 1915, when, after firing the entire magazine in an attempt to shoot down an enemy plane, he found himself in need to unlock the jammed weapon. Standing up in the nacelle, he began to fumble, but at the same time he lost control of the plane, which began to screw to the ground. Fortunately, he managed to get back into the cockpit, Strange survived, but the solution tested proved in this case not optimal.
In the following period, different solutions were experimented that allowed to adopt the configuration of an anterior machine gun, integral with the body of the plane, whose concept was first expressed by Roland Garros in the years preceding the conflict. In this period, Garros tried to mount a machine gun at a corner diverging from the axis of the plane, so that it would shoot away from the rotation circle of the propeller, but the difficulties experienced in taking aim had led him to abandon this attempt.
Also in the pre-war period Raymond Saulnier, co – founder of the Morane-Saulnier, experimented with the synchronizer, a mechanism that allowed the machine gun to shoot only when the propeller blades were not in front of the firing line. The first attempts were made with a Hotchkiss machine gun, but the unpredictability of his fire regime led Saulnier to give up.
Garros and Saulnier met in Paris in 1915 (the pilot flew over a Morane-Saulnier Type G) and together developed a different kind of approach. They mounted steel triangles, with the apex oriented towards the pilot, on the propeller blades at the level of the firing line, with the idea that any bullet hit them would be deflected away. Garros tested the solution in combat on April 1, 1915, with complete success, knocking down an enemy two-seater and achieving further victories on April 13 and 18. The exploits of Garros were echoed by the French press, which for the first time used the term ” ace”in connection with a pilot.” On April 19, however, while attacking the station of Kortrijk, Garros was hit, forced to land and then captured along with his plane.
The episode affected the development of German fighter aviation. Garros’ plane was, in fact, brought to Anthony Fokker, one of the most successful German aeronautical engineers and designer of the Eindecker series of monoplane. According to some sources, Fokker was already working on his version of the synchronizer when he came into possession of the Morane-Saulnier of Garros, but what is certain that in just 48 hours even the Eindecker was equipped with that kind of mechanism.
Given the skepticism of the pilots compared to the results at the ground trials, Fokker took the Eindecker in person and immediately pulled down a Farman reconnaissance aircraft. At this point, innovation was accepted and immediately exploited by Oswald Boelcke and his second in command, Max Immelmann, who quickly became the axes celebrated by the German press as “the scourge Fokker”
The introduction of the synchronization mechanism on the Eindecker reversed the power relations of the air war. Until then, the Allied planes had enjoyed the advantage of greater stability than the German ones. Suddenly, this advantage became a defect, because the Eindecker, finally armed in an appropriate manner, had great ease in exploiting its greater maneuverability to bring down opponents. As a result of the high number of casualties, the Allied bombings, previously conducted during the day, became night actions.
The Germans long maintained air control thanks to the Eindecker, who participated in the battle of Verdun with the task of tearing down enemy scouts, thus defeating the capabilities of the opposing artillery. The Battle of Verdun was one of the focal points of the First World War as far as operations on the ground were concerned; but it was also an important opportunity to develop aerial tactics on both fronts. In support of General Falkenhayn’s strategy, according to which the battle was to be the place where the “French forces would have bled to death”, the Germans concentrated most of their planes on Verdun’s front, in order to achieve air superiority. The aerial strategy involved the maintenance of a “barrier patrol” consisting of two-seater Type C, which was intended to prevent French aircraft access to the battlefield. A second force, composed of about 180 between Fokker EI and Pfalz EI, was charged with interdicting those who were eventually able to pass.
In mid- 1916, however, in correspondence with the Battle of the Somme, the German monoplane was overtaken by the entry into service of four allied aircraft: the aforementioned Vickers Gunbus, the Royal Aircraft Factory FE2b, the Airco DH.2 and the Nieuport 11.
In fact, all these planes were already available previously, but in the period between July and August 1916, which Boelcke later defined as “the blackest days of German aviation”, the Allies introduced the use of flying in defensive formations. of five aircraft, which effectively countered the groups of four normally used by the Germans. The change in aerial tactics put into practice the end of the “scourge Fokker”, which was symbolically closed by the demolition of Max Immelmann on June 18, 1916.
The autumn of 1916 saw the appearance on the operational fronts of a series of airplanes that would have further moved in favor of the Allies the balance of forces of the air war. The entry into service of the Sopwith Pup English and the SPAD S.VII French fielded formidable opponents for the German Albatros DI and D II.
Despite the short allied domination, a new regime change of the air war was marked by Boelcke’s death in a collision with another plane piloted by Erwin Böhme on October 28, 1916, and by the ascent to the headlines of one of his protégés., the baron Manfred von Richthofen. The young pilot knocked down the British ace Lanoe Hawker in combat, and to celebrate the victory, he painted his Albatros entirely in red, thus beginning the legend of the “Red Baron”.
In recognition of his abilities, he was entrusted with the command of Jagdstaffel 11 (Jasta 11), in time to see him reequipped with the new Albatros D.III, low wing fighter inspired by the Nieuport Bebé [ unclear ]. The combination of the new aircraft with the new leader was particularly lethal to the Allies, and brought control of the air war into German hands. In April 1917 (known as Bloody April), the Allied losses by Jasta 11 amounted to 80 devices, 21 of which were personally shot by Richtofen.
The German superiority during the month of April began to falter when it was introduced on the front line of the Sopwith triplane English, whose performance in terms of speed and service ceiling practice were substantially higher than those of the Albatros D.III and DV Germans. As on other occasions, however, this superiority was short-lived. The capture of a Sopwith triplet of the 1st to RNAS Squadron by the German troops, allowed the German Inspectorate to request from Pfalz-Flugzeugwerke, Siemens-Schuckert and Fokker to develop something similar. The result of this engineering effort on the German side was the realization of Fokker Dr. I, perhaps the best known aircraft of the conflict for being the favorite of the Red Baron.
The extraordinary results obtained during Bloody April prompted the German High Command to entrust to Richtofen a hunting flock composed of four squadrons, the Jagdeschwader I (JG I), for which he recruited the best pilots available . The flock, which was moved on the front line as needed, soon earned the name ” Circus Volante ” due to its pilots’ habit of painting brightly colored planes, imitating their charismatic leader; and for the particular attack maneuver adopted, which foresaw that the planes of the Jasta would fly in a circle waiting to start the assault.
The great influence of Richtofen was also the basis for the definitive change in the tactics of use of aviation by the German armed forces. Assigned to the IV Armata, and placed under the direction of the aviation captain Otto Bufe, it soon came into conflict with the latter due to the divergences on the use of hunting flocks. In fact, Bufe was among those who advocated the use of aviation as a mere tactical tool at the service of infantry, and as such required its presence in the air at certain pre-programmed hours as a function of blocking force. On the contrary, Richtofen claimed in a letter to Fritz von Falkenhayn (son of General Erich von FalkenhaynGerman Chief of Staff) the need to leave the hunting flocks as independent as possible, in order to guarantee the unpredictability and effectiveness of the slaughter of a large number of enemy aircraft. In the same letter he also complained that in the face of the Allied introduction of the Sopwith triplane and the Sopwith Camel, among others, the inferiority of the Albatros D.III and DV had become evident and was the basis of the loss of numerous valid pilots. He later complained that the monopoly regime of the Albatross manufacturers was at the root of the slow introduction of more effective aircraft such as the Fokker
The introduction on the war front of the Sopwith Triplane produced a new change in air supremacy, whose weight shifted to the RNAS. Just as the JG I had emerged as an elite unit on the German side, on the other front the affirmation of the Canadian ” Black Flight ” flock, led by ace Raymond Collishaw, soon took place. In addition to having aesthetic similarities (Black Flight was so named because its pilots painted the planes completely black), the Canadian formation proved to be comparable to JG I in terms of destructive capacity. In the months of June and July 1917 the Collishaw pilots knocked down at least 86 enemy planes, losing only three.
The evident inferiority condition in which the German aviation had fallen pushed Richtofen to exercise all his influence to obtain in the new fighters that could compete effectively with the Sopwith Triplane. The result of the German industrial effort was a series of new models, among which the Fokker Dr.I emerged, which in the words of the same Richtofen was ” manoeuvrable like the devil and climbs like a monkey “.
At the introduction of Dr. I, however, did not correspond to a new change in supremacy in the skies, since at the same time the Sopwith Triplane were replaced by the Royal Aircraft Factory SE5a and Sopwith Camel, while the French introduced the SPAD S.XIII, an excellent evolution of the SPAD S.VII. The main technological innovations of the new aircraft were the introduction of a linear motor in the SE5a, which canceled the torsion problems connected to the use of the rotary engine, to the advantage of the ease of piloting; and the displacement of most of the structural weight in the anterior portion in the case of the Sopwith Camel, which considerably increased its maneuverability.
The clashes between the new Allied and German aircraft produced losses on both sides. The commander of Jasta 11, Kurt Wolff, was shot down on September 15 by a Sopwith Camel of Black Flight while piloting a Fokker FI, the prototype of Dr.I, originally assigned to Voss. Voss himself was shot dead at the end of the month while he was fighting alone against seven SE5a.
Dr.I, however, had somehow brought the forces back into balance, and the situation remained unchanged until, in October 1917, several specimens shattered in mid-air. It was diagnosed that the cells were strongly affected by the stress of air combat, and so the Drs were grounded until the beginning of 1918, when a reinforced version was delivered to combat flocks. The return of Dr. I on the front line, however, did not serve to bring the air superiority back into German hands. The absence of the fighter had made it possible for the Allies to introduce large numbers of Camel, SE5a and SPAD, which made the fight very unequal. As the death of Max Immelmann had virtually closed the era of the “scourge Fokker”, so the German hopes of victory in the skies fell symbolically with Richtofen, who on April 21, 1918 rushed to the commands of a Dr.I for controversial causes
Not even the introduction of Fokker D.VII, which had many features that made it superior to its opponents, served to resolve the situation. The D.VIIs were produced in relatively low quantities, as German industry was beginning to suffer from the lack of raw materials, and had no impact on the conflict that would have been possible with higher numbers. The exceptionality of this plane is proved by the fact that the armisticeconcluded between the Allies and the German Empire including specific clauses concerning the D.VII, of which the winners should have acquired all the specimens and the construction plants. The expectations of the Allies, however, were disappointed by the initiative of Antony Fokker, who quickly dismantled the plants, hiding them in the surrounding farms and reporting them secretly in the Netherlands, where the D.VII were produced for most of the twenties.
Impact
By war’s end, the impact of aerial missions on the ground war was in retrospect mainly tactical – strategic bombing, in particular, was still very rudimentary indeed. This was partly due to its restricted funding and use, as it was, after all, a new technology. On the other hand, the artillery, which had perhaps the greatest effect of any military arm in this war, was in very large part as devastating as it was due to the availability of aerial photography and aerial “spotting” by balloon and aircraft. By 1917 weather bad enough to restrict flying was considered as good as “putting the gunner’s eyes out”.
Some, such as then-Brigadier General Billy Mitchell, commander of all American air combat units in France, claimed, “he only damage that has come to [Germany] has been through the air”. Mitchell was famously controversial in his view that the future of war was not on the ground or at sea, but in the air.
Source from Wikipedia