Birth of a New Weapon
In the summer of 1914,
the airplane was less than eleven years old. Aviation
was a fledgling technology that fascinated many but still generated
skepticism when it came to practical applications. Most airplanes
of the time were slow, flimsy contraptions with barely enough power
to lift a single pilot and perhaps one passenger. While numerous
countries had shown an interest in military aviation, the concept
of using airplanes to wage war was still a fairly radical idea. All
that changed during the course of World War I.
Reconnaissance Planes
Early in the war, military strategists realized that aircraft
could be very useful for spying on enemy
troop movements. Thus, the reconnaissance plane was
born—a tool that all sides in the war used to varying degrees. These
aircraft typically carried a pilot and an observer with a camera,
who would photograph troop positions on the ground. The use of aircraft
for reconnaissance grew rapidly during the first few months of the
war and played an increasingly crucial role in achieving victories.
Such aircraft proved vital to the British and French forces during
the Battle of Mons and the Battle of the Marne,
for example.
Fighter Planes
As aerial reconnaissance became more common, so did the
need for ways to stop enemy observation planes.
One way was by firing upon them from the ground, which was ineffective
until guns could be better adapted for the purpose. The other way
was to develop a means for one aircraft to attack another. The first
such attempts were made using the observation aircraft themselves,
as pilots and observers attempted to shoot at other planes using
rifles and even pistols—a method that quickly proved hopeless. Some
pilots tried throwing hand grenades, bricks, or even long ropes
with grappling hooks at planes below them. The ideal solution was
the machine gun, which could fire a continuous stream
of bullets, significantly increasing the chance of hitting a target.
Machine guns tended to be large and heavy, however, and
only a few were small and light enough to be practicable for use
on an airplane. Another problem was that firing sideways seriously decreased
accuracy, while firing forward meant that the airplane’s propeller
would be in the way. The problem was not solved until mid-1915,
when a Dutch aircraft designer named Anton Fokker developed
the “interrupter gear,” a timing mechanism that synchronized the
machine gun with the moving propeller blades.
On August 1, 1915,
German pilots Oswald Boelcke and Max Immelmann became
the first pilots to shoot down another aircraft using Fokker’s new
method. This development gave the Germans a strong advantage for
several months until French and British designers succeeded in adapting
the device for their own use about one year later.
Bombers
Bombing was an obvious offensive tactic for use in air
warfare, but different countries approached the concept in different
ways. Russia was the first to develop an airplane specifically for
this purpose: the Murometz, a large four-engine airplane that Igor
Sikorsky had developed in 1913 as
a passenger plane, was adapted for use as a bomber in 1914 and
was used successfully throughout the war.
