World War I: Aerial Combat

Aerial combat or dogfights emerged in World War I. Bi-plaine and tri-planes were initially used as mobile observation vehicles and early pilots gave little thought to aerial combat- before enemy pilots simply exchanged waves. Intrepid pilots decided to interfere with enemy reconnaissance by using anything to put the plane down. This progressed to pilots firing hand-held guns at enemy planes. Once machine guns were mounted to the plane, either on a flexible mounting or higher on the wings of early biplanes, the era of air combat began. The Germans acquired an early air superiority due to the invention of synchronization gear in 1915.

During the first part of the war, there was no established tactical doctrine for air-to-air combat. Oswald Boelcke was the first to analyze the tactics of aerial warfare, resulting in a set of rules known as the Dicta Boelcke. Many of Boelcke's concepts, conceived in 1916, are still applicable today, including use of sun and altitude, surprise attack, and turning to meet a threat.

In 1915, Anthony Fokker designed the interrupter gear, which turned the tide of war in Germany's favor. This ingenious device mechanically linked the gun to the propeller, stopping the fire when a propeller blade passed in front of the machinegun muzzle. This was first fitted in the spring of 1915 to the production prototypes of the Fokker Eindecker, known as the M.5K/MG, making it top-of-the-line in design, maneuverability (although the Eindecker used wing warping for roll control), and most importantly, gun placement. Leutnant Kurt Wintgens, on July 1, 1915, scored the earliest known victory for a synchronized gun-equipped fighter with his M.5K/MG over a two-seat Morane Saulnier Parasol near Luneville, France. The result was devastating for the Allied powers, and gave the Germans almost total control of the air. Soon Allied planes were forced to flee for home at the mere sight of German monoplanes. A solution was needed, and quickly.

The E.III's foil came in the form of the Nieuport 11, a tractor biplane 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.

Another plane contributing to the end of the Fokker Scourge was the British pusher Airco DH.2. It suffered from mechanical reliability problems, but was far superior to the E.III.

The Fokker E-III, Airco DH-2, and Nieuport 11 would be the first in a long line of fighter aircraft used by both sides during the war. Fighters were primarily used to shoot down enemy planes, mainly the two-seaters used for reconnaissance and bombing missions. Because of this, another key role of fighter planes was to protect their own two-seaters from enemy fighters while they carried out their mission. Fighters were also used to attack ground targets with small loads of bombs and by strafing.

Bloody April

In April 1917, the Allies launched a joint offensive, the British attacking near Arras in Artois, while the French Nivelle Offensive was launched on the Aisne. Air forces were called on to provide support, predominantly in reconnaissance and artillery spotting.

However, the Germans were prepared for the offensive, and were equipped with the new Albatros D-III, "the best fighting scout on the Western Front"^[8] at the time.

The month became known as Bloody April by the Allied air forces. The Royal Flying Corps suffered particularly severe losses. However, they managed to keep the German Air Force on the defensive, largely preventing them from using their planes on bombing or reconnaissance missions to assist their troops on the ground.

Shortly after "Bloody April", the Allies re-equipped their squadrons with new planes such as the Sopwith Pup, and S.E.5a which helped tip the balance back in their favor. The Germans responded with new types as well, such as the Fokker Dr.I, which were in turn countered by the British Sopwith Camel and French SPAD S.XIII. As a result, the Allies were able to maintain general air superiority toward the end of the year, which was in general maintained for the rest of the war.

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 Jagdgeschwader 1 eventually passed to Hermann Göring.

Germany introduced the Fokker D.VII, both loved and loathed to the point surrender of all surviving examples was specifically ordered by the victorious Allies.

This year also saw the United States increasingly involved. While American volunteers had been flying in Allied squadrons since the early years of the war, not until 1918 did all-American squadrons begin patrolling the skies above the trenches. At first, the Americans were largely supplied with second-rate weapons and obsolete planes, such as the Nieuport 28. As American numbers grew, equipment improved, including the SPAD S.XIII, one of the best French planes in the war.

^{courtesy of wikipedia.com}

By 1915 the French were experimenting with a machine gun mounted to fire forward through the propeller arc. To prevent the bullets from shattering the propeller, heavy armor plate encased the blades. While firing this arrangement against a German plane, Lieut. Roland Garros, a prewar aviation pioneer, shattered his propeller blades and was forced down behind the German lines.

The Germans quickly sensed the importance of the French development and gave Anthony H. G. Fokker, a Dutchman whose services had been rejected by Britain and France before he settled in Germany, the job of developing a machine gun synchronized to fire through the propeller arc. Fokker solved the problem with a mechanical cam that stopped the machine gun from firing each time a propeller blade was in the line of fire.

German pilots flying planes equipped with the Fokker synchronized machine gun sallied out in force driving Allied aircraft from the battle area. From this time onward, the air in wartime would be a disputed area. Control of the air became a prize in itself and a necessary requisite for successful ground or sea operations. The French soon countered with a hydraulically operated machine gun synchronizer and the air war flared into new fury.

As the war dragged on, three primary types of battle planes emerged as the primary lines of technical development. First came the scout or fighter aircraft designed to drive enemy aircraft from the sky and maintain control of the air. These were single-seater aircraft with the best performance available-starting out at about 90 mph. top speed in the early war years and pushing close to 150 mph. before the war's end. They were armed with a pair of forward-firing machine guns. It was in this type of aircraft that the great aces of World War I fought and rolled up their record of kills. Baron Manfred von Richthofen of Germany topped the list of fighter pilots with 80 victims, followed by Maj. Rene Fonck of France with 75, British Maj. Edward "Mickey" Mannock with 73, Canadian Maj. William Avery Bishop with 72, and Capt. Ernst Udet of Germany with 62, in that order. The leading United States ace was Capt. Edward V. Rickenbacker, credited with destroying 21 German aircraft and four balloons.

The fighter pilots preserved the last elements of the ancient chivalry of knights in combat during the bloody mass slaughter of trench warfare. When they were forced down behind enemy lines, the enemy air force entertained them as dinner guests before shipping them off to prison camps. When a fighter pilot was killed in enemy territory, the victors buried him with full military honors and dropped a note containing details of his demise and a photograph of his grave on his squadron aerodrome. Even in the swirling dogfights between squadrons of fighter planes, the combat usually narrowed down to individual duels.

However, a German schoolteacher named Oswald Boelcke, turned fighter pilot, changed this style of combat. Boelcke was the originator of fighter tactics that saw flights and squadrons deployed so they fought as a group rather than as individuals. Boelcke was killed after 43 victories in a mid-air collision with a wingman before he could fully apply his tactics in combat over the western front. But his leading pupil, Baron Manfred von Richthofen put them into practice with his wing of red-painted Fokker triplanes and dominated the air over northern France for months with Boelcke's tactics.

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