The early aeroplanes were not a candidate for war. The Wright brothers made their first powered flight late in 1903, but by 1909, the technology had advanced sufficiently for the Frenchman, Louis Bleriot, to cross the English Channel, some 22 miles or so. This won him the £1,000 promised by the London Daily Mail for doing so. He nearly didn’t make it.

The British Army had already conquered the air. From 1880 they were using balloons to locate and target enemy troops for artillery, as the Prussians had done in the siege of Paris in 1871. This service was delivered by the Balloon Section, Royal Engineers (RE). In 1911, the Air Battalion, RE, had two Companies, No1 had airships, balloons and kites, while No2 had aircraft. The Royal Flying Corps (RFC) was founded in 1912 from these two companies, but just before the outbreak of war, the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) took over the airships, leaving the RFC with the aircraft.1

The aircraft of 1914 were not intended to fight. The job for some, unlike their balloon predecessors, was to ‘scout’ for the enemy, a job traditionally given to the cavalry. The aircraft was not limited to difficulties of terrain and had a superior vantage point. At this stage, it complimented the role of the cavalry. Most British single seaters were called Scouts for most of the First World War. Once located, two-seater aircraft maintained the contact, the passenger or observer passing back fire correction for the artillery, superseding, but not replacing the balloon. They were ideal for a campaign of manoeuvre.

The problem with most of these aircraft was that they were underpowered and underdeveloped, which meant that they had problems lifting any sort of weight or payload, which included the pilot! The rate of climb was lamentable and their loiter time2 limited. The two seaters especially, were designed to be stable to allow ground observation. The standard RFC aircraft in 1914, the BE 2, was so stable that it could not be manoeuvred quickly at all and later proved the airborne equivalent of the ‘sitting duck’.

At the outbreak of war, France had 132 front-line aircraft and 15 non-rigid airships, Germany 246 aircraft and 5 Zeppelin airships, the RFC 84 aircraft and the RNAS 71 aircraft and 7 airships. The other major forces (Russia and Austria) were poorly equipped at this time, the Russians having some 24 aircraft and 12 airships available and the Austrians 36 aircraft and 1 airship. In the first few weeks of the Great War, there was still no desire to fight in the air. Opponents waved chivalrously at each other in passing. Just being airborne was dangerous enough, but it would soon become more so.

It may have started with the shaking of fists, but soon, opposing airmen started to devise ways of limiting the others activities. Due to weight restrictions, only pistols, rifles and shotguns were used initially, with little effect, although there were stories about both R.J.F. Barton of the RFC and Felix Brocord of the French Air Service shooting down German aircraft with pistols. Other offensive projectiles at this time included bricks, flechettes (heavy steel darts), hand grenades and grappling hooks.

Since there was no way of preventing a machine gun, or any other weapon shooting the propeller off, tractor aircraft (prop in front) could only fire to the side and behind. Pusher aircraft (propeller behind) could fire forward, but not to the rear. Early machine guns were too heavy to be carried in the smaller aircraft, so it was left to the large lumbering pusher planes to carry the heavy machine guns.

On 22 August 1914, Lt. Louis A Strange and his observer Lt. L. Penn-Gaskell with an infantry type Lewis gun mounted in a Henri Farman pusher, chased a German reconnaissance aircraft but could not come within range and the gun was ordered removed. On the same day German rifle fire brought down an Avro 504 on patrol over Belgium becoming the first RFC aeroplane to be destroyed by the enemy. As if in reply, a German two seater aircraft was forced down on 25 August, after a confrontation with three unarmed aircraft of No. 2 Squadron RFC. This was the first German casualty. On the Eastern Front in August 1914, Staff-Captain Pyotr Nesterov of the Imperial Russian Air Service was the first military pilot in the world to ram a hostile reconnaissance plane.

On 5 October 1914, the first aeroplane in the world to be shot down from another aeroplane was a German two-seater Aviatik, piloted by Feldwebel Wilhelm Schlichting with Leutnant Fritz von Zangen as his observer, which was brought down over Rheims. Sergeant Joseph Frantz (pilot) and Caporal Louis Quénault (observer) of the French Air Service were returning from a mission in a Voisin Type 3 (pusher), when they spotted and fired on the German aircraft. Quénault’s Hotchkiss machine gun fired about 48 rounds (two clips) before the gun jammed. At this point the German observer fired at them with his rifle. Quénault returned fire with his carbine, hitting the pilot.. The plane, out of control, crashed to the earth and was destroyed. This was witnessed by French troops on the ground and thus became the first confirmed air-to-air combat victory.

Before continuing, it is as well to describe the crew conditions and equipment. By the end of 1914, most two seaters carried a machine gun for rearward defence, usually a Lewis gun by the Allies and the Parabellum (a lighter redesign of the Maxim) by the Germans. The normal safety harness was a simple leather lap strap, which the observer had to undo if he was to man the machine gun. There are many tales of aircraft rolling over and the observer seen to fall to his death from the rear cockpit (or front, in the case of the BE 2). There were no parachutes issued to aircrew, they were reserved for the crews of the observation balloons which began to be used as the Front became more static. Many aircrew refused them as they were seen to be ‘unmanly’, but it was mainly because of the weight of early parachutes that prevented their widespread use. To shoot at an aircraft would almost certainly result in the death of the crew from gunfire or crashing. The chivalry wasn’t exactly dead, but it certainly became difficult to see. By the Spring of 1915, the air war had grown more deadly.

The ‘Scout’ aircraft were the most vulnerable as, with only one crew member, not only did the pilot have to fly the aircraft, he had to fire the weaponry as well. Since this could not be fired forward, it had to be fired around the propeller arc. Difficult? That may be, but there were those who did achieve notable success. On the 25 July 1915, Major Lanoe G. Hawker of 6 Squadron, RFC was flying a Bristol Scout C biplane, armed only with a bolt-action rifle (SMLE3 – the standard infanty rifle) mounted at a angle beside the cockpit to fire clear of the propeller arc. He attacked three enemy two-seat scouts in three separate actions during a single sortie. For this action he was awarded the Victoria Cross on 24 August.

."For most conspicuous bravery and very great ability on 25 July 1915. When flying alone he attacked three enemy aeroplanes in succession. The first managed eventually to escape, the second was driven to the ground damaged, and the third, which he attacked at the height of about 10,000 feet, was driven to earth in our lines, the pilot and observer being killed. The personal bravery shown by this officer was of the very highest order, as the enemy's aircraft were armed with machine guns and all carried a passenger as well as a pilot." London Gazette, 24 August 1915

The first forward firing machine gun in a tractor aircraft was fitted to a Moraine Saulnier scout of the French Air Service flown by Roland Garros. To avoid the obvious problem with bullets and propeller blades, he had steel wedges fitted, which deflected the bullets. This gave him a tremendous advantage over the opposition who thought they were safe when a scout came directly at them. After shooting down five enemy aircraft, he was forced down due to damage caused by ground fire. The Germans captured him and found the technology on his aircraft. The secret was out.

An enterprising Hollander, Anthony Fokker, who built aircraft for the German Air service (the Netherlands were neutral) inspected it, but decided he could do better. He used cams, in line with the propeller blades, on the crankshaft of the engine. These operated a linkage with the machine gun’s firing mechanism and stopped it firing as the blade passed in front of the barrel. This is termed interrupter gear. To avoid weight problems, he used a lightened version of the Maxim MG07, the MG07/15, which had an air-cooled barrel (not water-cooled). This became the standard German fighter gun of the Great War. He built this into a nimble monoplane, the E1 (E= Eindeckker = monoplane) and offered it to the German Army. It was eagerly adopted.

At first it was used as protection for spotters but in the hands of pilots like Ernst Boelcke and Max Immelmann4 who patrolled the skies looking for spotters to shoot down, it was a killer. So began the ‘Fokker Scourge’ of the Autumn of 1915, when Allied aircraft dropped from the sky with monotonous regularity. The BE 2, with the defensive armament in the front, firing backwards under the top wing was, as mentioned earlier, an easy target –‘ Fokker Fodder’ as it became known. The Fokker E1 could be considered the first fighter aircraft.

After using agile pusher aircraft like the Airco DH2 with forward firing guns, the Allies used another version of interrupter gear like that used by Fokker and almost universally used the air-cooled version of the British Army’s Vickers machine gun. As engines grew more powerful and aerodynamics more refined, heavier armament could be carried, usually two MGs with more ammunition.

Aircraft also became more agile, making a more difficult target. So began the ‘dog fight’, aircraft turning, rolling, looping and stalling to shake off an attacker and the attacking aircraft following these manoeuvres to gain a good shooting position. Thus began the long run of the fighter aircraft and ‘Aces’ – fighter pilots who shot down others. Most did not survive the war and many that did laid the foundations for a repeat performance in more modern machines from the Spanish Civil War to the Pacific Ocean, 1936 to 1945.