World War I Aviation

In World War I, aviation was used to achieve three goals: reconnaissance, bombing, and extermination of enemy aircraft. The leading world powers have achieved great results in the conduct of military operations with the help of aviation.

German Air

German Armed Forces - the second largest aircraft in the world at the beginning of the First World War. It counted about 220-230 aircraft. But meanwhile, it is worth noting that these were obsolete Taube -type aircraft; aviation was given the role of vehicles (then aircraft could carry 2 to 3 people). The costs of it in the German army amounted to 322 thousand marks.

During the war, the Germans showed great attention to the development of their air forces, one of the first to appreciate the impact that the air war has on the war on earth. The Germans sought to ensure air superiority by introducing technical innovations as quickly as possible into aviation (for example, fighter planes) and for a certain period from the summer of 1915 to the spring of 1916 practically maintained dominance in the sky at the fronts.

Much attention was also paid by the Germans to strategic bombing. Germany was the first country to use air force to attack the enemy's strategic rear areas (factories, settlements, sea harbors). Since 1914 , first German airships and then multi-engine bombers regularly bombed rear targets in France, Great Britain and Russia.

Germany made a significant bet on hard airships. During the war, more than 100 rigid aircraft built by Zeppelin and Schütte-Lanz were built. Before the war, the Germans mainly planned to use airships for air reconnaissance, but it quickly turned out that overland and in the daytime airships were too vulnerable.

The main function of heavy airships was sea patrolling, reconnaissance at sea in the interests of the navy and long-range night bombing. It was Zeppelin’s airships that first realized the doctrine of long-range strategic bombing, raiding London , Paris , Warsaw and other rear cities of the Entente. Although the effect of the application, excluding individual cases, was mainly moral, the anti-dazzle measures, air alarms significantly disrupted the work of the Entente, which was not ready for such an industry, and the need to organize air defense led to the distraction of hundreds of aircraft, anti-aircraft guns, thousands of soldiers from the front line.

The bombing of London on September 8, 1915

However, the appearance in 1915 of incendiary bullets, allowing effective destruction of hydrogen-filled zeppelins, eventually led to the fact that since 1917 , after heavy losses in the final strategic raids on London, airships were used only for naval reconnaissance.

Austro-Hungarian Aviation

Of all the countries participating in the World War, the Austro-Hungarian air force was one of the weakest. The conservative Austro-Hungarian military leadership did not attach any serious importance to aviation. Aircraft manufacturing enterprises in the country were very small, and the shortage of aircraft fleet was covered mainly by German-made aircraft. By the start of the war, the Austro-Hungarian Air Force had only about 30 aircraft and about eight dozen pilots.

Turkish Aviation

Of all the warring powers, the Ottoman Empire was the weakest. Although the Turks began to develop military aviation in 1909 , the technological backwardness and extreme weakness of the industrial base of the Ottoman Empire led to the fact that World War I met with very small air forces. After entering the war, the Turkish fleet replenished with more modern German planes. The peak of its development - 90 aircraft in the ranks and 81 pilots - the Turkish Air Force reached in 1915.

There was no aircraft industry in Turkey, the entire fleet of vehicles was provided with supplies from Germany. About 260 airplanes were delivered from Germany to Turkey in 1915-1918: in addition, a number of captured vehicles were restored and used.

Despite the weakness of the material part, the Turkish Air Force proved to be quite effective during the Dardanelles operation and in battles in Palestine. But since 1917, the arrival of large numbers of new British and French fighters to the front and the depletion of German resources led to the fact that the Turkish Air Force was practically exhausted. Attempts to change the situation were made in 1918 , but were not completed due to the revolution.

Russian Aviation

At the start of World War I, the Russian Empire had the largest air fleet in the world of 263 aircraft. ^[1] At the same time, aviation was in the process of formation. In 1914, the Russian Empire and France produced approximately the same number of aircraft and were the first to produce airplanes among the Entente countries this year, yet 2.5 times behind Germany in this indicator. However, here one of the laws of dialectics gave a crack: the quantitative advantage did not turn into a qualitative one, the material part was very worn out, the troops came to the front with airplanes and engines that had been in operation for two years. Vehicles (convoys) were completely unsuitable for transporting aviation property, and there weren’t enough trucks, which negatively affected the first months of the maneuver war. . ^[2]

By July 14, the troops had 4 Ilya Muromets , the only serial multi-engine aircraft in the world at that time. In total, during the war, 85 copies of this world's first heavy bomber were produced. Nevertheless, despite some manifestations of engineering, the air forces of the Russian Empire were inferior to the German, French and British, and since 1916 - also Italian and Austrian. The main reason for the lag was the poor state of production of aircraft engines and the lack of aircraft engineering capacities. Until the very end of the war, the country was unable to establish mass production of a domestic model fighter, forced to manufacture foreign (often obsolete) models under license.

In 1914, Russia occupied the third place in the world in the volume of its airships (immediately after Germany and France), but its fleet of ships, lighter than air, was mainly represented by outdated models. The best Russian airships of the First World War were built abroad. In the campaign of 1914-1915, the Russian airships managed to carry out only one sortie , after which, due to the technical deterioration and the impossibility for industry to provide the army with new airships, work on controlled aeronautics was curtailed.

Also, the Russian Empire became the first country in the world to use aircraft . At the beginning of the war there were 5 such ships in the fleet . ^[3]

UK Aviation

Great Britain was the first country to single out its air forces as a separate branch of the army , not controlled by the army or navy. The Royal Air Force (RAF) was formed on April 1, 1918 on the basis of the previous Royal Flight Corps ( English Royal Flying Corps (RFC) ).

Great Britain became interested in the prospect of using aircraft in the war back in 1909 and achieved significant success in this (although it was somewhat behind at that time from recognized leaders - Germany and France). So, already in 1912, the Vickers company developed an experimental fighter airplane armed with a machine gun . "Vickers Experimental Fighting Biplane 1" was demonstrated at maneuvers in 1913 , and although the military took a wait-and-see attitude at that time, it was these works that formed the basis of the world's first Vickers FB5 fighter airplane , which took off in 1915.

By the start of the war, all the British Air Force had been organizationally consolidated into the Royal Flight Corps, which was divided into naval and army branches. In 1914, the RFC consisted of 5 squadrons , totaling about 60 vehicles. During the war, their number increased sharply and by 1918 the RFC consisted of more than 150 squadrons and 3,300 airplanes, becoming the largest air force in the world at that time.

During the war, the RFC tackled a variety of tasks, from aerial reconnaissance and bombing to casting spies behind the front line . RFC pilots became pioneers in many areas of aviation applications, such as the first use of specialized fighters, the first aerial photography, the assault of enemy positions in support of troops, the deployment of saboteurs and the protection of their own territory from strategic bombardments.

Britain has also become the only country apart from Germany to actively develop a rigid-type airship fleet. As early as 1912, the first rigid airship R.1 “Mayfly” was built in the UK, but due to damage due to an unsuccessful withdrawal from the boathouse, it never took off. During the war, a significant number of rigid airships were built in Britain, but for various reasons their military use only began in 1918 and was extremely limited (airships were used only for anti-submarine patrols and had only one collision with the enemy)

On the other hand, the British fleet of soft airships (numbering more than 50 aircraft by 1918) was used very actively for anti-submarine patrols and escort convoys, having achieved significant success in the fight against German submarines .

France Aviation

French aviation showed its best side. Most of the inventions that improved the design of the fighter were made by French pilots . French pilots focused on the development of tactical actions of aviation, and mainly focused on the confrontation between the German Air Force at the front.

French aircraft did not produce strategic bombing during the war. The lack of multi-engine aircraft suitable for operation hindered raids on Germany’s strategic rear areas (as did the need to focus design resources on fighter production). In addition, the French engine industry at the beginning of the war was somewhat behind the best world level. By 1918, the French created several types of heavy bombers, including the very successful Farman F.60 Goliath , but did not manage to use them in actions.

At the beginning of the war, France had the second largest fleet of airships in the world, but it was inferior in quality to the German one: the French did not have hard airships like zeppelins in service. In 1914-1916, airships were quite actively used for reconnaissance and bombing operations, but their unsatisfactory flying qualities led to the fact that since 1917 all controlled aeronautics was concentrated only in the navy in patrol service.

Italy Aviation

Although before the war, Italian aviation was not on the list of the strongest, during the conflict from 1915-1918 it experienced a booming take-off. This was largely due to the geographical feature of the theater of operations , when the positions of the main enemy (Austria-Hungary) were separated from Italy by the insurmountable, but relatively narrow barrier of the Adriatic.

Italy also became the first country after the Russian Empire to massively use multi-engine bombers in the fighting. The three-engine Caproni Ca.3 , which first flew in 1915, became one of the best bombers of that era, it was built in more than 300 copies, and was produced under license in the UK and the USA .

During the war years, Italians also actively used airships for bombing operations. Weak security of the strategic rear areas of the Central Powers contributed to the success of such raids. Unlike the Germans, Italians relied on small high-altitude soft and semi-rigid airships, inferior to zeppelins in range and combat load. Since Austrian aviation, as a whole, was rather weak and also dispersed along two fronts, Italian aircraft were used until 1917.

United States Aviation

Since the United States has long remained aloof from the war, its air forces have developed relatively more slowly. As a result, by the time the United States entered the World War in 1917, their air forces were significantly inferior to the aircraft of other parties to the conflict and roughly corresponded to the technical situation in 1915. Most of the available aircraft were reconnaissance or "general purpose", there were no fighters and bombers capable of participating in air battles on the Western Front.

To solve the problem as soon as possible, the US Army launched an intensive production of licensed models of British, French and Italian firms. As a result, when the first American squadrons appeared on the front in 1918, they flew on the machines of European designers. The only airplanes designed in America and participating in the World War were Curtiss twin-engine flying boats, which had excellent flight characteristics for their time and were intensively used in 1918 for anti-submarine patrols.

In 1914, all countries of the world entered the war on airplanes without any weapons, with the exception of the personal weapons of pilots ( rifle or pistol ). As aviation intelligence began to increasingly affect the course of hostilities on the ground, a need arose for weapons capable of preventing the enemy’s attempts to penetrate airspace. It quickly became clear that handgun fire was practically useless in a dogfight.

At the beginning of 1915, the British and French were the first to put machine gun weapons on airplanes. Since the propeller prevented the firing, the machine guns were initially placed on machines with a pushing propeller located at the rear and not interfering with firing in the nose hemisphere. The first fighter in the world was the British Vickers FB5 , specially built for aerial combat with a machine gun mounted on a turret. Nevertheless, the design features of propeller-driven aircraft at that time did not allow developing sufficiently high speeds, and the interception of high-speed reconnaissance aircraft was difficult.

After some time, the French proposed a solution to the problem of shooting through a screw: metal pads on the lower parts of the blades. Bullets falling into the pads were reflected without damaging the wooden propeller. This decision turned out to be nothing more than satisfactory: firstly, the ammunition was quickly wasted due to some of the bullets getting into the propeller blades, and secondly, the bullet strikes still deformed the propeller . Nevertheless, due to such temporary measures, Entente aviation managed to gain an advantage over the Central Powers for some time.

On April 1, 1915, Sergeant Garroe was first shot down by a machine gun on a Morane-Saulnier L fighter with a machine gun firing through the rotary screw of the aircraft. At the same time, the metal reflectors installed on the Garroe aircraft after the visit of the Moran-Solnier company allowed the screw to be damaged. By May 1915, the Fokker company had developed a successful version of the synchronizer . This device allowed firing through the propeller of the aircraft: the mechanism allowed the machine gun to fire only when there was no blade in front of the barrel. The synchronizer was first installed on the Fokker EI fighter.

The appearance of squadrons of German fighters in the summer of 1915 was a complete surprise for the Entente: all of its fighters had an outdated scheme and were inferior to the Fokker apparatuses. From the summer of 1915 to the spring of 1916, the Germans dominated the skies over the Western Front, securing a substantial advantage. This position became known as the " Fokker Beach "

Only in the summer of 1916, the Entente managed to restore the situation. The arrival of maneuverable light biplanes to the front of the British and French designers, who exceeded the early Fokker fighters in maneuverability, made it possible to change the course of the air war in favor of the Entente. At first, the Entente had problems with synchronizers, so usually the machine guns of the Entente fighters of that time were placed above the propeller, in the upper biplane wing.

The Germans responded with the advent of the new Albatros D.II biplane fighters in August 1916, and the Albatros D.III in December, which had a streamlined half- monocoque fuselage. Due to the more durable, lightweight and streamlined fuselage , the Germans gave their cars better flight characteristics. This allowed them to gain a significant technical advantage again, and April 1917 went down in history as “bloody April”: Entente aviation again began to suffer heavy losses.

In April 1917, the British lost 245 aircraft, 211 pilots were killed or went missing, and 108 were captured. The Germans lost only 60 airplanes in battle. This clearly demonstrated the advantage of the semi-monococcal scheme over previously used ones.

The Entente’s response, however, was quick and effective. By the summer of 1917, the advent of the new Royal Aircraft Factory SE5 fighters, Sopwith Camel and SPAD, restored the situation in the air war. The main advantage of the Entente was the best condition of the Anglo-French engine building . In addition, since 1917, Germany began to experience a severe shortage of resources.

As a result, by 1918, Entente aviation achieved both qualitative and quantitative air superiority over the Western Front. German aviation was no longer able to claim more than a temporary achievement of local dominance in the front sector. In an attempt to turn the tide, the Germans tried to develop new tactics (for example, during the summer offensive of 1918, air strikes on airfields were first widely used to destroy enemy aircraft on the ground), but such measures could not change the overall unfavorable situation .

In the initial period of the war, in the collision of two aircraft, the battle was fought with personal weapons or with the help of a ram . The ram was first used on September 8, 1914 by Russian ace Nesterov . As a result, both aircraft fell to the ground. On March 18, 1915, another Russian pilot first used a ram without crashing his own aircraft and successfully returned to base. This tactic was used due to the lack of machine gun weapons and its low efficiency. The ram demanded extreme accuracy and composure from the pilot, so the rams of Nesterov and Kazakov were the only ones in the history of the war.

In the battles of the late period of the war, aviators tried to get around the enemy’s aircraft from the side, and, having entered the enemy’s tail, shoot him from a machine gun. This tactic was also used in group battles, while the pilot who took the initiative defeated; making the enemy fly away. The style of air combat with active maneuvering and close-range shooting was called “dogfight” (“dog fight”) and until the 1930s dominated the concept of air war.

A special element of the air battle of the First World War was attacks on airships. Aircraft (especially of a rigid structure) had a fairly large number of defensive weapons in the form of machine guns, at the beginning of the war they were almost as fast as airplanes, and usually significantly exceeded the rate of climb. Before the appearance of incendiary bullets, ordinary machine guns had a very weak effect on the shell of the airship, and the only way to shoot down an airship was to fly directly above it, dropping hand grenades on the keel of the ship. Several airships were shot down, but in general, in air battles of 1914-1915, airships usually came out victorious from meetings with airplanes.

The situation changed in 1915, with the appearance of incendiary bullets. Incendiary bullets allowed to ignite mixed with air flowing through the holes pierced by bullets hydrogen, and cause the destruction of the entire aircraft.

At the beginning of the war, not a single country was armed with specialized aircraft bombs. The German zeppelins carried out their first bombardment sorties in 1914, using conventional artillery shells with attached cloth planes, aircraft dropped hand grenades at enemy positions. Later, special aircraft bombs were developed. During the war, bombs weighing from 10 to 100 kg were most actively used. The heaviest aerial munitions used during the war were first a 300-kilogram German aerial bomb (dropped from zeppelins), a 410-kilogram Russian aerial bomb (used by Ilya Muromets bombers) and a 1,000-kilogram bomb used in London in 1918 from Germany Zeppelin-Staaken multi-engine bombers

The bombing devices at the beginning of the war were very primitive: the bombs were manually dropped according to the results of visual observation. The improvement of anti-aircraft artillery and the resulting need to increase the height and speed of the bombing led to the creation of telescopic bomb sights and electric bomb racks.

In addition to air bombs, other types of aircraft weapons developed. So, throughout the war, airplanes successfully used throwing arrows-flashettes, which were dropped on the infantry and cavalry of the enemy. In 1915, the English fleet first successfully used torpedoes launched from seaplanes during the Dardanelles operation. At the end of the war, the first work began on the creation of guided and planning air bombs.

After the outbreak of war, special anti-aircraft guns and machine guns began to appear. At first they were mountain cannons with an increased angle of elevation of the barrel, then, as the threat increased, special anti-aircraft guns were developed that could send a projectile to a great height. Both stationary batteries and mobile ones appeared on the automobile or cavalry base, and even anti-aircraft parts of self-detectors . For night anti-aircraft shooting, anti - aircraft searchlights were actively used.

Of particular importance was the early warning of an air attack. The time of lifting interceptor aircraft to great heights in World War I was significant. To provide a warning about the appearance of bombers, chains of forward-detection posts began to be created, capable of detecting enemy aircraft at a considerable distance from their target. Towards the end of the war, experiments began with sonar, aircraft detection by the noise of engines .

Наибольшее развитие в Первую мировую получила противовоздушная оборона Антанты, вынужденная бороться с германскими налётами на свои стратегические тылы. К 1918 году, в ПВО центральных районов Франции и Великобритании находились десятки зенитных орудий и истребителей, сложная сеть связанных телефонными проводами постов звуколокации и передового обнаружения. Тем не менее, обеспечить полную защиту тылов от воздушных нападений не удавалось: и в 1918 году германские бомбардировщики совершали налёты на Лондон и Париж. Опыт Первой мировой в плане противовоздушной обороны был подытожен в 1932 году Стэнли Болдвином во фразе «бомбардировщик всегда найдет дорогу» («The bomber will always get through»).

Противовоздушная оборона тылов Центральных Держав, не подвергавшихся существенным стратегическим бомбардировкам, была намного слабее развита и к 1918 году находилась, по сути дела, в зачаточном состоянии.

• Офицерская Воздухоплавательная школа

• Советская военная энциклопедия. — М. , 1990. — Т. 1. — С. 459—460.
• Shaw, Robert L. Fighter Combat: Tactics and Maneuvering. — Annapolis, MD : Naval Institute Press, 1985. — ISBN 0-87021-059-9 .
• Russian aviation of the First World War and the Civil War, on the website War is Over.
• Discovery World TV Channel Air Battle

• [one]
• Aviation and Ballooning of the First World War // on the website of Retroplan
• Russian Army Aviation in the First World War // on the site Sky Corner
• "Aeronautical Park." Website dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Officer Aeronautical School
• Ballooning and aviation in Russia until 1907. Collection of documents and materials.
• V.F. Cheltsov, History of the creation and activities of the headquarters of the Air Force. 1912-1945. // VIZH, 2007, No. 8 (unavailable link)