Aviation In World War 1 Essay

Aviation in World War 1

Historical Context

They first unpowered flight occurred in 1902 by, brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright on a beach in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The brothers completed over 700 flights with their gliders. Having mastered glided flight, the brothers strived for powered flight. The brothers began by searching for a light, powerful engine that they could use, however, no automobile manufacturer could provide such an engine. So, the Wright brothers designed and built their own. And on December 17, 1903 Orville Wright piloted the first powered aircraft over a wind-swept North Carolina beach. “The body [was] supported by a pair of wings that run its length, their inclination being controlled by a pilot wheel, so that the

aerial vessel [was] able to rise or descend at will. It [was] propelled by a series of explosions in the rear, small pellets of nitroglycerine being fed automatically into a cup opening backward and discharged by electricity”(McCullough 34).
World War 1, or the Great War as it was known during the war, was a time of wartime advancements. The Great War marked the first time tanks, aircraft, and chemicals were used in combat. The introduction of tanks in 1916 is quite possibly the most influential advancement of the war, but “aerial photography was crucial to the conduct of military operations on the ground” (Winter 109). “From scouts [aircraft] developed into fighters, literally-from going up with rifles and revolvers, to the day when [they] learned to fire through the propeller” (Bryan 159).
“The United States was the first country to experiment with military aviation” in 1909 ( Tucker 14). However, “April 1918 saw the world’s first independent air force; the Royal Air Force, formed of the Royal Navy Air Service and Royal Flying Corps, had 22,000 aircraft and 291,175 personnel (Tucker 15). The United States and Britain were powerful in the sky, but it would not had been that way if it was not for France. The production on aircraft engines in France may be one of the major manufacturing achievements during World War 1. “ The société Gnôme et Rhône led all other French firms in output, and the demand for its engines was so great that they also were made in Britain, Italy, Russia, the United States, Sweden, and even Germany (Fridenson 135).
Airplanes were not they only aircraft used during the war, Zeppelins were also used by the Germans. Named after their inventor, Ferdinand von Zeppelin, they were “capable of carrying a load of about fifteen thousand pounds” (March 417). The primary use of Zeppelins was “for high-seas patrolling and scouting and, after January 1915, for air raids on England” (Kirchberger 189). However, they were not ideal for they moved at a rather slow pace, flew at low altitude, and they were filled with nitrogen, a rather flammable gas. Soldiers were able to shoot Zeppelins down from the ground, due to how flammable nitrogen is. Airplanes were also able to fly above zeppelins and drop bombs along the length of the ship.
The introduction of military aviation during World War One is possibly the most significant advancement during the war. The use of airplanes as surveillance sparked the idea of mounting weapons on aircraft. Without aerial weapons many wars could have lasted way more years than they did, for example the A-bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima helped end WWII, and the use of napalm in Vietnam cleared the way for the U.S. and her allies; therefore, aviation in World War One was the greatest achievement of the war.
II. Supporting Evidence
Early Aviation
“In the year 1914-only eleven years after the Wright Brothers first flew-military aviation was conspicuous by its sparsity”(Baldwin 12).

The first uses of aircraft in WW1 was reconnaissance on the enemies. In March 1915 the first surveillance squadrons were formed to fly the Western Front with three main duties. The first of the duties was photographic recon. The photographs were used to form mosaic maps of enemy trenches. “Aerial photography was crucial to the conduct of military operations on the ground. The mapping and analysis of evidence brought back on film provided the best source of information on enemy emplacements” (Winter

109).
The second duty of early aviation was spotting for artillery batteries. The two man team would locate the main fortifications of the enemies that were out of sight for the artillery operator. Once the team spotted fortifications they would relay the information via a morse code transmitter. Since aircraft were not equipped with a morse code receiver, the artillery battery would communicate with pilots by laying white strips of cloth in prearranged patterns. This duty was also shared with tethered balloons which could communicate directly with to the ground via field phone. Balloons, however, were not as effective at locating targets and spotting the fall of the shot.
The third and final duty for early flyers was “contact patrol”. Contact patrol" work attempted to follow the course of a battle by communicating with advancing infantry while flying over the battlefield. The technology of the period did not permit radio contact, while methods of signalling were necessarily crude, including dropping messages from the aircraft. Soldiers were initially reluctant to reveal their positions to aircraft, as they found distinguishing between friend and foe problematic. Reconnaissance flying, like all kinds, was a hazardous business. In April 1917, the worst month for the entire war for the Royal Flying Corps, the average life expectancy of a British pilot on the Western Front was 93 flying hours.
Some aircraft in 1914 would carry bombs, but only very small loads. The bombs and stowage themselves were very elementary, and effective bomb sights were yet to be developed. Nonetheless the beginnings of strategic and tactical bombing date from the earliest days of the war. Notable are the raids by the Royal Naval Air Service on the German airship sheds at Düsseldorf, Cologne and Friedrichshafen in September, October and November 1914. The formation of the Brieftauben Abteilung Ostende, or "Ostend carrier pigeon detachment", code name for the first German strategic bombing unit, was very important. The B.A.O. mounted the first token raid over the English Channel in December 1914, which opened the door for cross-channel bombing. “The newfangled flying machine, something of a military novelty at war’s beginning, became in 1915 an established part of the order of battle of all combatants”(Baldwin 56).

B. Design
The first planes “were not planes as we know them, but contraptions of wood and wire fabric ‘doped’ to the wings”(Baldwin 12). Almost all planes were biplanes, triplanes were introduced toward the end of the was, with a propeller mounted in the front. Most planes, at the time, were open cockpit with a small windshield for the pilot. Having a closed cockpit was unnecessary for the altitude they were flying at, the extra glass would also add extra weight that would hold the plane back.
Planes made early on in the war were made of cloth over wood. “For an airframe the Army needed as much as 5,000 feet of lumber to get 500 feet with no cross or spiral grain” (Feriel 111). Before the war, cotton was the primary cloth used, but in 1911 cellulose dope was invented. The most popular was the use of rubberised fabrics such as those manufactured by the Continental company, other methods included the use of sago starch. The advent of cellulose dopes such as "Emaillite" was a major step forward in the production of practical aircraft, producing a surface that remained taut. The use of metal to build planes was introduced during 1915.
The engines used at this time was the rotary engine.

The rotary engine consisted of a stationary crankshaft with the entire engine block rotating around it, unlike the radial engine which had a stationary engine block and rotating crankshaft. The rotary engine achieved great success during the war due to three key factors. The first factor was the very smooth running of the engine. Rotaries delivered power very smoothly because there are no reciprocating parts, and the relatively large rotating mass of the crankcase, or cylinders acted as a flywheel. The second factor was the increased cooling of the engine. When the engine was running the rotation of the cylinders created its own fast moving airflow, even when the aircraft was

stationary.