My own made aeroplane a "Sopwith camel"

World War I was a terrible event. A lot of new technologies were put into use by all sides to destroy each other. Flamethrowers, tanks and submarines were a few of the horrible inventions used in this new kind of warfare.

Only ten years before World War I broke out, the plane constructed by the Wright brothers took it’s first historical flight. At the beginning the war triplanes, biplanes, and monoplanes were used to spy and take pictures of enemy troops. Later they were used as fighters and bombers. At first, when two enemy spy planes met, they would wave and smile at each other; later, they started throwing grenades, bricks, and rope, which sometimes got stuck in the enemy’s propellers. Soon they shot handheld firearms at each other. But then machine guns were put on the airplanes, and the battle for air really began.

Due to the lack of technology and engine power a plane could not weigh much. Planes were made of hardwood braced by steel wires, canvas doped with oily liquid, and paint. Because of this, sometimes a plane in a dive would lose a wing or a tail. Sometimes they burst into flames. On August 22, 1914 British Captain L.E.O. Charlton and Lieutenant V.H.N. Wadham reported that Alexander von Kluck’s German army was on the move to surround BEF. The British Commanders listened to the reports and retreated to Mons saving the lives of 100 000 soldiers. At the First Battle of Marne spy planes discovered weak points and chances to flank the enemy.

A major challenge was mounting of the machine gun on the plane. It seemed natural to place the gun in front of the pilot, so that the pilot could reload it and fix a gun jam. But on the tractor plane (which had the propeller at the front) it put the gun between the pilot and the propeller. This led to the fact that pilots often shot their own propellers. French fighter pilot Roland Garros tried to solve this problem by attaching metal plates to his propeller. He became the first ace with five victories. Pusher planes, which had the propeller behind the cockpit, were more accommodative with the gun positions, but were very slow and hard to handle. Soon guns were fixed on the top wing of a biplane. This way the pilot did not shoot the propeller, but the gun could not be fixed or reloaded. For this purpose the “Foster Mounting” was invented as the way to attach the gun. Now the pilot could slide the gun back to service it.

In 1915 Anthony Fokker designed the “interrupter gear”, which coordinated the working between the gun and the propeller. This turned the war in Germany’s favor. Very soon Allied planes turned around at the mere sight of an enemy plane. At this point Germany had almost total control of the air. The Allies countered this event with the Nieuport 11, a tractor biplane with a similar gun constuction. They captured the german pilot who got lost in the fog over France, giving the Allies the access to the “interrupter gear”. At the same time the successfully designed Airco DH2 “pusher” plane also played a big part in defeating the Fokkers.

The pilots of the planes became legends, known as Aces. To become an Ace the pilot had to have five or more victories. French pilot Roland Garros was the first fighter to became an Ace. He was killed in combat in 1918. A German—Manfred von Richthofen, also know as “The Red Baron”, was killed in April of 1918. With 80 victories he was the top Ace of the war. The top Canadian Aces were Billy Bishop with 72 victories and Raymond Collishaw with 62 victories.

During the four years of war the development of aviation rapidly advanced. From the dream of flight pioneers of conquering the air the planes were transformed to the weapons of mass destruction At the end of the war they were used for spying, combat fighting, bombing of battlefields and cities, or dropping of propaganda leaflets. The use of planes in WWI created a whole new field of war tactics and changed the dimensions of all future wars.