Aircraft were used constantly on practically every front and battlefield of World War I. Whether engaged in reconnaissance, acting as artillery spotters or hunting other aircraft, they became an indispensable cog in the military machine. It is easy to forget that when these early 'knights of the air' met in combat, flying was still in its infancy. Indeed, one of the major events in the history of aviation, Louis Bleriot's flight across the English Channel, had taken place just six years before the outbreak of war. This event at once put the aeroplane on the historical map and served notice to Britain that perhaps the Channel was no longer as effective a barrier to foreign aggressors as it had been.
France, Britain and Germany had all taken their first faltering steps down the road of military aviation in the pre-war years. The Royal Flying Corps (RFC), formed in 1912 as part of the British Army, initially had very few aircraft and even fewer men with the ability to take them into the air. Numbers of both had increased by the outbreak of war in August 1914, but there were still only a handful of squadrons with a variety of aeroplanes and equally variable performance and reliability. In the first weeks of the war it was just as easy to fall prey to engine or structural failure as it was to the actions of the enemy. In Germany the hesitant development of the air service had included not only a variety of aeroplanes but also military airships - the great Zeppelins. In France aeronautical development in the shape of balloons long pre-dated the 20th century, as did their use by the military for observation. France also had her early aviators and the French Army, like others, was forced to take an interest in these aerospace developments.
Once the Great War began, each air arm began to flex its limited muscle. The only real function for military aeroplanes in these early days was reconnaissance. It soon became apparent that the view from a plane was infinitely superior to that from the highest ground or even from the basket of a tethered balloon, however, many army generals barely tolerated their flyers let alone set any store by their reports. Many of these officers were of course old cavalrymen, brought up on the traditional method of gaining information from 'the other side of the hill'.
Once the initial war of movement on the Western Front bogged down into a stalemate dominated by trenches, barbed wire and machine-guns, the aeroplane became the only practical means of acquiring accurate information about enemy activities. Aircraft were few in numbers but were used constantly over certain battlegrounds and areas of planned attacks. Verbal reports and — following the development of reliable aerial cameras — photographic evidence were vital. The aviators had become the eyes of the armies and little worthwhile planning could be done without the information they supplied. Both sides rapidly realised that it was important not only to collect this data but also to prevent the enemy from doing the same. This realisation inevitably led to the first aerial combats, which were amateurish affairs conducted with rifles, pistols and eventually machine-guns.
The early observation aircraft were not particularly powerful machines, and the added weight of a machine-gun and ammunition considerably affected their performance. Most were two-seaters, accommodating a pilot and an observer, and generally it was the observer who was available to use the machine-gun. While it did not take long to design a mounting for a machine-gun, considerable problems remained — not least of which was avoiding shooting away bits of one's own aeroplane. With single-seater machines it had to be the pilot alone who operated the gun, but with tractor-type aircraft the problem was the whirling blades of the propeller, which pulled the craft through the air.
Aeroplane designers had already begun to move the propeller from the front to the rear, bringing in the 'pusher' concept. Aeroplanes such as the Vickers FB5 'Gunbus' and then the DH2, FE2b and FE8 on the British side, made firing to the front possible, although they were vulnerable to attack from astern. French flyers had the Farman, Voisin, Bréguet and Caudron, all pusher types.
The first interrupter gear
The Germans too tried the pusher design but following the capture of a French Morane type-N, whose pilot Roland Garros had fitted metal deflector plates to the blades of his propeller, a new concept was born. Garros had some limited success firing a fixed gun through the propeller arc - the plates deflecting any bullets that came from the muzzle whilst the blade was directly in front if it. The majority of bullets were able to pass through the arc and towards the target, however, those that struck the blades gradually unbalanced his engine. On 18 April 1915 this problem forced him to land and he was captured by the enemy. The secret was out and the deflection device was presented to Anthony Fokker, the Dutch designer working for the Germans (Britain and France having rejected his services as an aircraft designer). Realising that the deflector would prove just as dangerous to German pilots as it had to Garros, Fokker conceived a better solution to the problem. He invented a successful interrupter gear that caused the gun to cease firing at the moment the propeller was in front of the gun muzzle.
Fokker had his own single-seat monoplane design (the Eindecker) ready for frontline service and mounted the interrupter gear on this type. Once it had proved a success, it was rushed to the front. Although the new aircraft did not flood the Western Front in huge numbers, many German two-seat units had two or three of the new Fokker Eindeckers attached for both protection and for use against British and French observation machines. The period was known as the 'Fokker Scourge' and for a while the new machine caused considerable casualties amongst Allied airmen.
The French, meantime, had developed their nimble Nieuport biplane, designed by Edouard de Nièport, as both a single and a two-seater aircraft. The Nieuport was employed as a scout (an early term for what we now call a 'fighter') by both the French and British. Nièport had solved the propeller problem by mounting the machine-gun on the upper wing, fixing it to fire forward and slightly downwards, so that the bullets passed over the blades and towards the target. Early guns used by the Allied airmen were the Lewis and Hotchkiss types. Both these weapons were derived from infantry machine-guns. The Lewis was a robust drum-fed gun. The Hotchkiss, however, was fed by an awkward strip of bullets which was unsuitable for an aircraft. A Lewis gun, fitted to the top wing of a Nieuport, could be pulled down on its mounting, the drum changed for a full one and then pushed back in place. The Allies were also working on their own interrupter gear. The system adopted by the British was that developed by Romanian engineer, George Constantinesco. It worked on the same principle as Fokker's but was less complicated. Once an interrupter gear was produced, a belt-fed machine gun, such as the Vickers, could also be mounted on the decking in front of the pilot. Most RFC Nieuport pilots preferred the wing mounted gun, while the French used both, though not together. A few aircraft did carry both but the combined weight of the guns became a problem.
The first Nieuports
One of the first RFC squadrons to use the Nieuport Scout as a fighter was No.11 and, as the Germans had done with the Eindeckers, this unit had a few Nieuports attached as fighting machines. It did not take long for a number of more adventurous young airmen to volunteer to fly the single-seaters, especially since the Fokkers had proved such a menace. It was far better to try and fight the Fokkers on equal terms than to sit in a two-seater and become a target for up-and-coming German aces, such as Max Immelmann, Oswald Boelcke and Kurt Wintgens, who were starting to score heavily against the Allied air services.
Because they were so few in number, and because the air was still a fairly empty place compared to the latter years of the war, it was possible for airmen to take their Nieuports up alone, with the clear intention of looking for trouble. Pilots needed only the permission of their commanding officers to leave the ground, and once this had been granted they were generally deemed able to look after themselves.
British aviators followed a policy of aggression throughout WWI, so these intrepid lone pilots were always over the German lines looking for action against two main types of German airmen. Firstly, there were enemy pilots flying artillery observation missions (i.e. watching for the fall of artillery shells and sending messages by Morse key so that gunners could adjust their aim until they were on target). The second type of German airman was the pilot on a photo-reconnaissance mission (i.e. flying into Allied air space to photograph and report on Allied positions, supply dumps or train and troop movements).
Some Nieuport Scout pilots became expert at stalking enemy two-seaters, whose crews took every precaution to avoid being attacked. Throughout the year there is usually some cloud cover over northern Europe and both sides tried to take advantage of this to do their jobs. Nieuport pilots, for their part, would use cloud to creep up on German two-seaters.
Lieutenant Albert Ball, who first flew a Nieuport Scout with 11 Squadron before going on to see action with 60 Squadron, became an expert at stalking his opponents. Ball was also unafraid of attacking all-out when the need arose and if he managed to spot a two-seater undetected, he would take great care to get behind and below it. From this position he would remain unseen by the observer, who would probably be too busy with other tasks to take more than an occasional cursory glance at the sky around him. Once in position, Ball would either lift the nose of his Nieuport and fire up into the German machine, or remain below and behind it, so that he could pull down the gun and hammer off a drum of bullets into the underside. The effects of both approaches were equally devastating, usually causing death or serious injury to the crew of the enemy aeroplane.
Ball, still only 19 years old in the spring of 1916, gained his first victories in a Nieuport Scout on 22 May, driving down an Albatros C two-seater and then forcing an LVG C to land with a wounded observer. In these early days of air combat, 'victories' were not necessarily aircraft destroyed. The later categories of 'destroyed', 'probables' and 'damaged', are more familiar to World War II and should not be confused with those of 1914-18. There were no combat manuals to read, no lectures to attend, nor any vastly experienced comrades to consult. Every action involved a learning curve. To shoot down a hostile aircraft and see it crash, or burn up in the air produced a conclusion to the fight, however, it was not always possible to watch a falling aeroplane all the way to the ground without exposing oneself to an attack by another aeroplane. Thus the 'probable' of WWII was the 'out of control (believed crashed)' of WWI.
In the period 1915 to early 1917, and especially in Ball's debut year of 1916, it was equally as important to stop enemy airmen from carrying out their tasks as it was to shoot them down. If a pilot could force his opponent to a lower altitude, away from his target, or even force him to land, it almost certainly meant the enemy had failed in his task. It took some time to reach operating height, so airmen forced to lose valuable altitude often had insufficient fuel left to try again. Artillery bombardments had to be abandoned and cameras were returned without pictures. If, in addition, one of the crew had been wounded, perhaps mortally, or the aircraft damaged then this was a bonus. As the fighting almost always took place on the German side of the frontline, it was rarely possible for the Allies to confirm that a spinning plane ended up as a pile of wreckage on the French countryside. Often the falling aeroplane was pulled out of its spin short of the ground, leaving its crew to return home with a desperate tale to tell. Alternatively, a German pilot might simply land to get away from trouble and take off again once the Allied aeroplane had flown away.
The rise of the Jagdstaffeln
By the early summer of 1916 the Fokker Eindeckers were being outflown by RFC and French pilots in Nieuports, DH2s and FE8s. Max Immelmann was killed in action and Oswald Boelcke was removed from combat flying. However, Boelcke was helping to develop a new way of fighting during the summer and autumn of 1916. He felt the fighting machines should be concentrated into dedicated fighting Jagdstaffeln, 'hunting squadrons', rather than scattered among two-seater units. In this way they could both protect the front and the German two-seaters operating there. At present they were forced to fight in 'penny packets' of twos and threes.
By August 1916 this new concept had been put into place and the first Jagdstaffeln were being formed. Boelcke was able to talk his way into leading one of these units, being given command of Jasta 2. Due to his fame he was also able to select most of his pilots personally, drawing them from among the more aggressive young airmen he had met during his period away from frontline operations. He chose men such as Manfred von Richthofen, Erwin Böhme, Leopold Reimann and Max Müller, all of whom would become famous aces in their own right.
As the Fokker Eindecker left the front, new types were starting to appear, all of them more stable and structurally reliable biplanes rather than monoplanes. Fokker produced a biplane fighter, as did Halberstadt and the Albatros works. All three types were supplied to the new Jastas, but it was the Albatros DI and DII which nosed ahead in the race for a machine which would help win victories and honours for its pilots.
Even the early Albatros DI had two Spandau machine-guns mounted on top of the fuselage decking in front of the pilot. Like those used on the Fokker Eindecker, these guns were belt-fed, and each had interrupter gears to fire their deadly streams of bullets through the twin blades of the propeller. A dozen of the new Jastas had been formed and sent to various sectors along the Western Front by the end of 1916, each supporting an area controlled by one of the German armies. There was a strong spirit of adventure amongst the fledgling fighter pilots. Most had come to the Jastas through the established system after time spent as two-seater pilots. The strength of this system was that the German fighting pilot had already gained front-line combat experience and had learnt to 'see' things in the air. In contrast, the RFC fighter pilots mostly came to their front-line squadron straight from training school and were often shot down before they even saw what was attacking them. At best the RFC pilots had little skill in combating their more experienced Jasta adversaries. By the spring of 1917 the improved Albatros DIII was arriving in numbers and more Jastas were being formed and moved to the battle fronts. As the first real contest of the New Year began, the Battle of Arras in early April, the scene was set for a mighty clash. The German fighter pilots, for their part, were keen to get to grips with the RFC and French Air Service now that the winter weather was coming to an end. They had had several weeks to hone their skills and learn from the advice of their more experienced comrades. The Allies were planning a major offensive, which their aircraft would support in large numbers. However Allied airmen were still, for the most part, flying 1916 aircraft that were fast becoming outclassed by the new German scouts. New British machines were planned but they were not yet in France.
'Bloody April'
The German fighter pilots would meet vast numbers of British and French aeroplanes and would not be without targets and opportunities for combat action. Here was their chance to make names for themselves. The resulting episode was to be dubbed 'Bloody April' by the RFC. In that month alone the British lost around 245 aircraft in direct action with the enemy, with approximately 316 airmen either killed or reported missing. Known French losses were in the region of 55 aircraft lost and 63 airmen killed, missing or wounded.
While the Nieuport Scout pilots were often able to hold their own in combat situations, the RFC nevertheless lost 43 during April and the French 12. Most of the downed RFC Nieuports were flown by relatively inexperienced pilots who were up against good German scouts or more experienced and aggressive Jasta pilots. Albert Ball had ended his first period in France in the autumn of 1916 with an amazing score of 31 'victories' of all types. He had been awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and two Bars and the Military Cross (MC). In April 1917, with the rank of captain, he was back in France again, this time with 56 Squadron, the first operational SE5 unit. Within a month he was dead. He was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross. Another famous airman was about to take Ball's place in France. Edward Mannock, flying Nieuports with 40 Squadron, proved a slow starter, due in part to the defective vision that he had kept secret. By September 1917, however, he had scored 15 victories and won the MC. Like Ball he would later fly the SE5 and go on to win the Victoria Cross.
French Nieuport Aces
On the French side, a number of Nieuport pilots began to stand out in 1916-17, several flying with the famous Escadrille N3, part of the Cigognes (Storks) Group. Amongst these budding aces were the mercurial Georges Guynemer, Alfred Heurtaux and René Dorme. The French, like the Germans, made the most of the propaganda value of their heroic fighting airmen with the most succesful and highly decorated quickly becoming household names. Some pilots, including Jean Navarre of N67 and Charles Nungesser of N65, became ceelbrities as much because of their aircraft as for their exploits. Navarre flew a Nieuport with broad red, white and blue bands round the whole of his fuselage. Another of Navarre's aircraft was completely red. Nungesser's plane carried a large distinctive black heart on the side of his fuselage, on which was depicted a skull and crossbones, candles and a coffin.
As the war progressed so too did the Nieuport and Albatros designs. Although the numerous marks of Nieuport are difficult to distinguish at a glance, the lines of the later machines became more rounded. While only relatively few RFC squadrons were equipped with the Nieuport, at least one still had them in the spring of 1918. The French had begun to change over to the Spad VII in 1917, but many units still operated with the Nieuports well into that year. The Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) also had one fighter squadron in France equipped with Nieuport Scouts.
The famous American volunteer escadrille, N124 Lafayette, also flew Nieuports in 1916-17, and when the Americans came into the war, their first fighting machines were the Nieuport 28 fighters, made famous by Edward Rickenbacker, Douglas Campbell and James Meissner. In Italy the Nieuport saw action with such aces as Francesco Baracca, Pier Piccio and Fulco Ruffo di Calabria. The Russian 19th Corps Air Detachment, with their skull-painted tailplanes, were made famous by their great Nieuport ace Alexsandr Kozakov, while Vasili Yanchenka and Donat Makeenok were other Nieuport aces on the Russian Front.
The German Jasta pilots continued to fly Albatros fighters throughout the war, the DIII being superseded by the DV and DVa models. The Albatros served with both the German Jastas and the German Marine Jastas along the North Sea coast, amongst whose aces were Theo Osterkamp and Gotthard Sachsenberg.
Other machines served alongside both the Albatros and Nieuport on both sides of the frontline. The German Fokker DrI Triplane and the Fokker DVII biplanes both gained fame on the Western Front. For the Allies the SE5 and a variety of Sopwiths and Spads all served with distinction. However, the Nieuport and Albatros remained popular and widespread with their respective air services and the chosen 'mount' of a number of the great aces of World War I.
by Norman Franks
Further reading
Franks, Norman, Aircraft of the Aces 32: Albatros Aces of World War 1 (Osprey, 2000)
Franks, Norman, Aircraft of the Aces 33: Nieuport Aces of World War 1 (Osprey, 2000)
Franks, Norman, Aircraft of the Aces 40: Fokker Dr I Aces of World War 1 (Osprey, 2001)
Franks, Norman & VanWyngarden, Greg, Aircraft of the Aces 53: Fokker D VII Aces of World War 1 (part 1) (Osprey, 2003)
Franks, Norman & VanWyngarden, Greg, Aircraft of the Aces 63: Fokker D VII Aces of World War 1 (part 2) (Osprey, 2004)
Guttman, Jon, Aircraft of the Aces 39: SPAD VII Aces of World War 1 (Osprey, 2001)
Guttman, Jon, Aviation Elite Units 17: SPA124 Lafayette Escadrille: American Volunteer Airmen in World War 1 (Osprey, 2004)
Guttman, Jon, Aircraft of the Aces 47: SPAD XII/XIII Aces of World War 1 (Osprey, 2002)