Trechos de Flight: 100 Years Of Aviation (2007), de R.G. Grant.
On the outbreak of war in Europe in August 1914, aircraft did not seem set to play a serious part in the conflict. The ground forces of the major European armies were counted in millions; the front-line aircraft deployed by all combatants amounted to little over 500 fragile, unarmed monoplanes and biplanes. Caught up in the patriotic fervour of the moment, civilian pilots rushing to join up included such well-known stars of peacetime aviation as Roland Garros and Jules Védrines. But the military establishments initially had little use for the skills of the daredevil sportsman-aviators who had so recently enthralled the public.
Army pilots were essentially aerial chauffeurs. Their job was to ferry an observer - sometimes a senior officer - over the countryside to report on the movement of enemy troops. In the first months of the war there was plenty of movement to observe, with rapid advances, encirclements, and desperate retreats. In the west, the German forces overran Belgium and advanced on Paris, while in the east the Russians marched menacingly into East Prussia. Flying mostly from improvised airstrips (any unploughed field) close to the ever-shifting front line, pilots and observers roamed the thinly populated skies, seeking out bodies of enemy troops and recording their size, location, and direction of march in scribbled notes and hastily sketched maps. It was no easy task to locate the enemy in unfamiliar territory while trying to avoid becoming hopelessly lost and coping with unpredictable weather. Low cloud hampered observation and the sheer flimsiness of the machines led to frequent accidents and forced landings. The appearance of aircraft was greeted with volleys of rifle fire from friend and foe alike. And after undergoing these hazards, airmen often saw their reports simply disregarded by the crustier generals who distrusted information from such a novel source.
Nonetheless, aerial reconnaissance made a decisive contribution to both fronts. In the east, the Russians failed to make effective use of the few aircraft they possessed, while the Germans employed their Taubes to crucial advantage. Ranging over the forests and lakes of East Prussia, German aviators located the advancing Russian armies, giving the high command time to move reinforcements to the front. When battle was joined at Tannenberg, information from aerial observers let the numerically inferior Germans concentrate their forces in the right place at the right time to carry off an epic victory.
In the west, French and British aviators were caught up in a rapid retreat across France as the grey columns of the German army swept towards Paris. Anticipating triumph, on 29 August 1914, a German pilot flew round the Eiffel Tower and dropped a single bomb on the city. But on 3 September, French aircraft assigned to the defence of their capital, reported that the enemy's armies had turned away from Paris to the east. This information enabled General Joseph Gallieni, who was in charge of the defence of the city, to launch an attack on the exposed German flank on the Marne that turned the tide of the war.
- - -
From 1915, photography replaced sketches and notes as a technique for aerial reconnaissance. Aircraft with unwieldy box cameras were dispatched day after day over the front to build up an exact picture of the enemy's trench systems and gun emplacements. Initially the cameras were like those found in photographers' studios, with large glass plates that had to be changed by hand after every shot. This was ghastly work for observers with freezing fingers operating in the gale of the aircraft's slipstream. Later, cameras with a mechanically operated plate change made the observer's job more practical, but photo-reconnaissance remained as hazardous as it was unglamorous. An aircraft held steady and straight for photography presented an inviting target for ground fire, and the underpowered obsolescent aircraft usually thought suitable for reconnaissance were easy prey for enemy fighters. But, at the cost of heavy loss of life, comprehensive photomontages of trench systems were built up and used for selecting targets for the artillery.
When the heavy guns opened up, again the aircraft came into play. The gunners needed observers to tell them where the shells were landing so they could correct their range and direction. In decent weather, airborne observers could usually see where a shot was falling but there was no efficient way of communicating this to the ground until 1916, when some new aircraft were capable of carrying radio transmitters. Combining the use of radio with the "clock system" - a code of number and letter co-ordinates that identified where a shell had fallen in relation to the target - created a reasonably efficient spotting technique.
- - -
For the generals, the main reason for putting guns in aircraft was to protect their own reconnaissance aircraft and shoot down the enemy's. But the initial impetus towards arming aircraft came from pilots and observers who simply wanted to "have a go" at the opposition. Firing pistols and carbines at passing aircraft had limited effect, while attempts at dropping grenades on them from above were a total failure. Machine guns were what were needed. But carrying such a weapon was a considerable burden for the lightweight, underpowered aircraft of 1914. It was also hazardous: there was a serious risk of blowing bits off your own machine, with its array of struts and wires. The first recorded aerial victory is credited to a French aviator. On 5 October 1914, observer Louis Quénault shot down an Aviatik with a Hotchkiss machine gun mounted on a Voisin 8 - a pusher aircraft (with the propeller at the rear). Affording a clear field of fire to the front, pushers were one option for air-combat machines. They proved especially attractive to the British, who introduced the Vickers "Gun bus" in 1915 and the F.E.2 and single-seat D.H.2 pushers the following year. But while pusher machines were by no means ineffective, tractor machines (propeller at the front) were faster and more manoeuvrable.
What the more skilful and adventurous pilots instinctively yearned for was a gun they could aim simply by pointing their aircraft at the target. Before the war, French and German designers had discovered that it was feasible to create an interrupter gear that would pause a machine gun each time a propeller blade was in its line of fire. Raymond Saulnier, designer of the Morane-Saulnier monoplane, was one of those who experimented with interrupters, but he had not been able to make one work in practice. So it was Dutch designer Anthony Fokker who fitted the first effective interrupter gear to one of his Eindecker monoplanes. The Germans went on to use guns firing through the propeller arc on all their fighters for the rest of the war. Interrupter gears and other forms of synchronizing mechanism tended to reduce the rate of fire of the machine gun, but in later German aircraft, such as the Albatros D.V and Fokker D.VII, the use of twin guns compensated for this drawback.
The Allies' first effective riposte to the Eindecker's interrupter gear was to mount a machine gun on the upper wing of a biplane so that it fired over the top of the propeller. Even after the Allies developed their own synchronizing mechanisms to allow firing through the propeller arc, they remained attached to the concept of the wing-mounted gun. Successful solo fighters such as the Nieuport 17 and the S.E.5a were usually fitted with both.
Early in the war individual fighters prowled the skies as lone hunters in search of unsuspecting enemy aircraft. By 1916, fighter aircraft were being grouped in squadrons as tactics were developed for fighting in formation. During the titanic battles of Verdun and the Somme, Allied and German airmen fought for air superiority; losses on both sides were heavy in an aerial combat that mirrored the war of attrition on the ground. Numerically inferior the German aircraft tended to stay on their own side of the trenches and concentrate their resources in ever larger units capable of winning local air superiority on crucial sectors of the front.
Mais:
http://www.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/wwi/wwiair
http://www.unz.org/Pub/Scribners-1915jul-00001
http://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/ww1-aircraft.asp
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLucsO-7vMQ0153KNxuMsKumtfUUlnw5l_
Army pilots were essentially aerial chauffeurs. Their job was to ferry an observer - sometimes a senior officer - over the countryside to report on the movement of enemy troops. In the first months of the war there was plenty of movement to observe, with rapid advances, encirclements, and desperate retreats. In the west, the German forces overran Belgium and advanced on Paris, while in the east the Russians marched menacingly into East Prussia. Flying mostly from improvised airstrips (any unploughed field) close to the ever-shifting front line, pilots and observers roamed the thinly populated skies, seeking out bodies of enemy troops and recording their size, location, and direction of march in scribbled notes and hastily sketched maps. It was no easy task to locate the enemy in unfamiliar territory while trying to avoid becoming hopelessly lost and coping with unpredictable weather. Low cloud hampered observation and the sheer flimsiness of the machines led to frequent accidents and forced landings. The appearance of aircraft was greeted with volleys of rifle fire from friend and foe alike. And after undergoing these hazards, airmen often saw their reports simply disregarded by the crustier generals who distrusted information from such a novel source.
Nonetheless, aerial reconnaissance made a decisive contribution to both fronts. In the east, the Russians failed to make effective use of the few aircraft they possessed, while the Germans employed their Taubes to crucial advantage. Ranging over the forests and lakes of East Prussia, German aviators located the advancing Russian armies, giving the high command time to move reinforcements to the front. When battle was joined at Tannenberg, information from aerial observers let the numerically inferior Germans concentrate their forces in the right place at the right time to carry off an epic victory.
In the west, French and British aviators were caught up in a rapid retreat across France as the grey columns of the German army swept towards Paris. Anticipating triumph, on 29 August 1914, a German pilot flew round the Eiffel Tower and dropped a single bomb on the city. But on 3 September, French aircraft assigned to the defence of their capital, reported that the enemy's armies had turned away from Paris to the east. This information enabled General Joseph Gallieni, who was in charge of the defence of the city, to launch an attack on the exposed German flank on the Marne that turned the tide of the war.
- - -
From 1915, photography replaced sketches and notes as a technique for aerial reconnaissance. Aircraft with unwieldy box cameras were dispatched day after day over the front to build up an exact picture of the enemy's trench systems and gun emplacements. Initially the cameras were like those found in photographers' studios, with large glass plates that had to be changed by hand after every shot. This was ghastly work for observers with freezing fingers operating in the gale of the aircraft's slipstream. Later, cameras with a mechanically operated plate change made the observer's job more practical, but photo-reconnaissance remained as hazardous as it was unglamorous. An aircraft held steady and straight for photography presented an inviting target for ground fire, and the underpowered obsolescent aircraft usually thought suitable for reconnaissance were easy prey for enemy fighters. But, at the cost of heavy loss of life, comprehensive photomontages of trench systems were built up and used for selecting targets for the artillery.
When the heavy guns opened up, again the aircraft came into play. The gunners needed observers to tell them where the shells were landing so they could correct their range and direction. In decent weather, airborne observers could usually see where a shot was falling but there was no efficient way of communicating this to the ground until 1916, when some new aircraft were capable of carrying radio transmitters. Combining the use of radio with the "clock system" - a code of number and letter co-ordinates that identified where a shell had fallen in relation to the target - created a reasonably efficient spotting technique.
- - -
For the generals, the main reason for putting guns in aircraft was to protect their own reconnaissance aircraft and shoot down the enemy's. But the initial impetus towards arming aircraft came from pilots and observers who simply wanted to "have a go" at the opposition. Firing pistols and carbines at passing aircraft had limited effect, while attempts at dropping grenades on them from above were a total failure. Machine guns were what were needed. But carrying such a weapon was a considerable burden for the lightweight, underpowered aircraft of 1914. It was also hazardous: there was a serious risk of blowing bits off your own machine, with its array of struts and wires. The first recorded aerial victory is credited to a French aviator. On 5 October 1914, observer Louis Quénault shot down an Aviatik with a Hotchkiss machine gun mounted on a Voisin 8 - a pusher aircraft (with the propeller at the rear). Affording a clear field of fire to the front, pushers were one option for air-combat machines. They proved especially attractive to the British, who introduced the Vickers "Gun bus" in 1915 and the F.E.2 and single-seat D.H.2 pushers the following year. But while pusher machines were by no means ineffective, tractor machines (propeller at the front) were faster and more manoeuvrable.
What the more skilful and adventurous pilots instinctively yearned for was a gun they could aim simply by pointing their aircraft at the target. Before the war, French and German designers had discovered that it was feasible to create an interrupter gear that would pause a machine gun each time a propeller blade was in its line of fire. Raymond Saulnier, designer of the Morane-Saulnier monoplane, was one of those who experimented with interrupters, but he had not been able to make one work in practice. So it was Dutch designer Anthony Fokker who fitted the first effective interrupter gear to one of his Eindecker monoplanes. The Germans went on to use guns firing through the propeller arc on all their fighters for the rest of the war. Interrupter gears and other forms of synchronizing mechanism tended to reduce the rate of fire of the machine gun, but in later German aircraft, such as the Albatros D.V and Fokker D.VII, the use of twin guns compensated for this drawback.
The Allies' first effective riposte to the Eindecker's interrupter gear was to mount a machine gun on the upper wing of a biplane so that it fired over the top of the propeller. Even after the Allies developed their own synchronizing mechanisms to allow firing through the propeller arc, they remained attached to the concept of the wing-mounted gun. Successful solo fighters such as the Nieuport 17 and the S.E.5a were usually fitted with both.
Early in the war individual fighters prowled the skies as lone hunters in search of unsuspecting enemy aircraft. By 1916, fighter aircraft were being grouped in squadrons as tactics were developed for fighting in formation. During the titanic battles of Verdun and the Somme, Allied and German airmen fought for air superiority; losses on both sides were heavy in an aerial combat that mirrored the war of attrition on the ground. Numerically inferior the German aircraft tended to stay on their own side of the trenches and concentrate their resources in ever larger units capable of winning local air superiority on crucial sectors of the front.
Mais:
http://www.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/wwi/wwiair
http://www.unz.org/Pub/Scribners-1915jul-00001
http://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/ww1-aircraft.asp
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLucsO-7vMQ0153KNxuMsKumtfUUlnw5l_
