by 1914 the use of aircraft as a piece of military equipment was starting to become commonplace as opposed to being a novelty although there was still some debate as to how useful they would be in major conflicts nevertheless the concept of using aircraft as a machine in warfare had been proven soldiers and sailors from a group of nations had already become proficient in the art of flying there had been the italo-turkish war and the balkan wars america had used curtis a-ones in the veracruz incident and france had employed its airplanes in a colonial campaign in morocco however no airplane existed at the outbreak of world war one equipped with a gun of any sort many nations now had military air arms in one form or another the biggest three belonging to france germany and russia respectively in europe and neighboring theaters you also had air forces belonging to great britain belgium italy the austro-hungarian empire the ottoman empire serbia bulgaria romania greece basically you had a lot of people with a lot of planes at least by the standard of the time the purpose of all these new air forces was almost exclusively for reconnaissance it being generally thought unlikely that a rifle or pistol shot from one moving aircraft would prove fatal to another and so at the beginning of the war the belligerent nations prepared their forces of unarmed flimsy aircraft for the skies in the french aviation military 24 squadrons were equipped with a score of different aircraft blerio 11s maurice farman 7 and 11s and cadron g3s were being filtered in the largest numbers the total number of operational aircraft for france in august of 1914 was estimated to be between 140 to 160 machines the british royal flying corps were equipped with depodusins sopwith tabloids british box kites raf be2s and a smattering of others along with these they also operate some of the french aircraft mentioned before as number two three and four squadrons moved over to france in august of 1914 together they operated approximately 60 aircraft germany went to war with approximately 246 operational frontline machines the tub monoplane and albatross and aviatic biplanes being the dominating models they also had a decent pool of trained servicemen with a combined total of approximately 500 pilots and observers distributed amongst their air units russia also had a sizeable fleet to equip the imperial russian air service approximately 250 aircraft however these were mostly outdated by 1914 standards however the russians would soon up their game producing some deeply impressive heavy aircraft by the middle of the war many nations were also beginning to field larger and more powerful designs of airship which we will touch on in these videos but they will also get their own dedicated video in the near future at the start of hostilities there was no real organization of air units or any plans to commit said units to any sort of offensive exercise and so no real effort was made by either side to contest the skies and deny their use to the enemy the only real threat to military reconnaissance aircraft at this time was the infantryman's rifle and indeed the first british aircraft to be lost in action was an avaro 504 that was shot down by enemy small arms fire from the ground on august 19th now the opening stages of the war in 1914 was known as the war of movement and this did much to highlight to the usefulness of the aircraft to those who were still critical of its effectiveness during these chaotic months the frontline was in constant movement and aerial reconnaissance became critical to each side's strategic planning germany and france already had dedicated reconnaissance aircraft by the start of the war and there were great hopes that these new machines would supplement or even surpass the existing reconnaissance and artillery spotting platforms at the time which consisted of airships and oversized kites some of these early expectations went far beyond the capabilities of the aircraft at the time however as more traditional land-based forms of reconnaissance i.e like cavalry units were being mowed down by relentless machine gun fire the warring nations were left with a little alternative despite the newness of the technology the limiting factors of heavy and cumbersome photographic equipment and the difficulty of keeping relatively light aircraft steady enough in contrary weather for the photo to even be legible some achievements were made that comprehensively proved their effectiveness during the battle of mons in mid to late august observations made by the royal flying corps enabled the british expeditionary force to keep ahead of german movements as the forces tried to outflank each other this was especially valuable as a good portion of the french advance to the north west had been checked which left a salient that could have been surrounded had the german movements not been well reported french aircraft at the first battle of the man were used to report and exploit weak points and exposed flanks in the german lines germany 2 also made good use of its aircraft though their use was somewhat less enthusiastic thanks to the popularity of the zeppelins during the battle of tannenberg an unexpected russian attack was exposed by german spotting aircraft and the russian forces were forced to withdraw though primarily used for reconnaissance purposes the physical and psychological effects of aerial bombing in the pre-war conflicts had not been forgotten and it was not long before individual pilots started out on what can only be regarded as courageous if full hardy escapades franz von hidsen dropped two light bombs by hand over paris on the 13th of august 1914 and the first bomb to be dropped on english soil was another such light bomb which fell into a dover garden on christmas eve in 1914 along with the zeppelin raids this would go on to have a startling effect on the british home front which had long avoided the physical effects of war thanks to the english channel and the domination of the royal navy inevitably the airmen of the opposing services would encounter each other in the sky at the beginning of the war they would leave each other well alone but as the importance of aerial reconnaissance was realized on both sides it became apparent that a good way to have an advantage over your enemy was to deny their ability to operate their reconnaissance aircraft and so began the earliest form of aerial combat which usually consisted of the aircraft observer taking up a rifle or a pistol of some kind and employing it in a way that would encourage the enemy to vacate the general vicinity although these actions represented a watershed moment in the opening chapters of aerial warfare it was not the only method that pilots used to bring down their opponents in these early days although it was definitely the most sane elsewhere rather more dramatic means were being adopted to destroy enemy aircraft particularly with russian pilots staff captain nestarov would earn russia's first air-to-air kill by ramming his austrian opponent in an unarmed marine solena in this instance both pilots were unfortunately killed but aircraft ramming was something that occurred throughout the war usually when an aircraft was too critically damaged to carry on the fight had no ammunition or found itself in the unhappy situation of being an unarmed scout plane against an armed opposing force not all ramming events were suicidally fatal as one would assume though and the first to successfully survive this was a russian flying ace alexander kazakov kazukov is noted for employing a particularly unorthodox method of melee aerial combat trailing a grapnel below his aircraft which he would then engage to the wing of the enemy and then proceed to beat the confused and distressed austrian airmen with the fixed landing gear of his aircraft now the first plane to actually be shot down rather than bludgeoned down was a german aviatic on october the 5th which was shot down by french pilot sergeant joseph franz using a free-mounted hotchkiss gun on his wassen the concept of mounting a gun to an aircraft was not new though it had been rarely employed as early as 1912 aircraft designers had been experimenting with machine gun carrying aircraft however a lot of these designs were known as pusher aircraft where the engine and the propeller were mounted behind the pilot and therefore pushed the aircraft forward giving the gun and the pilot a clear view facing forward and no propeller to get in the way whilst good for gunnery it was bad for aerial performance and these early designs were not very aerodynamic at all despite this some of the earliest fighter plane designs particularly the british ones would be of this pusher propeller design one of the most notable was the royal air factory fe2 which stood for farmer experimental and it was based on the pusher aircraft designed by the french pharma brothers while some were working on developing the pusher designs further others were looking at fighter aircraft design from a different perspective the easiest way to turn an aircraft into an offensive weapon was to have the guns facing forward so that the pilot would be able to both control the aircraft and operate the guns it would also allow the pilot easy access to the breach of the gun to clear any jams that might occur light single-seat aircraft would also be nimbler and more maneuverable than the two-seat designs that had a pilot and either a gunner or an observer on the rear which is where a lot of the early guns were being mounted however there was one small problem firing forward would mean firing through the fragile wooden propellers and funnily enough you needed an intact propeller if you wanted to stay in the air for any extended period of time biplanes had the option of mounting its guns above the upper wing thus avoiding the unhappy scenario of shooting off one's own propeller blades but that made them both difficult to aim and to operate and to maintain and with monoplane aircraft that were being preferred by the french and the germans at the start of the war this wasn't even an option as they only had the one wing the solution to this problem would be to synchronize the firing of the machine gun to the rotation of the propeller early experiments with synchronized machine guns had been carried out before the war however some of the most commonly used machine guns at the time particularly british ones were almost impossible to sync with a propeller due to their erratic fire rates the lewis gun with its open bolt firing cycle was one such gun despite this it would still be used on some aircraft like the bristol scout which mounted the gun in a forward firing position pilots would have the reassurance and comfort that if they shot their own propeller and there was only a slim 5 chance they would be preserved by the reinforced sticky tape that would hold the blades together for enough time for them to land safely i wish i was making that up thankfully this would be a relatively brief albeit insane stop gap as the maxim gun was found to be a perfect candidate for a synchronization gear thanks to its closed bolt firing cycle this weapon was used by both sides of the war under various manufacturing names and the idea of a synchronization gear was being pursued by both sides in earnest france would be first off the mark with this new technology equipping their marine monoplanes with forward-firing weaponry they had not completely perfected the technology however and the weapon system still suffered from hang fires and synchronization issues this was due to the fact that the french were using the hotchkiss machine guns on their marines which like the lewis gun was almost impossible to properly synchronize with their propeller as a backup in case the propeller was struck by one of the bullets they fitted so-called deflector blades to the back of the propeller at the point where they could be struck by the rounds the marine solenoid model l would be equipped with this new technology and piloted by roland garros it would be the first aircraft equipped with forward-firing weaponry to score a kill during the first world war shooting down a german aviatic on the 1st of april 1915. garros would go on to shoot down four german aircraft in his new plane that month signaling the birth of true aerial combat but this victory and the technological advantage for the ontant would be short-lived on the 19th of april his aircraft took ground fire and suffered engine damage forcing garros to land behind enemy lines he would be captured before he was able to completely destroy his aircraft though he had managed to at least set it on fire and this new secret weapon now fell into the hands of the enemy the aircraft would be sent back to the fokker aviation company who were already in the process of developing and producing a monoplane fighter and fokker were ordered to build a copy of the synchronization gear design there is still some conjecture as to how fokker came to the final design of their own interrupter gear some accounts say that enough of the original mechanism survived the burning of garrosh's aircraft others point to fokker making some pretty hefty infringements upon a patent made by franz schneider in 1913 and some allude to a combination of the two however the important thing is that in july of 1915 a french marine solenoil would be shot down by a german fokker monoplane using a working synchronization gear for the first time signaling the end of the early days when aerial combat was fought with primitive means sometimes resulting in broken propellers and opening a new chapter in the history of aerial warfare in world war one with the germany leading the charge in what would be known as the focus scourge [Music] [Music] you