We all know the cultural trope of the WW1 flying ace in his biplane, engaging the enemy in a dogfight. But what was the strategic background to these fights in the wider context of the war - why would belligerents even bother building fighter planes to face the other side’s fighters? Was it to prevent those enemy fighters from intercepting your own bombers? AIUI, large-scale air-to-ground raids were a WW2 thing, and aerial bombing in WW1 was primitive and didn’t do much damage. So what was the benefit, in terms of the wider objectives of the war, that you’d get from air superiority?
Planes were used for reconnaissance and for artillery spotting. You could have a plane up in the air telling your artillerymen “you’re too far left, too close, now you’re just a bit too far right” using simple signals which would allow artillery fire beyond line of sight.
At first recon pilots would take potshots at each other with pistols or try to toss grenades into the other plane, but pretty soon they started mounting machine guns on the planes.
'Zactly.
Enemy observer planes over or near your positions were very dangerous to you, despite them having zero offensive weapons aboard. So as soon as they were invented, there was an opposing desire to stop them. Shooting at them from the ground pretty quickly proved mostly ineffective. Whole lotta ammo for not much result. So shooting at them from nearby up in the air was the next idea.
It did not take long to advance from ad hoc weapons tacked onto observation airplanes trying to plink one another to deliberately designed plane-killing airplanes. And then the tactics to use them. At first the plane killers (fighters) wanted to kill the opposition observers. But once both sides had plane killers, stopping the other guy’s plane killers from getting to your observers became a mission too. Hence fighter-to-fighter “dogfighting”.
In modern parlance, you didn’t need total air superiority. You just needed to be able to temporarily clear a small local area of a few miles extent long enough for your observers to do their thing (mostly) unmolested. So local air superiority.
Aerial bombardment was an idea from invention of the airplane itself. As you say, in WW-I it rarely amounted to more than a nuisance on the battlefield; too few planes with too little payload and range to make a material difference anywhere. But all the air forces, and all their brass and political boosters were trying hard to make it work. Bombers were the artilleryman’s dream weapon: extreme long range beyond the battlefield into the enemies’ rear areas, and able to select and kill targets in real time. It was the smart guided munition of its era. And potentially equally revolutionary. And they knew it.
The war ended before they got much more effective than pinpricks, but as we all know deep aerial bombardment really came into its own in WW-II and especially late in that war.
On the converse side, once bombers appeared in the skies over your side, why not send up some plane-killers to deal with them? Shoot them down or drive them off or … . And every pound of defensive weapons and ammo they carried in response was that much more drag and weight which further reduced their already pitiful range, performance, and bomb load.
The rest until today is just a continuous leapfrogging arms race of technology and tactics.
In addition to enemy spotter planes, there were observation balloons of various sorts used by the belligerents; these were likewise better attacked from the air, and thus would attract enemy aircraft with the intent of downing them. And, of course, you would launch you own aircraft to protect them (though they also tended to have some armaments of their own for defense).
Yeah, it’s really interesting how strategy breeds counterstrategy in warfare, so that both sides have to engage in increasingly difficult activities, not so much to get an advantage, as to avoid being put at a disadvantage
- Observation planes - yeah, better information for attacks
- Attack each other’s observation planes.
- Build better and better planes to attack each other’s attack planes, just so your observation planes get a few minutes of time to get observations
- Planes big enough to carry big bombs
- Attack planes to destroy the bombers before they get to their targets
- Increasingly advanced attack planes to shoot down the enemy attack planes that are after your bombers - or to shoot down the enemy planes that are defending their bombers.
It is said of WWI that last month’s superior plane that could sweep the skies clean is this month’s average plane, and next month’s easy target.
Second to what has already been said, there was also a romantic desire on the part of many pilots to restore the traditions of one-on-one chivalric combat. To many, the tactical and strategic goals assigned to them took second place to racking up kills and engaging in pointless aerial duels.
There’s an element of that.
But IMO that’s largely romanticized and propagandized sorta-history of a few pilots who were extraordinarily naturally skilled or lucky. Or more likely both. The vast majority of journeymen were just trying to stay alive while doing something mostly useful against the enemy. In an era where there was little established doctrine or tactics and you learned from talking with the surviving men who’d been there a month longer than you had.
It was also an era with no radios in a theater with normally shitty flying weather. The problems of coordinating even two airplanes to fight together was difficult and doing so with 20 was a nightmare. Which tended to turn even a planned force-on-force engagement into a clichéd Western movie saloon fight where suddenly everybody is punching everybody for no seeming reason.
Of course, no matter what the pilots might have wanted, they were still at the mercy of their command structures, and those command structures wouldn’t have authorized their fuel expenditures, or cleared takeoff and landing fields, or done any of the other support planes need, if they weren’t getting a definite benefit from it.
Mapping the trenches and observing any extensions or work in progress was a large part of the air effort. Without detailed topological survey maps of France and Flanders at a much larger scale than most prewar surveys, accurate artillery firing off the map was not possible.
And noting movement of troops and supplies from one location to another was also very important, since those movements were strong indicators of where enemy attacks might come from next or where you attacks should go.
And yet the probably most famous WWI plane fighter, Red Baron Manfred von Richthofen, was most probably shot dead by a machine gun from the ground:
Aircraft in WW1 was basically light cavalry, wasn’t it? Tasked with scouting, skirmishing and harassing.
Except that light cavalry could historically engage (and even rout) infantry in exposed positions, and WWI aircraft were mostly useless against anything aside from other aircraft. Strategically they were pretty much exclusively scouting and reconnaissance, along with protection of your own aircraft and attacking those of the opponent.
No attempts were made to strafe ground forces or logistics? Even if they don’t do much damage, the fear of attack from above can slow the enemy down.
Is that because WWI aircraft were useless in that role, or was it simply that infantry tended not to be in exposed positions once trench warfare set on. Which, as it happens, rendered cavalry useless as well.
They still had to cart food and ammo to the front. Those are pretty good targets.
They did all that and even dropped light bombs. the Hannover CL.II & III were designed as a multi-role aircraft and used extensively for ground attack.
there was also the
Almost all by horse drawn wagons.
It turns out that the word “strafe” derives from WWI. Specifically, it comes from a German propaganda slogan “Gott strafe England” (may God punish England). So that’s a strong indication, even without other info, that they did do strafing in WWI.
Indeed, the whole romance of “knights of the sky” engaging in chivalrous duels is pretty much entirely bunk.
From Shaw’s definitive work on the subject of ‘dogfighting’ bolding mine, Fighter Combat-Tactics and Maneuvering.pdf
Section is the term used to describe a team of two fighters acting in concert
against the adversary. This concept was first employed early in World War
I by the Germans Oswald Boelcke and Max Immelmann. Even in the
infancy of air combat, it was readily apparent that one-versus-one engage
ment has serious flaws in practical application. Among these failings is
inadequate defense against surprise attack by an unseen opponent. It has
been estimated that throughout the history of air combat 80 to 90 percent
of downed fighter pilots were unaware of their danger until the moment of
the attack. Suprise, then, and, conversely, the avoidance of surprise, must
be considered the most vital element in air combat.The first rule of all air combat is to see the opponent first. Like the hunter
who stalks his prey and maneuvers himself unnoticed into the most favor
able position for the kill, the fighter in the opening of a dogfight must detect
the opponent as early as possible in order to attain a superior position for the
attack.
Lt. General Adolph Galland, Luftwaffe
It’s for this reason that a lot of aces didn’t use tracers:
Tracer bullets, introduced during World War I, were also a great aid to
the pilot, since he could see the trajectory of his bullet stream and make
corrections. Small pyrotechnic charges located in the rear of tracer bullets
burn during the TOF, making the projectile visible. Although this feature
can be an aid in placing bullets on the target, the benefits can work both
ways. The pilots of many target aircraft do not realize they are under attack
until the first shots are fired. Any tracer that misses the target will defi
nitely get the target pilot’s attention and cause him to maneuver defen
sively. Without tracers, attacking pilot normally gets a few extra seconds’
chance at a steady target, greatly increasing the probability of a kill. For
this reason it is recommended that tracer ammunition be used only for
gunnery practice, to allow the student to develop a feel for bullet trajecto
ries and dispersion.Sometimes you miss with the first bullets and the tracers give you away.
Colonel Francis S. “Gabby” Gabreski, USAAF
Leading American Ace in Europe, WW-II
34.5 Victories, WW-II and Korean Conflict
Air Interdiction was invented in World War I, but the limited size of air forces meant its impact was usually limited in size and range, although it is argued to have affected the outcome of specific battles.