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Home , 2nd Army (German Empire), 5th Army (France), Airpower, Army aviation, Charles Lanrezac, Joseph Joffre

The was on the march through until aerial led the Allies to a critical victory.

The Influence of on the By Walter J. Boyne

he mere mention of World ing in 1918 than by a handful of fragile France, in 1908. As a result, the major War I elicits images gathering the vital data early in European powers adopted a more sys- of between Spads the war. Airpower, in its earliest form, tematic approach to acquiring and ex- and Fokkers, or of Gotha led to the decisive Battle of the Marne perimenting with this new phenomenon. Tbombers over . The fact that the in . Aviation was also fashionable, and advanced airplanes of 1918 stemmed From the start, the Wright brothers was adopted as a sport by wealthy men from a handful of harmless-looking presumed their invention would be in many nations. Thus, it had sponsors aircraft first taking flight at the beginning adapted by the military services. This at high levels in government who were of the war in 1914 rarely comes to mind. was not realized until 1909, when the able to funnel resources into aviation. Most of these early warplanes were US Army purchased the Wright Military Besides its glamour, the aircraft offered conversions of civil aircraft. They were Flyer. In the Army, aviation came to be what every military man always sought, slow, with perhaps a 20 to 40 mph regarded as a dangerous hobby, pursued a means of viewing “the other side of margin between stalling and top speed. only by men indifferent to both longevity the hill.” Balloons were used before and They lacked power to carry any but the and successful military careers. would be again, but they were static, lightest armaments. In , things were different. difficult to install in position, and could Yet it can be argued the outcome of There, military men were convinced survey only a limited area. The airplane was influenced less by the of the airplane’s potential by Wilbur was seen as a means of rapidly getting thousands of efficient new aircraft fight- Wright’s dazzling display at , to the other side of any hill. 68 Magazine / July 2011 In 1910, France established the Ser- with this, and by 1914, the RNAS vice Aeronautique. The results were operated a variety of aircraft. Great promising, and on Oct. 22, 1910, Gen. Britain went a step further, founding Pierre A. Roques created the world’s first the Royal Aircraft Factory in 1911, to air force, the Aeronautique Militaire. spur aircraft development. It did so, French aerial maneuvers in 1910 led him but with mixed results. to say, “Airplanes are ... as indispensable In the East, Imperial also es- to armies as the cannons and rifles, and tablished its air force in 1910, initially those to whom this is not to their liking depending on aircraft purchased from risk one day having to admit it by force.” the French. In time, under the leader- had already made great ship of Igor Sikorsky and backed by the progress with Ferdinand von Zeppe- surprising depth of Russian research, it lin’s huge , believing they had established its own aviation industry. immense potential value for reconnais- Although -Hungary established a sance and bombardment. But Germany balloon corps in 1893, and reorganized was also interested in heavier-than-air it in 1912 as an air service, it did not craft, and the Imperial German Army provide the funds for training pilots or Air Service was founded in 1910. buying equipment on the scale of the The British waited until 1912 to other major powers. establish the Royal Flying Corps. The RFC would use heavier-than-air Plan XVII craft, while the Royal Naval Air Ser- On June 28, 1914, a Serb assassinated vice (RNAS) operated lighter-than-air the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz craft. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, begin- , was very unhappy ning the slide into what became the “Great War.” When war began, Great Left: Flying an AG-4 similar to this one, Louis Breguet spotted a gap Britain had about 150 aircraft in military in the German line. Below: German service, France had 160, Germany had soldiers keep watch from a trench dur- 246, and Russia had about 150. Austria- ing the Battle of the Marne. Until they Hungary had 10 balloons and perhaps were forced to dig in to the trenches 50 aircraft. that came to define World War I, the Germans had been maneuvering The new enthusiasm for military toward . aviation has to be viewed in context. Photos via National Archives

AIR FORCE Magazine / July 2011 69 blue, white, and red roundels. Three days later, a dozen reconnais- sance flights took off. One was flown by Capt. L. E. O. Charlton and Lt. V. H. N. Wadham of No. 3 Squadron. Photo via Library of Congress They scouted , but found no German troops. They then landed 50 miles away at Moerbeke, . There the mayor told them large Ger- man forces were passing through the neighboring town of Grammont, only two miles away. The two men took off and soon found what they estimated as an entire Army corps marching along the Brussels-Ninove road toward the British forces. This turned out to be the II Corps of the 1st German Army, commanded by Gen. Alexander von Kluck, just beginning the turn by which he intended to cut off and annihilate Breguet joined the as an enlisted pilot, and flew an aircraft of his own the . design and manufacture on reconnaissance missions. The observations delivered by Charl- ton and Wadham were taken directly Expenditures by all these governments The British forces, while small, were to the British commander, Field Mar- on standard arms vastly exceeded the professional. In a similar way, the tiny shal John French, who believed the amounts spent on aviation. Secondly, Royal Flying Corps responded to the information and would have acted on national armies operated on a great emergency with surprising skill. the intelligence at once, had he not scale, with hundreds of thousands of men By Aug. 13, more than 40 aircraft been bound by orders to support his fighting over many miles of territory. flew from Dover across the English counterpart, Gen. . Not much was expected of a handful of Channel to land at fields near , On the previous day, at Charlerois, experimental machines, flown by inex- France. A further 24 aircraft followed the 15 divisions of the French 5th perienced pilots on ill-defined missions. them, accompanied by the men and Army under Lanrezac were virtually Nonetheless, the intelligent operation equipment necessary to support the destroyed by the attack of 38 divisions of these fragile aircraft helped change force in the field. After landing at of the German , led by Gen. the course of the war, preventing a swift Amiens, the aircraft deployed to make- Karl von Buelow. The two command- German victory—and affecting how shift fields near the Belgian border, ers, Lanrezac and French, were so conflicts would be waged in the future. from which the first reconnaissance furious with each other it took a per- In 1914, Germany possessed what flights took off on Aug. 19. sonal intervention by their respective was acknowledged at the time to be the commanders, the French commander finest army in the world, but it feared Flying the Colors in chief, Gen. , and the a war on two fronts. A magnificent rail The German plan of attack called British Secretary of State for War, system led Germany to plan a French for a quick sweep through Belgium Horatio Herbert Kitchener, to bring defeat in five weeks, then shuttle its deep into France, and then a turn to them back into a working relationship. troops on trains to the east, to Russia. envelop the French armies and destroy Reluctantly, French agreed to hold the The German High Command estimated them. The strong Belgian defense of British Expeditionary Force’s position it would take the Russians at least six fortresses at Liege and Namur slowed for 24 hours, to allow the French Army weeks to mobilize—giving Germany a the Germans down somewhat, to the to retreat. week to play with in a high stakes game. extent that the British and the French Fortunately the advance warning With the war under way, German lost contact with them. provided by Charlton and Wadham’s armies were sent to sweep through Bel- On Aug. 19, British Capt. Philip report allowed French to deploy two gium and into France. They Joubert de la Ferte took off in his corps around , across a planned to destroy the French armies, Bleriot, accompanied by Lt. Gilbert 25-mile front. Although outnumbered rather than capture Paris. The French W. Mapplebeck in a B.E.2 on the first two-to-one in both men and artillery, had their own “Plan XVII,” calling for RFC reconnaissance mission of the the expert British riflemen held off troops to advance into the provinces of war. Both men saw large numbers of the German advance for a crucial day. Alsace-Lorraine, ceded to Germany after the enemy, and both made landings They then began an eight-day fighting their 1870 conflict. This fit into German to ask local people for information retreat, with the RFC relocating to new plans unwittingly, for it thrust French before returning to base. These early fields each day. forces forward so they could be cut off reconnaissance flights were subject to Von Buelow’s success against Lan- by a scything movement from the west. fire from all ground troops, friendly rezac’s forces caused him to urge von Germany was surprised to find its or hostile. This led first to the paint- Kluck to turn his forces to the southeast invasion of Belgium brought Great ing of the British flag on wings, and and envelope the French Army. Von Britain into the war on Aug. 4. then the adoption of the now familiar Kluck complied on Aug. 31, but his 70 AIR FORCE Magazine / July 2011 movement opened a gap in the German lines immediately spotted by no less An Eclectic Collection of Early Airpower than six members of the RFC. In early , a rather eclectic collection of British aircraft left Once again, Field Marshal French Dover, , in four squadrons to aid the defense of France and Belgium believed the aerial reports and acted along the front lines near Amiens, France. No. 2 and No. 4 Squadrons flew on them. Bleriot Experimental 2s (B.E.2s). The French Army was equally well- No. 3 Squadron flew a mixture of Bleriots and Henri Farmans, while No. served by aerial reconnaissance. Louis 5 Squadron had Henri Farmans, Avro, and B.E.8s, the latter nicknamed C. Breguet, of the famous watch-making “Bloater” for its resemblance to the fish. family, had himself assigned as an Two of the types, the B.E.2 and B.E.8 were products of the Royal Aircraft enlisted pilot. Factory at Farnborough, present-day site of the biennial international air Flying a Breguet AG-4 of his own show. Originally established as His Majesty’s Balloon Factory, it became the Royal Aircraft Factory in 1911 and attracted some of the best aviation design and manufacture, Breguet also pioneers in England, including Geoffrey de Havilland and Henry Folland. spotted the gap as the German forces The Royal Aircraft Factory created some useful aircraft early in the war and changed direction, moving from west to was responsible for what many consider to be the best RFC/RAF fighter of east. He informed his headquarters of it. the period, the S.E.5a. Most of the aircraft sent to France in August 1914 were B.E.2s, a fragile A Course Irrevocably Changed looking biplane powered by a 70-hp Renault engine. Its sole original design Getting the Allies to act on the infor- requirement was to create “a stable aircraft,” and no one envisioned that it mation was a tougher task, as the French would enter combat. With a maximum speed of 70 mph, it could carry a load High Command, from Gen. Ferdinand of 224 pounds of . Its stall speed was just over 40 mph, providing a Foch down, held a dismissive view of 30 mph envelope in which to maneuver. Despite this limited performance, the aircraft was continually improved and served until 1918. The B.E.8 was aviation and aviators. Flights with an essentially a B.E.2 powered by an 80-hp Gnome rotary engine. It was built R.E.P. monoplane and a Maurice Farman in much smaller numbers than the B.E.2, and as a result, killed fewer British pusher biplane confirmed Breguet’s pilots than the B.E.2. report. Coupled with information from The Bleriots of the Royal Flying Corps were essentially similar to the the British, this induced the French to channel-crossing type, and had a top speed of 59 to 61 mph. deploy to trap the Germans. The net Only a few Avro 504s were available for the initial operation, despite their result of this collaborative effort was that superior 82 mph top speed. An Avro 504 of No. 5 Squadron was shot down over a period of three days, the Germans on Aug. 22, 1914, the first British aircraft lost to enemy fire. marched into a salient with the French The Henri Farmans were a hopeless-appearing collection of wings and on their left flank, the French struts, powered by an 80-hp Gnome pusher engine providing a blistering 65 mph top speed. on their right flank, and the This collection of RFC aircraft was impressive to the French, and the aircraft British Expeditionary Force standing were soon dispersed to fields around , the French garrison town firm at the bottom of the pocket. Sud- designated as the forward operating base of the British Expeditionary Force. denly, the German flanking movement

aircraft not been available, the course of World War I might have been irrevocably changed. The warplanes were available only because the French and British

Photo vio Agence Rol governments had drawn the correct conclusions from the convincing dem- onstrations of the early Wright aircraft. Had the Wright brothers not been successful in 1903, there would have been no 1908 demonstrations in Europe, and it is probable there would have been no primitive air forces available French infantrymen charge the line in 1914. Alerted by reconnaissance aircraft, the in 1914. Germany might well have won French redeployed to draw the German advance into a trap at the Marne. World War I that year because, before the Battle of the Marne, the Germans was outflanked—and trapped. The Al- by the Royal Flying Corps under Sir were on the move. n lied forces attacked at dawn on Sept. 6, David Henderson. Their skill, energy, beginning the Battle of the Marne. After and perseverance have been beyond all Walter J. Boyne, former director of the four days of hard fighting, the Germans praise. They have furnished me with the National Air and Space Museum in retreated 40 miles to the River . most complete and accurate information Washington, D.C., is a retired Air Force They began digging the trenches that which has been of incalculable value in colonel. He has written more than 600 articles about aviation topics and 40 would extend from to the the conduct of operations.” books, the most recent of which is sea and forever characterize the war. Aerial reconnaissance disrupted the How the Helicopter Changed Modern In an exultant dispatch written to German plan and turned a swift five- Warfare. His most recent article for Air Kitchener on Sept. 7, French wrote, “I week conquest of France into a four- Force Magazine, “The High Intensity wish particularly to bring to your lord- year bloodbath that proved impossible Life of Patrick Fleming,” appeared in ship’s notice the admirable work done for Germany to win. Had the primitive the March issue. AIR FORCE Magazine / July 2011 71