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The Influence of Airpower on the Marne T The German Army was on the march through France until aerial reconnaissance led the Allies to a critical victory. The Influence of Airpower on the Marne 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 aviation elicits images aircraft gathering the vital data early in European powers adopted a more sys- of dogfights 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 London. The fact that the in September 1914. 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 Europe, 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 World War I 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 Le Mans, to the other side of any hill. 68 AIR FORCE 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 Russia 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- Germany 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 airships, believing they had established its own aviation industry. immense potential value for reconnais- Although Austria-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- Winston Churchill, 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 Paris. aviation has to be viewed in context. Photos via National Archives AIR FORCE Magazine / July 2011 69 Royal Air Force 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 Brussels, but found no German troops. They then landed 50 miles away at Moerbeke, Belgium. 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 French Army as an enlisted pilot, and flew an aircraft of his own the British Army. 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. Charles Lanrezac. Not much was expected of a handful of Channel to land at fields near Amiens, 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 2nd Army, 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. Joseph Joffre, 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 Luxembourg into France. They Joubert de la Ferte took off in his infantry corps around Mons, 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.
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