AIR COMBAT. Combat between aircraft is a new develop ment of war. It is one that will probably become increasingly important, since aircraft have, so far at any rate, proved in war to be the best antidote to aircraft. The most effective way in fact of preventing enemy aircraft from carrying out their object, be it reconnaissance, observation of artillery fire or bombing, is to oppose them in the air with other aircraft.
The term air combat covers fighting between aeroplanes and between aeroplane and airship. There has been no instance recorded of airship fighting airship.
Early History.—Prior to the outbreak of the World War, none of the belligerents had devoted much attention to air com bat. Reconnaissance was regarded as the primary, indeed almost the only, duty of aircraft. There was thus little or no specializa tion of duties among aeroplanes; in fact it is, broadly speaking, true to say that all the belligerents began the war with one class of aeroplane—a two-seater designed solely for reconnaissance. There were a few single-seaters of high performance, but their role was that of fast scouts. As the war went on, specialization appeared, and a class of aeroplane designed specifically for air fighting was evolved, followed by a class of bombing aeroplanes.
Prior to the outbreak of war the British had experimented with machine-guns in aircraft, and firing tests had been carried out in the air. But on the outbreak of war no aeroplane on the Western Front was actually armed with a machine-gun. Rifles, carbines, pistols, shotguns and hand grenades were carried by pilots and observers. The tactics employed in the stray combats that did occur at this time were rudimentary. The pilot simply flew close to the enemy aeroplane, and, when within range, he or his ob server blazed away with whatever weapon they happened to be carrying.
In the summer of 1915, all belligerents began to mount machine guns in their standard two-seater reconnaissance aircraft, the great majority of which were of the tractor type (i.e., aeroplanes in which the pilot sits behind the engine). In these aeroplanes the gun was usually mounted on a swivelling bar at the back of the observer's seat. The observer could only fire the gun back wards towards the tail of the aeroplane and over the pilot's head. (At that time the observer was always seated in front of the pilot.) The arc of fire was consequently restricted; and it was necessary, owing to the fact that the gun pointed towards the aero plane's tail, to fly away from the enemy aeroplane in order to bring fire to bear upon it.
It was at once apparent that, in order to attack effectively, it was essential to be able to fire forwards in the direction in which the aeroplane was flying. The British had already designed an aeroplane embodying this principle. This aeroplane, the Vickers Fighter, was a two-seater of the "pusher" type (i.e., the pilot and observer sat in a nacelle in front of the engine). The observer, who sat in the very front of this nacelle, was armed with a Lewis gun on a swivelling mounting. Two squadrons of these aeroplanes were sent to France in the summer and autumn of 1915 respec tively. The machine, however, lacked speed and climbing power, and was soon outclassed by a new type of German aeroplane— the Fokker monoplane.
Meanwhile the Allies had not been idle. Shortly after the advent of the Fokker E.I., the French produced the "Baby" Nieu port, a single-seater tractor biplane with a Lewis gun so fixed on its top-plane as to fire straight ahead outside the arc of the pro peller; while early in 1916 the British sent to France the D.H.2, and later the F.E.8. These were small single-seater fighters of the pusher type, in which the pilot operated a Lewis gun on a move able mounting in the front of the nacelle.
By this time the need for the specialization of functions among aircraft was becoming apparent ; and both the Allies and the Ger mans, besides producing aeroplanes designed solely for air fighting, had, by the beginning of 1916, grouped these aeroplanes into specialist fighting squadrons.
As formations increased in size and the tactics of fighting in formation developed, individualism in air fighting tended to dis appear in favour of co-operation—that is, it was found, as the war went on, to be usually of little use f or one pilot to go out alone to search for and shoot down enemy aeroplanes. Not only was he liable to be attacked by a formation of enemy fighters and so outnumbered, but it was also found to be a hazardous business for one man to attack single-handed a close knit formation of two-seater reconnais sance or bombing aeroplanes.
The System of Offensive Patrols (Summer and Autumn 1916).—By the summer of 1916 therefore the cus tomary British method of employing fighter squadrons was to send them out in small formations of five or six aero planes on what were termed "offensive patrols." These formations flew out over enemy territory, often as far as the enemy aerodromes, with the object of searching for and dispersing enemy fighting patrols, and so affording indirect protection to the British reconnaissance, artil lery observation and bombing aircraft. To the French must be given the credit of first employing this system on a wholesale scale. This they did at Verdun in the spring of 1916. But the system was brought to full flower by the British during the battle of the Somme, where its success was so great as to transfer for a time to the Allies the mastery of the air that had been previously won for the Germans by the Fokker monoplane.
Modifications in Design of Two-Seaters (Summer 1916). —In 1916, as a result of the increasing importance of air combat, all belligerents began to devote far more attention not only (as already described) to the development of fighting aircraft and their methods of employment, but also to the design of the two seater reconnaissance and bombing aeroplanes, and to the tactics by which they could best defend themselves against the attacks of fighting aircraft. Thus there gradually came into vogue a more or less standard "lay-out" for the two-seater reconnaissance and bombing types—a lay-out that has not so far been materially modified. The design that was f ound to be most effective was a tractor biplane, in which the pilot was seated in front of the observer or gunner. The pilot had a fixed machine-gun, firing straight ahead, and a synchronizing gear—an armament in fact similar to that of the fighter pilot. The observer was seated facing backwards, behind the pilot, with a light machine-gun on a swiv elling mounting with which he was able to cover an arc of rather more than 18o degrees towards the aeroplane's tail. Since—for reasons that will be explained later—the usual method of attack in the air is to take the enemy in the rear, the main defence of a two-seater was found to be in the fire of the observer from this rearward gun, supplemented of course, by such tactical manoeu vrings as the pilot thought fit to carry out. The first two-seater aeroplane of this type to be used on the Western Front was a British machine, the Sopwith "Ii Strutter," the first squadron of which was sent to France in the early summer of 1916. Later aeroplanes with a similar lay-out and armament were the British R.E.8, D.H.4, Bristol Fighter and D.H.9; the French Breguet; and many types of German two-seaters, of which the L.V.G. was perhaps the most common.
Germany's Second Period of Mastery (Spring 1917).— Early in 1917 the Germans made a determined effort to regain the mastery of the air, which they had lost the previous summer on the Somme. They produced two new types of single-seater fighters—the Albatros D.III. and the Halberstadt—which for some months outclassed the fighters of the Allies at that time on the Western Front. Their success was due partly to their superior performance, and partly to the fact that they were armed with two machine-guns, fixed to fire through the propeller, instead of one as heretofore. The Allies, caught short of effective fighters, quickly lost the superiority in the air that they had won the previous year at Verdun and on the Somme. By February 1917 German superiority was clearly marked.
In the last year of the war the tactics of fighting in formation crystallized, and tactical systems were evolved adapted to the peculiarities of the various types of aeroplanes. In the summer of 1918 on the Western Front it was rarely that either fighter or bombing squadrons operated in formations of less than squadron strength; and, as already stated, it was not uncommon for three or four squadrons to work together in one large, but rather loose formation. The tactics customarily employed in the formation fighting of this period have not materially changed and will be described in a later section.