War and Game

Austria-Hungary - Fokker E.III Unit: Flik 18 Serial: 03.45 Galicia, October 1916.

From the start of the conflict at the beginning of August, German airplanes acquitted themselves well on the Western and Eastern Fronts. In the west they kept track of the French retreat and played key roles in detecting enemy troop movements. Aviation was even more important on the Eastern Front because, in light of the great numerical superiority of the Russian cavalry, airplanes provided key information on Russian troop movements in the relative absence of cavalry units. German aviators were instrumental in preparing the victory at Tannenberg and in preventing a more serious defeat on the Marne. By the end of August, the airplane had developed from “a supplementary means of information relied upon principally for confirmation” to “the principal means of operational reconnaissance—an important factor in forming army commanders’ decisions.”

German army airships, in contrast, proved vulnerable to ground fire during reconnaissance and bombing attacks on the Western Front. The zeppelins’ initial wartime performance was disastrous: five of the seven military airships were destroyed by early October 1914, four by fire from the ground. The giant dirigibles had become liabilities; they could fly over the front only on dark nights. In addition, replacement of their losses was slow, with only three new zeppelins entering service by the end of 1914. Though the airship failed the German army, the German naval airship officers considered it a cheap substitute for cruisers to scout for the fleet. Obsessed with the idea of bombing England, the naval leadership expanded its tiny unit, which had only one airship at mobilization.

Organizational deficiencies lessened the potential efficacy of German aviation units. The high command and army commands lacked central aviation agencies to collect and assess fliers’ reports; the subordination of aviation to transport deprived aviators of direct access to the front command; and the practice of equipping units with different aircraft types complicated supply. In the rear, the existence of war ministries in some of the smaller German states, Bavaria in particular, also impeded the most efficient mobilization of the aviation industry. More crucially, the Prussian War Ministry, although it insisted on increased aircraft deliveries in early August, impeded the industry’s ability to comply by resisting aircraft price increases until February 1915, four months longer than did the French War Ministry, which had issued extensive aircraft contracts and consented to price increases in October 1914.

Whatever the problems in Germany, they paled before the inadequacy of Austro-Hungarian aviation, which quickly became a burdensome appendage to its German counterpart. The tiny size of the Austrian aircraft industry forced the Austro-Hungarian army to resort to the German industry for airplanes, but the army refused to extend advance payments to manufacturers to allow them to procure materials. The army also demanded the immediate development of a large twin-engine biplane (the Grossflugzeug, or G-plane) from an industry that was barely able to deliver ten airplanes a month.

The onset of the war disrupted aviation production everywhere, and the French responded most quickly to the new challenges. In October the French army began specializing its aircraft types as it geared up aircraft and particularly aero-engine production for the anticipated campaign of 1915.

In that year, as the war spread and the consumption of materiel exceeded expectations, resulting in production and labor shortages, the combatant powers confronted critical decisions regarding the mobilization of aviation technology and industry that would have far-reaching implications for the future course of the air war.

At the recommendation of the German high command, the Prussian War Ministry established a chief of field aviation (Feldflugchef ) on 26 April 1915 to direct all aviation, including the “systematic mobilization of the aviation industry.” French attacks in 1915 forced the German army and its air service on the defensive, and the French remained superior in numbers throughout the year. The appearance in the late spring of the C-plane, the standard two-seat biplane equipped with 150- horespower engines and a machine gun for the observer, and then of the single-seat Fokker monoplane (Eindecker), armed with a synchronized forward-firing machine gun, kept the German air arm qualitatively abreast of its opponents. The performance of German aircrews, particularly pilots such as Max Immelmann and Oswald Boelcke, demonstrated the quality of their training, and outstanding fighter pilots began to appear on both sides of the Western Front.

The army, confronting continued zeppelin losses, transferred most of its airships to the vast reaches of the Eastern and Balkan Fronts. The navy, which secured the kaiser’s consent to bomb England, exaggerated the significance of its initial airship raids in January and was determined to procure increasingly larger zeppelins. An editorial in the Kölnische Zeitung on 21 January exulted: “The most modern air weapon, a triumph of German inventiveness . . . , has shown itself capable of carrying the war to the soil of old England! . . . This is the best way to shorten the war, and thereby in the end the most humane.” Meanwhile, during the year, the zeppelins grew larger, expanding from 1 million cubic feet in volume powered by four engines to nearly 2 million cubic feet with six engines. These ships could outclimb opposing airplanes, but they remained vulnerable to weather in the air and fire in their sheds on the ground. With the onset of winter, the naval raids ceased, and the airships were left to face the ravages of high humidity, mold, and putrefaction in their hangars.

In perhaps the most significant development for the future of aviation science and technology, Hugo Junkers spent 1915 developing the first all-metal airplane. Its metal construction would make it more resistant to weather and fire, and its thick airfoil offered little more drag and better stability than the thin airfoils used by other airplane designers. The War Ministry tendered Junkers a contract in May, but wartime conditions made it difficult for the firm to find sufficient skilled workers, so the prototype was not finished until December.

Spurred by military contracts, the German aircraft industry increased production from 1,348 airplanes in 1914 to 4,532 in 1915, while engine factories delivered 5,037 engines. Yet German aero-engine manufacture stagnated during the first three quarters of 1915. Erroneous decisions by the inspectorate’s engine section, whose one engineer, Walter Simon, managed relations with the industry in a “peculiar and arbitrary manner,” compounded the limitation posed by Daimler’s near monopoly of production. On 16 November 1914 the inspectorate had decided against the development of engines greater than 150 horsepower to avoid disturbing production. This decision, though prompted by limited production capacity, delayed the evolution of more powerful engines.

In 1915 the inspectorate declined a Benz eight-cylinder, 240-horsepower engine because it did not conform to the six-cylinder standard, but it then allowed Daimler to produce an eight-cylinder, 220-horsepower, in-line engine following its bench test in December 1915. After only forty-two of the engines had been made, however, it halted production because the engine’s length caused a lack of stiffness in its crankshaft. In general, shortages of skilled labor and machine tools kept crankshaft manufacture insufficient to increase overall engine production, so the entire year was spent expanding factory capacity. Such inadequate production condemned the German air service to, at best, a temporary aerial superiority over a circumscribed area of the front.

The Austro-Hungarian army’s air service encountered even greater difficulty than the Germans. After the Italian declaration of war in May 1915, it was involved on three fronts—Russian, Balkan, and the mountainous Italian. Although the navy’s Lohner flying boats dominated the air over the Adriatic Sea in 1915, the limited capacity of the domestic aviation industry kept its monthly deliveries to the army air service below fifty planes. Only the intervention of Hansa-Brandenburg, an Austrian- owned German firm with a superior designer, Ernst Heinkel, saved the army air service. The German army released the Hansa-Brandenburg factory for German naval and Austro-Hungarian production, and the Austro-Hungarian army quickly became dependent on the firm for fast, modern planes. The owner of Hansa-Brandenburg, Camillo Castiglioni, also owned aircraft firms in Vienna and Budapest. Thus, the prospect of monopoly loomed, and Hansa-Brandenburg charged comparatively high prices to the Austro-Hungarian army, whose desperate straits allowed no alternative.

The circumstances in Germany and Austria-Hungary contrasted to those in the Entente powers. French aircraft manufacturers delivered 4,489 planes in 1915—a figure comparable to their German counterparts; French engine production, which rose steadily in the fall and winter, totaled 7,096 in 1915. By 1916, the French were producing nearly two engines to every one airplane, a ratio they sustained for the rest of the war and that the other combatants found impossible to duplicate. Furthermore, these engines were rotaries, radials, and in-lines, a variety unequaled by other countries. French aero-engine manufacturers had established their ascendancy in design and production.

The French aviation procurement agencies also capitalized on innovative designs in 1915. C. Martinot-Lagarde, chief of the engine service, pressed for the development of 200-horsepower engines of V or radial design, because their shorter crankcases and crankshafts in comparison with in-line engines would result in lighter and stronger power plants. He also pressed French firms to evolve materials and accessories such as special steels, aluminum, magnetos, and spark plugs that France, like the rest of Europe, had imported from Germany before the war.

French procurement experts traveled to Spain to purchase a new Hispano-Suiza 150-horsepower V-8 engine, a revolutionary new liquid- cooled engine design. Powerful, rigid, light, and durable, the Hispano-Suiza would deliver ever higher horsepower and would become one of the war’s greatest fighter engines.

French aero-engine experts and manufacturers in 1915 thus laid the foundation for the future superiority of French aviation in the First World War. Although Britain still lagged in the development of its aviation industry and remained dependent on France for aero engines, it possessed the industrial resources for substantial expansion. The automobile firm Rolls-Royce designed and began to deliver two high-horsepower engines in 1915—the 250-horsepower Eagle and the 200-horsepower Falcon. Finally, the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and Royal Naval Air Service were developing a group of accomplished and aggressive aviators. As for the Austro-Hungarian air service, even the Russian aerial effort remained superior to it. Italy’s entry into the war in May 1915 brought an embryonic airpower with an air theorist and an aircraft designer—Giulio Douhet and Gianni Caproni, respectively—who focused on the use and development of strategic bombers. With every year, the odds against German and Austro-Hungarian aviation rose.

In 1916, the year of the great battles of Verdun and the Somme on the Western Front, the German air arm was hard-pressed to compete against an enemy that was superior in number and often in aircraft quality. France’s Nieuport outclassed the German planes, and Britain’s pusher DH2 biplanes were comparable to the Fokker monoplane. By spring, the army forbade flights of the expensive zeppelins over the Western Front, because Feldflugchef Colonel Hermann von der Lieth-Thomsen believed that their high losses and negligible results pointed inescapably toward the abandonment of airship operations. The navy, however, persisted in its determination to use zeppelins to bomb England, although RFC airplanes had improved sufficiently to be able to shoot down zeppelins in 1916. At least the zeppelins proved to be effective scouts for the High Seas Fleet. German naval seaplane forces were also acquiring capable floatplanes, in particular the Hansa-Brandenburg W12 (Wasserflugzeug), whose speed and maneuverability would give the British a rude shock over the Flanders coast in 1917.

Fortunately for German aviators, the Albatros factory had incorporated plywood construction techniques pioneered in 1913 by the Russian designer Steglau to build a strong, stiff, sleek fuselage in which it installed a Mercedes 160-horsepower, six-cylinder, in-line engine and twin forward-firing machine guns synchronized to fire through the propeller. The resulting biplane (and then sesquiplane) fighter restored qualitative supremacy to the German fighter arm from fall 1916 through spring 1917.

On the home front, the War Ministry improved its procurement hierarchy by adding organs for aircraft acceptance at the factories, secured skilled workers through exemptions in the face of a serious labor shortage, and in the fall of 1916 prepared to select its best aircraft types for licensed production. Hugo Junkers confronted numerous problems in perfecting his all-metal airplane in 1916, among them wartime shortages of engineers, skilled workers, materials, and capital.

Yet the most serious industrial problem remained an inadequate aero-engine production, consisting of 7,823 engines in 1916. Although air chief of staff Lieth-Thomsen wanted the industry and inspectorate to develop and test powerful engines of more than six cylinders, the industry proved incapable of copying either the Hispano-Suiza V-8 or the Rolls-Royce V-12 engines. The German industry had perfected six cylinder in-lines of 150 to 160 horsepower, but German authorities had not attracted additional firms to engine production or pushed the production of higher-horsepower engines, as the French had. The airplane industry remained competitive, building such sophisticated craft as the Albatros and Junkers, and delivered a total of 8,182 airframes, but the German engine industry was unable to keep pace with domestic aircraft production, much less with its French opponent.

The Feldflugchef failed to secure a unified independent air arm, although the air service officially became the Luftstreitkräfte (air forces) and gained a commanding general (Kogenluft, or Kommandiere General der Luftstreitkräfte). Yet German prospects looked grim, as a memorandum written by Air Chief of Staff Lieth-Thomsen on 31 August 1916 and released in early October acknowledged. The Allies, supported by the “world raw material market and the American motor and aircraft industry,” had increased their “oppressive” numerical aerial superiority, causing severe losses to Germany’s best and most experienced fliers. The German air arm would have to improve its organization and equipment merely to assert aerial control at decisive points in future battles. Lieth- Thomsen was resigned to a defensive posture with occasional and limited aerial ascendancy. It was now questionable whether efficient organization and aircraft technology, the hallmarks of German aviation excellence, would suffice to offset the Allies’ mounting numerical superiority.

With the defeat of Serbia and the impending collapse of Russia by late 1916, Germany’s Austro-Hungarian ally could focus on the war against Italy. The dual monarchy’s air services did not lack for intrepid spirit in its pilots, but there were just too few of them. Shortages of skilled labor and raw materials severely impeded domestic production, which rendered Austria-Hungary increasingly dependent on Hansa-Brandenburg and its Austro-Hungarian subsidiaries’ production, just as the German navy increasingly required Hansa-Brandenburg to meet its own needs. Under such circumstances, it made little difference that Porsche developed a 250-horsepower, twelve-cylinder V and a 360-horsepower, six-cylinder engine in 1916. The industry, which delivered fewer than 1,000 airplanes in 1916, could not build them.

In France, the administration and politics of aviation were riven with conflict, and although the aircraft industry delivered fewer planes (7,549) than its German counterpart, French engine production totaled 16,875. These numbers included such advanced types as the Hispano-Suiza, a heavier Renault twelve-cylinder engine, and the Salmson Canton-Unné radial, all of which would be delivering more than 260 horsepower by 1918. These engines would power, respectively, the famed Spad 7 and 13 fighters, the superlative Breguet 14 reconnaissance- bomber, and the durable Salmson 2A2 reconnaissance biplane. Gnome-Rhône and Clerget continued to press the evolution of rotary engines, which the Germans found difficult to copy because of their inability to secure castor oil, the engine’s essential lubricant.

Meanwhile, the British pressed forward relentlessly, particularly in their insistence on an offensive policy at the front, regardless of the inadequacies of their aircraft in 1916. The outcome of the air war did not hinge on aircrew quality, because the aircrews of all countries were volunteers. Although the pressures of attrition often meant that they did not receive complete and extensive training, they did not fail to undertake their assigned missions. By 1916, the British aviation industry began to hit its stride, realizing its potential as the world’s leading industrial nation before the war. The Rolls-Royce Eagle and Falcon became superlative high-horsepower combat engines, although their complexity inhibited their production in sufficient numbers and rendered the British dependent on the French for aero engines. Furthermore, three aircraft prototypes appeared in late 1916—the SE-5 and Sopwith Camel single seat fighters and the Bristol F-2 two-seat reconnaissance fighter—that would be the mainstays of the Royal Flying Corps and, in 1918, of the Royal Air Force through the end of the war. Britain produced over 5,000 airplanes and a similar number of engines in 1916 as it began to assume a role in aviation more commensurate with its potential.

Even the Russian aviation industry, which was in decline, stepped up its production of airplanes and engines in 1916. Italy, with its military focusing on the development of aviation and an industry endowed with the Caproni bomber firm and the Fiat engine company, had also outdistanced Austria-Hungary in military aviation by the end of 1916.