German and Allied Air Forces in World War I: The History and Legacy of the Rivals in the Sky during the Great War
ISBN: 9781986569200
*Includes pictures
*Includes accounts of the fighting
*Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading
World War I, also known in its time as the “Great War” or the “War to End all Wars”, was an unprecedented holocaust in terms of its sheer scale. Fought by men who hailed from all corners of the globe, it saw millions of soldiers do battle in brutal assaults of attrition which dragged on for months with little to no respite. Tens of millions of artillery shells and untold hundreds of millions of rifle and machine gun bullets were fired in a conflict that demonstrated man’s capacity to kill each other on a heretofore unprecedented scale, and as always, such a war brought about technological innovation at a rate that made the boom of the Industrial Revolution seem stagnant.
One of the most important breakthroughs in military technology associated with World War I, and certainly the one that continues to capture the public imagination, was the use of airplanes, which were a virtual novelty a decade before. While the war quickly ground to a halt in its first few months, the skies above the Western Front became increasingly busy. The great powers had already been acquiring aircraft for potential uses, but given that aerial warfare had never been a major component of any conflict, it’s understandable that few on either side had any idea what the planes were capable of doing. Furthermore, at the start of the war, all sides’ aircraft were ill-equipped for combat mostly because the idea that planes might somehow fight was still a novel one, and the adaptations had not yet been developed that would allow the aerial battles later in the war.
*Includes accounts of the fighting
*Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading
World War I, also known in its time as the “Great War” or the “War to End all Wars”, was an unprecedented holocaust in terms of its sheer scale. Fought by men who hailed from all corners of the globe, it saw millions of soldiers do battle in brutal assaults of attrition which dragged on for months with little to no respite. Tens of millions of artillery shells and untold hundreds of millions of rifle and machine gun bullets were fired in a conflict that demonstrated man’s capacity to kill each other on a heretofore unprecedented scale, and as always, such a war brought about technological innovation at a rate that made the boom of the Industrial Revolution seem stagnant.
One of the most important breakthroughs in military technology associated with World War I, and certainly the one that continues to capture the public imagination, was the use of airplanes, which were a virtual novelty a decade before. While the war quickly ground to a halt in its first few months, the skies above the Western Front became increasingly busy. The great powers had already been acquiring aircraft for potential uses, but given that aerial warfare had never been a major component of any conflict, it’s understandable that few on either side had any idea what the planes were capable of doing. Furthermore, at the start of the war, all sides’ aircraft were ill-equipped for combat mostly because the idea that planes might somehow fight was still a novel one, and the adaptations had not yet been developed that would allow the aerial battles later in the war.