Aviation in Peace and War

by Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes

Tactics and the Machine.

The value of the application of flying to war requires little demonstration. The most important attributes of generalship are quick appreciation of a situation and quick decision. To the ordinary Commander the absence of information is paralysing. In the nineteenth century the mass of cavalry was the special instrument of information and to obtain it contact with the enemy's main forces had to be effected. It thus acted as a shield and also tried to provide the information necessary to enable the infantry to take the offensive.

Aviation, by the wide field of observation it commands, by the speed with which it can collect and transmit information, to a great extent lifts the fog of war and enables a general to act on knowledge where before he acted largely on deduction. Information once obtained, its mobile and far-reaching offensive power introduces the element of surprise, and permits of lightning strokes against the enemy's vital points.

Before the war reconnaissance was regarded as the principal duty of the aircraft of the Military Wing. This was due to two reasons, first, the obvious one that aircraft possessed advantages shared by no other arm for obtaining information quickly and over wide areas and reporting to Headquarters, and second, that experiment had proved the difficulty of loading aeroplanes with offensive weapons, such as bombs or machine guns, without impairing speed and climb.

The following statement, which I drafted and which was issued by the General Staff before the Army Manœuvres of 1912, summarizes the position:—

"As regards strategical reconnaissance," it says, "a General is probably now justified in requiring a well-trained flyer, flying a modern aeroplane, to reconnoitre some 70 miles out and return 70 miles. This would be done at a speed of, say, 60 miles an hour in ordinary weather over ordinary country. Thus within four hours, allowing a wide margin, a report as to the approximate strength, formation and direction of movement of the enemy, if he is within a 70-mile radius, should be in the hands of the Commander."

To those imbued with a knowledge of military history this new method of ascertaining the enemy's movements might well seem revolutionary.

Let us take two instances illustrating what aircraft, with a radius of little over 100 miles, might have done in previous campaigns. For the operations which terminated in the capitulation of Ulm in 1805 Napoleon concentrated two army corps at Würzburg and five along the left bank of the Rhine between Mannheim and Strasburg, his main body of cavalry under Murat being at the latter place. The Austrian Army under Mack was behind the Iller between Ulm and Memmingen, and expected the French to advance through the defiles of the Black Forest, where Napoleon did actually make a feint with his cavalry. Napoleon, however, crossing the Rhine on September 26th, 1805, moved east, and it was not until October 2nd, when the French Army had reached the line Ansbach, Langenburg, Hall and Ludwigsburg, and his envelopment was far advanced, that Mack realized that the main French advance was coming from the north. Aeroplanes of the type we possessed in 1914 could have reconnoitred the whole of Napoleon's preliminary position, could have detected his line of advance, especially as it was concentrated on a very narrow front, and could have brought back the information to the Austrian Headquarters within a few hours.

Aircraft would have been of even greater value on August 16th, 1870, at the Battle of Rezonville, where neither the French nor the Germans were aware of the other's movements. On the 14th a battle had been fought east of Metz which had resulted in the French retreat. On the morning of the 16th Moltke thought the French had retired west by the Metz-Verdun road and those to the north of it, and consequently he directed his left wing due west towards the Meuse to head off the French, sending his right army towards Rezonville to harass their rearguard. The French retreat, however, had been slow and two corps were still at Rezonville, while three corps and the reserve cavalry were within easy reach, some 130,000 men in all. At 9 in the morning the German 3rd Corps, unaided and far from support, attacked a position within reach of the whole French Army, believing it had to deal with a rearguard only. Bazaine, on the other hand, thinking that he was faced by the German main army, remained on the defensive, and lost the opportunity of defeating in detail first the 3rd and then the 10th German Corps. A few aeroplanes operating on a radius of 30 miles would have disclosed between daybreak and 10 a.m. the true position to either commander. Neither the German nor the French cavalry, though both were engaged, obtained any reliable information.

The problem as to how far aircraft would reduce the value of cavalry was widely discussed before the war. It was seen that by day aircraft could obtain quicker and more accurate information, but that cavalry retained their power of night reconnaissance, of mobile offensive action and of pinning the enemy to his ground by fighting. This was found to be so during the retreat, when, in addition to the direct value of aircraft for long-distance reconnaissance, an indirect asset of great importance lay in the release of the cavalry for battle action in assistance of the infantry. The question has become more acute since the offensive action of aircraft against ground targets has developed, but although we must never forget the splendid work of the mounted arm during the Retreat from Mons, and in March, 1918, factors have arisen tending to make the use of cavalry a problem of extreme difficulty in European wars, and it is possible that, in addition to their reconnaissance functions, aircraft will supersede the shock tactics and delaying action of cavalry, though this may be modified if, the sabre being a thing of the past, cavalry are converted into mounted machine gunners.

Air tactics and training were, therefore, chiefly studied from the point of view of reconnaissance. In addition to the possibility of being shot at by other aircraft, an important consideration was vulnerability from the ground. Before the war reconnaissances were carried out at heights varying from 2,000 to 6,000 feet, but it was generally considered that the aeroplane was safe from fire from the ground at heights above 3,000 feet.

Serious difficulties affecting the mobility of aircraft were the means of providing a regular supply of fuel and the selection of landing grounds when moving camp, which had to be close enough behind the front line as not to entail waste of time in flying out and back over friendly territory. This was later brought home to us in a very acute form during the Retreat from Mons.

As machines improved, increasing attention was paid to bettering their power of reconnaissance by air photography, their value in co-operation with artillery by wireless equipment, their offensive action by bomb dropping and their offence and defence by armament.

The value of a correct initiative and the aeroplane's rôle as an offensive weapon were fully appreciated and brought out in the Training Manual of the Royal Flying Corps which we compiled at Farnborough, and which was published early in 1914 by the War Office. It says:—

"It is probable that one phase of the struggle for the command of the air will resolve itself into a series of combats between individual aeroplanes, or pairs of aeroplanes. If the pilots of one side can succeed in obtaining victory in a succession of such combats, they will establish a moral ascendancy over the surviving pilots of the enemy, and be left free to carry out their duties of reconnaissance. The actual tactics must depend on the types of the aeroplanes engaged, the object of the pilot being to obtain for his passenger the free use of his own weapon while denying to the enemy the use of his. To disable the pilot of the opposing aeroplane will be the first object. In the case of fast reconnaissance aeroplanes it will often be advisable to avoid fighting, in order to carry out a mission or to deliver information; but it must be borne in mind that this will be sometimes impossible, and that, as in every other class of fighting, a fixed determination to attack and win will be the surest road to victory."

Speaking generally, the evolution of the machine, as apart from the engine, which hung behind, followed upon the evolution of air tactics. As soon as experience, often hard won at the cost of a valuable life, opened up new fields of activity for aircraft, the designer and constructor evolved new designs to meet the new requirements. It was no small achievement in this period to have solved the problem of inherent stability, both in theory and practice, so successfully, that from the aerodynamic standpoint our machines in 1914 compare favourably with those in use at the end of the war.

In dealing with the evolution of the machine during the three years prior to the war there are three landmarks: in the autumn of 1911 the few machines belonging to the Air Battalion failed to reach their destination for Army Manœuvres; in May, 1912, the Royal Flying Corps was formed and experiments with a view to meeting military requirements were for the first time energetically and methodically prosecuted; and in August, 1914, four squadrons flew to France with machines which had attained a high degree of stability and were not inferior to any of those possessed by other countries. When it is remembered in what a short time these machines were evolved, it is not surprising that attention had been chiefly confined to the problem of the 'plane and stability, the engine and speed and reliability. Wireless, bombing, photography, night flying and machine gunnery had been discussed and experimented with, but no progress was made comparable to that effected under war conditions.

Machines and engines before the war were chiefly French. It is interesting to note those with which No. 3 Squadron, one of the first to be formed, commenced its career in May, 1912. They consisted of one 50 horse-power Gnome Nieuport, one Deperdussin, which by the way was privately owned, one Gnome Bristol, two Gnome Bleriot monoplanes, one Avro and one Bristol box-kite biplane. By September, 1912, the Squadron possessed fourteen monoplanes, but in that month, owing to the number of accidents incurred by them, the use of monoplanes was temporarily forbidden, and it was not until April, 1913, that the Squadron was fully equipped with B.E. and Maurice Farman biplanes organized in flights.

These types formed the backbone of the Military Wing, which also included Codys, Breguets, Avros, and, later, Sopwiths. The B.E.2c was produced by the Royal Aircraft Factory in the autumn of 1913 and demonstrated its high degree of stability by flying from Aldershot to Froyle and from Froyle to Fleet, distances of 6¾ and 8 miles respectively, without the use of ailerons or elevators. The progress made is illustrated by the fact that at the Army Manœuvres of 1913 twelve machines covered 4,545 miles on reconnaissance and 3,210 miles on other flights, accurate observations being made from a height of 6,000 feet, without serious mishap.

In 1913 I recommended the gradual substitution of B.E.'s for Farmans on the ground of the all-round efficiency and superior fighting qualities of the former, and to secure the advantage of standardization, but it was objected by the War Office that the Farmans were the only machines that could mount weapons in front—an objection which was not met until firing through the airscrew was introduced—and that the slower Farmans offered greater advantages for observation, an idea which was long prevalent. As a result, a compromise was effected, and two squadrons were equipped with B.E.'s and two with homogeneous flights of Farmans, Bleriots and Avros.

At the outbreak of war the most successful machines possessed by the Military Wing were the B.E.2 tractor with a 70 horse-power Renault engine, a speed of 73 miles an hour, and a climb of 3,000 feet in nine minutes; and a Henri Farman pusher with a speed of 60 miles an hour, and a climb of 3,000 feet in fourteen minutes. A special study was being made in 1914 of the best methods of ensuring clear observation of the ground, and partly in this connection staggered planes were introduced, culminating in the B.E.2c's, which were not, however, available for service in any numbers until 1915.

To sum up, the technical development of aircraft has taken place, and will continue side by side with the evolution of the uses to which aircraft can be put. While due attention was paid to problems connected with the anticipated duties of aircraft ancillary to that of reconnaissance, owing to the short space of time between the formation of the Royal Flying Corps and the outbreak of war, to the difficulties connected with the engine, and to causes inseparable from peace conditions, development had been more or less confined to evolving a stable and reliable machine with a good field of view.