The science of flight was only slightly more than ten years old when men decided to use the airplane as a military weapon in actual warfare. Therefore it can be understood that the fighting planes of World War I were fairly elementary in every way. They were fairly standard in design and construction—all biplanes with enclosed fuselage and two-wheel and tail-skid landing gear. The French Nieuport-27 fighter plane, brought out in 1915, was considered the outstanding aërial achievement of its day. The first of the British fighters was the Sopwith Camel. The Nieuport-27 was followed in 1916 by the famous French Spad and in 1917 by the Nieuport-28. The Germans used the Fokker fighter designed by Anthony Fokker, a Hollander.
Fighter planes of World War I had an average wingspan of 28 feet, and a ceiling of about 20,000 feet. They were powered with engines of 150 horsepower, their speeds ranged from 100 to 125 miles per hour. Their average weight was 1,500 pounds and they carried enough gasoline for a two hours’ flight and were armed with two .30-caliber machine guns. All of these planes had the habit of shedding parts under stress of battle and more pilots were killed during the war because of defective equipment, lack of parachutes, and inexperience than as a result of enemy action.
The long-range heavy bomber also came into being during World War I. Before the conflict was over many farsighted military men visualized it as the most important military weapon produced by the science of flight. Our own General “Billy” Mitchell was one of the first to visualize its possibilities.
The British two-engined Handley-Page bomber carried the brunt of heavy bombardment action during the war. It carried a one-thousand-pound bomb load, with its bombs ranging from 15 to 600 pounds each. It had a range of 250 miles and was credited with a great deal of destructive work behind the German lines. At the end of the war a new and larger Handley-Page bomber with a range of 650 miles and a 2-ton bomb load capacity was ready to carry the war far beyond the enemy’s lines. While the Germans relied mainly on their big Zeppelins for long-range bombardment, they also used the big two-engined Gotha bomber for raids on French cities.
Whether the airplane had any real effect on the outcome of World War I is questionable. It did, however, set keen-minded military men to thinking in a manner that made the airplane the key weapon of World War II.
During World War I, American aviation production was centered around the three great names that had typified the airplane since its earliest days—Wright, Curtiss, and Martin. Wilbur Wright died on May 30, 1912, from typhoid fever, and in 1915 Orville disposed of his interests in the Wright Company. He continued, however, to act as a consultant for the company. In California, young Glenn L. Martin’s company had prospered with war orders from the United States and foreign governments. His chief engineer was the young midshipman who, not so many years before, had robbed his penny bank to watch the trials of the first Wright Army plane—Donald Douglas. Larry Bell, of whom we will hear more in connection with another great war, was Martin’s general manager. In 1916, the Martin Company and the Wright Company were joined in partnership, as the Wright-Martin Company. This organization was a heavy contributor to the war effort, turning out hundreds of airplane engines for the Allies. The Curtiss company produced the famous Jenny training plane and many flying boats for the Navy, including the big NC flying boats. America also produced the celebrated 12-cylinder, 450-horsepower Liberty engine. It was the lightest per horsepower aviation engine in the World and was used to power the American-built DH-4 observation plane used by the Army in the latter part of the war. Considering the fact that it was only a dozen years since man had first flown in a powered airplane and that our knowledge of aërial warfare was extremely limited, both manufacturers and aviators did a splendid job in the First World War.
It was in terms of men rather than in aërial victories that America profited. As the result of the foundation laid by men like Wilbur and Orville Wright, Glenn H. Curtiss, Glenn L. Martin, E. J. Hall and J. G. Vincent (inventors of the Liberty engine), Guy Vaughn of Curtiss, Donald Douglas, and others, America gained world leadership in the production of aircraft engines and airplanes.
Many of the young men who flew the “crates” of World War I for the American Army and Navy are the men whose names make headlines in commercial air transport and on the world-wide battlefronts today. Many a pilot who got his first flying training in a Jenny or a Curtiss flying boat is now an airline executive or a world-famous flying general or admiral. It was the steadfast efforts of such veteran airmen as Mitchell, Arnold, Spaatz, Eaker, Rickenbacker, Harold L. George, Artemus Gates, Bob Lovett, Louis Brereton, Jimmy Doolittle, Frank Lahm, Gill Robb Wilson, Jack Jouett, John H. Towers, and others, who have built American air supremacy.
The famous Curtiss Jenny that served the Army so well as a training plane also helped keep aviation alive in the days following World War I. Ex-Army fliers used them for pleasure and business, and a few of them used them to start some of the country’s first airlines.
