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Scout Aircraft in the Great War

Pictures printed by Collier's during April 1911 were the first actual news photographs ever taken from an aeroplane. They demonstrated the ease with which a scout aeroplane could photograph the enemy's position or learn of the advance of reenforcements. Before war was declared,e German military experts were emphasising the importance of trees for masking troops and guns against aerial observation. One of the foremost authorities upon military aviation urged the German Military Staff to encourage the planting of orchards, not for the purpose of benefiting agriculture or in the interests of the farmers, but merely for military exigencies.

One of the most prominent features of the year 1912 was the active part that the British and French Governments took in the development of aircraft for war. The French Minister of War held a great review of military fliers and aeroplanes, and British aircraft took a conspicuous part in naval and military manuvers. The Cody pusher biplane won the £4,000 prize in the War Office trials on Salisbury Plain in the summer, during which the tractor biplane BE2 reached a height of 9,500 feet. In September four army fliers lost their lives in two accidents in monoplanes, which led to close restrictions being placed on their method of bracing in England. In March the French Government had imposed a ban on certain monoplanes until the defects were removed as the result of a report by Bleriot on their structural weakness.

The unglamorous two-seat aircraft, working in cooperation with army ground forces, formed the backbone of aerial activity in World War I and undoubtedly contributed more to military successes than any other class of aircraft. One of the primary functions of the much-heralded single-seat fighters was the protection of their own two-seaters and the destruction of those belonging to the enemy. Army cooperation aircraft performed a variety of diverse duties including photoreconnaissance, artillery spotting, observation of enemy troop movements, ground strafing, and daylight tactical bombing. Duties such as photoreconnaissance required steady and precise flying at a given altitude and along prescribed flight tracks if the photographs necessary for accurate mapmaking were to be obtained. All the while, the crews had to be constantly on the lookout for enemy air attack, and the steady flight path over enemy territory offered the antiaircraft gunners excellent opportunities for target practice. Certainly the men who flew these aircraft are among the unsung heroes of the First Great War.

The Germans were among the first to realise the scope of the airman's activities, and the significance of their relation to the conveyance of intimate information and the direction of artillery fire. Consequently, they spared no effort to convey illusory information, in the hope that the hostile force may ultimately make a false move which may culminate in disaster. Thus, for instance, as much endeavor was bestowed upon the fashioning of dummy trenches as upon the preparation of the actual lines of defence. And every care was taken to indicate that the former are strongly held. The dug-outs were complete and at places were apparently cunningly masked. If the airman was flying swiftly, he is likely to fail to distinguish the dummy from the real trenches. To him the defenses appeared to be far more elaborate and more strongly held than is the actual case.

The advantage of this delusion was obvious when a retreat is being made. It enables the enemy to withdraw his forces deliberately and in perfect order, and to assume another and stronger position comparatively at leisure. The difficulty of detecting the dummies is emphasised, inasmuch as now, whenever the sound of an aeroplane is heard, or a glimpse thereof is obtained, the men keep well down and out of sight. Not a sign of movement was observable. For all the airman may know to the contrary, the trenches may be completely empty, whereas, as a matter of fact, they are throbbing with alert infantry, anxious for a struggle with the enemy.

It also became increasingly difficult for the airman to gather absolutely trustworthy data concerning the disposition and movement of troops. Small columns were strung out along the highways to convey the impression that the moving troops are in far greater force than is actually the case, while the main body was under the cover offered by a friendly wood and is safe from detection. The rapidity with which thousands of men were able to disappear when the word "Airman" was passed round was astonishing. They vanished as completely and suddenly as if swallowed by the earth or dissolved into thin air. They concealled themselves under bushes, in ditches, lay prone under hedgerows, darted into houses and outbuildings—in short, take every cover which was available, no matter how slender it may seem, with baffling alacrity. The attenuated column, however, was kept moving along the highway for the express purpose of deceiving the airman.

The two-seater, as it evolved during the war, had the pilot in the front cockpit with one or two fixed, synchronized machine guns firing between the propeller blades; the observer was in the rear cockpit with one or two flexibly mounted machine guns in addition to the camera, wireless, or other special equipment. A steady platform was required for photoreconnaissance and bomb aiming, which meant that the two-seater had to be relatively stable; yet a certain amount of speed and maneuverability were required to avoid destruction by the enemy. Good high-altitude performance was another desirable characteristic. The correct mix of these sometimes conflicting requirements and the technical means for accomplishing that mix presented difficult design problems. In the early years of the war, two-seaters were often considered to be easy prey for fighter aircraft; but as designs improved, they gave an increasingly good account of themselves in combat operations.

The development of the two-seater presents little of technical interest beyond what has already been discussed in the preceding sections on fighters and bombers. A large number of two-seat types were developed during the war, and a number of configuration concepts, including monoplanes, biplanes, triplanes, and quadruplanes were investigated. As in the case of the fighters and bombers, however, the biplane emerged as the best compromise, consistent with the existing state of technology, between the various conflicting requirements.

A careful consideration of the salient features leading to maximum efficiency in aeroplanes—particularly in regard to speed and climb, which were the two most important military requirements—showed that a vital feature was the reduction in the amount of weight lifted per horse-power employed; which in 1914 averaged from 20 to 25 lbs. This was effected both by gradual increase in the power and size of the engines used and by great improvement in their detailed design (by increasing compression ratio and saving weight whenever possible); with the result that the motive power of single-seater aeroplanes rose from 80 and 100 horse-power in 1914 to an average of 200 to 300 horse-power, while the actual weight of the engine fell from 3-1/2-4 lbs. per horse-power to an average of 2-1/2 lbs. per horse-power. This meant that while a pre-war engine of 100 horse-power would weigh some 400 lbs., the 1918 engine developing three times the power would have less than double the weight. The result of this improvement was that a scout aeroplane at the time of the Armistice would have 1 horse-power for every 8 lbs. of weight lifted, compared with the 20 or 25 lbs. of its 1914 predecessors. This produced a considerable increase in the rate of climb, a good postwar machine being able to reach 10,000 feet in about 5 minutes and 20,000 feet in under half an hour. Although a speed of 126 miles per hour had been attained by a specially designed racing machine over a short distance in 1914, the average at that period little exceeded, if at all, 100 miles per hour; whereas in 1918 speeds of 130 miles per hour had become a commonplace.