Combat in the Skies WW1 Uncut

Throughout history, victory has been decided

by what's going on down here on the surface of the Earth.

Britain, for example, in the 19th century,

came to dominate the globe by controlling the world's oceans.

But from the First World War onwards, warfare took to the skies,

and now controlling the air is a key part of military strategy.

And all that began with those brave pioneer aviators

of the First World War.

In 1909, Louis Bleriot set off on a flight that would make history.

His aim was to win a prize of £1,000

for the first plane to cross the English Channel.

It wasn't the most elegant of flights,

and ended in a rather rough landing.

But he had made it.

The plane he flew was a Bleriot XI, like this one here.

It's amazing it got that far, it looks so flimsy.

Even more remarkably, this one still flies.

Not exactly Top Gun! HE GRUNTS

When the war started five years later, planes like this

were still in production,

and a few visionaries thought these might have a military application.

With that, the first major air war had begun.

At first, planes like this were reconnaissance vehicles,

having a look at what was going on behind enemy lines

and reporting back, but gradually started actually taking

an active role on the battlefield.

Pilots were issued with these nasty looking things, flechettes -

spikes that if you dropped over the side, might hit enemy troops -

or even bombs.

Planes were now an important weapon of war.

You've got to be kidding!

There's no way I would go up in this thing.

This might have been the future, but it was pretty primitive.

In fact, I feel like I'm sitting in a wicker garden chair,

surrounded by a sea of canvas.

To steer it, you just move this column

and it's connected by a very flimsy-looking set of wires

to the wings themselves, not little flappy bits like modern aircraft.

The whole wings move, they twist. It's a system called wing warping.

The engine is underpowered and prone to overheating.

It could only fly at 47mph,

could only go at about 3,000 feet, no more,

and as for the instrument panel, you get one dial,

your oil pressure, that's it.

Phew!

But as planes went into service in World War I,

the pressure was on to improve the technology.

Soon, there was an arms race

that pushed aircraft development at an astonishing rate.

The pace of innovation in those years

was like nothing seen before or since.

Just a few years into the war, they had planes like that.

Isn't that cool?

What makes this aircraft so distinctive is three sets of wings.

They are designed to give the aircraft the necessary lift,

but make the wings narrower,

so the pilot can see more of what's going on on the ground.

It also made the plane very manoeuvrable.

There is an old story that the first ever test pilot amazed onlookers

by doing three consecutive loop-the-loops.

That plane can fly at 117mph, that's two and a half times

as fast as the Bleriot, and it can fly seven times higher.

Such was the pace of innovation that some planes that were cutting-edge

could be obsolete just a few months later.

But innovation wasn't just changing how these planes flew.

It was changing how they fought.

MUSIC: "Mr Blue Sky" by ELO

It's said that at the very start of the war,

when enemy planes passed each other, they would give a friendly wave.

That didn't last

and the age of air-to-air combat was born.

At first, it was just the pilots taking pot-shots with a pistol.

But the next generation of aircraft

would have guns as part of their design.

It soon became clear that the most effective way for the weapon

to point was in the direction the aircraft is travelling.

Big problem there, though, of course, is you end up shooting your own

propeller off, which is a bit of a disaster.

The first solution they tried was to mount a machine gun

on top of the wing, on top of the propeller.

The trouble with that was that the pilot basically had to stand up

in his seat, release his straps, stand up here

and replace the magazine when it ran out.

Completely unworkable, really.

This S.E.5 had a system whereby the gun could slide

back down to be reloaded, then slide up into its firing position.

Still very cumbersome, though.

The Germans soon came up with an even better solution.

It was quickly copied by the Brits.

To show you how it works, I'm going to need too slow this down.

They connected the machine gun to the crankshaft of the propeller

with a series of cam plates.

That meant the machine gun only fired when these propellers' blades

weren't in the way. It was a very precise bit of engineering.

Get it wrong, you would blow your own propeller off.

The amazing thing about the First World War is

that by the end of it, pretty much every significant

part of aerial warfare was already in development.

Planes were being used for reconnaissance, for communications,

for dropping supplies, for dropping bombs and for air-to-air combat.

In 1914, a new kind of hero was born.

The fighter ace.

These men took to the air in flimsy, primitive aircraft

and fought to the death.

Today I'm going to find out what it's like to be

in the middle of a World War I dogfight.

I'm flying with the Great War Display Team,

in a replica of the British B.E.2.

This is a reconnaissance aircraft,

so I'm in the observer's seat at the front.

The B.E.2 was famed for its stability in flight.

Perfect as an observation platform, but hopeless at fighting.

Planes like this would usually be accompanies by a more nimble fighter.

My escort is this Sopwith Triplane.

Manoeuvrable and well armed.

But for a dogfight, we need an opponent.

Our nemesis is a Fokker DR1 Triplane.

It was Germany's answer to the Sopwith.

They took the British design and improved on it.

It's spotted us and decided to go in for the kill.

Air-to-air combat decides who lives and who dies.

A young German ace, Oswald Boelcke, decided to change that.

He wrote a list of what he believed

were the key tactics of aerial combat, the Dicta Boelcke.

So here is Boelcke's guide to winning a dogfight.

The Fokker is using the sun to mask its attack.

It's also climbed up higher than the Sopwith.

If you have the height,

you have the stored energy which you can convert to speed.

The Fokker attacks, hoping to take out the Sopwith with an ambush.

He can see the plane, but he's not firing yet.

He's following another of Boelcke's dictums.

But the Sopwith got lucky and spotted the Fokker.

Time for the next rule.

If your opponent dives on you:

Facing attack, your instinct might be to flee,

but in fact, flying towards your attacker is the best strategy.

By turning up, it makes it harder for the Fokker to hit it.

The Sopwith survived and now it's got the height advantage.

The two sides are now manoeuvring,

putting into practice another one of Boelcke's rules.

It's essential to assail your opponent from behind.

The two pilots are now twisting and turning,

desperately trying to get behind the other.

It's a battle of nerves, wits and engineering.

Both pilots are pushing their planes to the limit.

It's this that drove such rapid technological development.

Just turning a little bit faster

and tighter can be enough to secure victory.

In this case, it's the Fokker that has the advantage.

It has the Sopwith in its sights and fires.

GUNFIRE

The Sopwith has been hit, its thin canvas walls offer no

protection for the pilot or fuel tanks.

We're now on our own. With no escort, we're a sitting duck.

But the stability of the B.E.2 makes it hopeless against the Fokker.

GUNFIRE

We've been hit.

Even though I wasn't flying the plane,

I still found that dogfight an exhausting experience.

And to do that, day in, day out, for much longer sorties, up to a

couple of hours, with people shooting at you, it's hard to imagine.

Not surprisingly, the life expectancy of pilots was measured in weeks,

not years.

Those that made it safely to the ground were the lucky ones.

Just a few months after writing his rules,

Boelcke was killed during a dogfight.

He collided with another German aircraft. He was just 25 years old.

Technology may have evolved beyond all recognition, but today,

every fighter pilot still needs to know how to win an aerial dogfight.