World War 1 Aircraft
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World War 1 Aircraft
The airplane was first built 1903 by the Wright brothers, 11 years before the start of world war 1. In the beginning, the plane played a very small part of the war, but by the end of the war, the plane became a key part of every nations military.
Benefits of airplanes were first used for reconnaissance by flying high above the battle and finding weak points in the enemys line. The best use of airplane reconnaissance came at the first battle of Marne, in Belgium where planes spotted a gap in the Germany´s front line which the allies used to split the forces and win the battle.
Another advantageous use for airplanes was dropping bombs at strategic points in the enemy line. At first, the planes could only carry small bombs and were very vulnerable to attack from the ground. By the end of the war, the planes could carry large bombs over a long distance to deal devastating blows to the enemy’s line.
As more planes took to the sky, pilots began to fight each other in the air, At first, they shot at each other with handguns and rifles but that was inaffective. It was discovered that the most effective way to take out other planes was to mount a machine gun on the front of the plane. Soon after it was realized that the propeller would get in the way of the bullets. To prevent this from happening the Germans invented something called the “interrupter” which synchronized the propeller with the bullets.
There were disadvantages to using WW1 airplanes, though. The average life expectancy of a pilot flying over the western front was 70 hours. Also, the planes were too small to carry a parachute. Additionally it was a very time-consuming process to build one of these planes. The average two-seat plane consisted of more than 50,000 parts and took over 4,000 hours of labor to finish. Also, the planes were very cost prohibitive which some planes costing over 7,000 dollars