World War 1

I only have one question for your area that I need. My question is: At what point did World War 1 become a turning point in history for avation?

[leo]

Personal opinion: When the airplane was first used for reconnaisance.

Lighter than air craft had been used for recon since the Civil War. IMHO it was when some gentleman took a pop at another airplane with a pistol and initiated an era of the airplane as a fighting weapon.

The day Death took to wings, when a pilot killed the enemy with a pistol, or hunting rifle, bringing the flying machine down, even grenades were dropped on enemy troops from recon aircraft, all this before Christmas 1914.

faster regards
wert.

[Barrett]

When nation states began investing significant amounts of time, effort, and resources in fleets of large, long-range bomber aircraft. Recon and fighter types were military advances of the flying machine; Gothas, Giants, HPs, etc, showed the way to the future of AVIATION in the form of practical air transport and commerce that would otherwise have been delayed an indefinite period, but probably decades. Airframes, powerplants, and navigation all were enhanced.
Additionally, the lineal descendants of the Giants (Riesen) were the B-29s that delivered atomic weapons across immense distances. THAT was when aviation transcended itself as more than transport and more than a military tool--it became the central concern of whether our civilization would endure.

About 27-28 August 1914 when RFC reconnaissance reveals the German Army exposing a flank and hence an opportunity for an Anglo-French counter-attack. The vaunted Schleiffen Plan begins to unravel, the First Battle of the Marne turns mobile warfare into static warfare, and the era of air power begins. See Barabara Tuchman, THE GUNS OF AUGUST.

[leo]

Hugh:
Exactly what I had in mond. Guns were added to airplanes not to shoot down other airplanes similarly armed, but in an effort to keep Recon planes from doing their duty. It seems it is hard for some people to grasp this fact. Recall the threads where some contributors thought that the downing of a fighter was a more valuable kill than the elimination of a recon plane or an artillery spotter. The main job of the fighter was the elimination of the enemy two-seaters. Shooting down other fighters was a secondry consideration.

The day the armies mobiulized for war