![]() ![]() ![]() Successful reorganisations in France and Britain brought back air control for good until the Armistice. But things were on the move on the Allied side. During April 1917, nicknamed ‘bloody April’, the British suffered four times more casualties than the Germans. The control of the sky was to change hands again in the first half of 1917 when the Germans reformed their squadrons and introduced modern fighters. Thereafter, Allied dominance was gained through the creation of French fighting squadrons and the expansion of the British Royal Flying Corps. Their air superiority was to last until April 1916, two months after the beginning of the battle of Verdun. This type of plane gave an edge to the Germans during 1915. This discovery had a revolutionary consequence: the creation of fighter aircraft. In 1915, the Dutch aircraft manufacturer Anthony Fokker, who was working for the Germans, perfected a French invention allowing machine-gun fire through the propeller. However, rapid progress enhanced aeroplanes’ performance. In fact, aeroplanes were mostly involved in observation missions during the first year of the conflict. British Library, Public DomainĪt the beginning of the war, the usefulness of air machines was met with a certain amount of scepticism by senior officers on all sides. Published as a training aid for identifying German aircraft, this image shows the Albatros Scout D.v. ![]()
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