Norman S. Leach - Cavalry of the Air: An Illustrated Introduction to the Aircraft and Aces of the First World War

T here is no more iconic image of the First World War than the daring ace flying a rickety machine made of wood and cloth held together with wire. His silk scarf flowing in the wind, the daring aviator challenged his opponent to a fight to the death over the battlefields of Europe.

Had you been at Baddeck, Nova Scotia, in 1909 only five years before the start of the First World War when Alexander Graham Bells company flew what was hardly more than a kite with a motor, you would not have been able to imagine the advances in aviation that were to come.

For the young cavalry officers looking at the war clouds forming over Europe after 1900, it was increasingly clear that conflict would be very difficult to avoid. In Europe and around the globe, Great Britain and Germany were challenging each other for dominance in a world growing ever smaller through colonization and modernization. New superpowers, including Japan, were flexing their military muscles defeating great empires on their way to regional power and control. The world was quickly becoming an unstable place in which no one country was clearly the most powerful.

There is a military maxim that generals are always fighting the last war. This is only natural. When generals are young lieutenants they attend military schools where those who fought the last war are the teachers. In every major country, young men look to history for lessons on how to fight the coming war. Unfortunately, in the early twentieth century, history would have little to teach.

In the Boer War (18991902) Great Britain and her Dominions faced off against local Dutch settlers, the Boers, determined to keep Great Britain from expanding her territories in South Africa.

Very quickly, the war became one of lightning strikes and rapid retreats by the Boers against rigid British infantry formations. The Boers had early successes that stung the British, and soon the long lines of the infantry were supplemented by hard-riding cavalry and mounted infantry from Great Britain, Canada, and Australia. The horsemen proved perfect for chasing down the Boer raiding parties and for quickly covering the great distances of the South African plains. In the end, Britains use of mounted troops turned the tide and won the war.

The static trenches and thick, cloying mud of France and Belgium in 1914 could hardly be farther from the plains of South Africa, both in distance and in territory. It didnt take a graduate of a military college to recognize that there would be little role for the cavalry in Europe. While cavalry officers like British Field Marshal General Haig always believed that the great and glorious cavalry charge would make a difference, the men knew better. Soon, dashing cavalry officers were searching for another way to find action and glory. At the same time, forward-thinking generals were searching out new technologies to gain an advantage on the battlefield. The traditions of the cavalry were to become the way of the future.

No technology, ever in history, made the advances aviation did in so short a time. The world moved from Bells flimsy Silver Dart to German bombers threatening London in well under a decade; from joyriding over farmers fields to air-to-air combat in less than five years. The airplane became vital to success on the battlefield.

Soon, droves of young men were leaving their horses behind and streaming to aerodromes across Canada, Australia, and Europe. The modern airplane promised freedom from the rigid trench life of the infantry, the freedom of the skies and the glory of personal victory.