I continue my deep dive into everything WWI. I wanted to read John Morrow’s The Great War in the Air after seeing it recommended on a Reddit post about the best books on the air war of WWI. It was first published in 1993, well within James Marriott’s “sweet spot” for non-fiction writing. I bought my hardback copy from eBay, which I now think is the best place to buy used hardbacks. I think it’s a 90’s edition, maybe even a first edition, but can’t be sure. In the introduction Morrow states that most previous histories of the WWI air war have concentrated on the exploits of individual aces, the Red Barron in his Fokker triplane, and the high drama of dogfights over the tranches. Morrow In contrast says very little about the actual fighting, instead he describes how the organisation and leadership of the various combatants’ airforces evolved over the four and a half years of the war, and how the vast industrial enterprise needed to support ever larger airforces was created almost from scratch. The book is chronological; there is an initial chapter about the years leading up to 1914, and then a (long) chapter for each year of the war. Each chapter is subdivided into sections for each of the combatant powers, usually with a long section for France, German, and Britain, and then shorter summaries for Russia, Austria-Hungry, and Italy. I kept another eBay purchase, Jack Herris’s Aircraft of World War I, open beside me as I read Morrow, because it has beautiful full colour illustrations of the aircraft. I can’t read about machines without knowing what they look like.

At the outbreak of war, it was barely 10 years since the Wright Brothers’ first successful flight. Nobody really knew whether aircraft could be of any real utility or effectiveness as a military weapon. The European armies, especially the French, had started to accumulate embryonic air detachments, but with only a small number of flimsy wood and cloth aircraft powered by engines with just tens of horsepower, and often more dangerous to their pilots than the enemy. Initially aircraft were primarily used for reconnaissance and artillery spotting, but even in the first few months aircrew would carry pistols or rifles with them and take pot shots at enemy aircraft if the opportunity presented itself. Many early designs were pusher types, with the propeller at the rear of the fuselage and the tailplane supported by twin booms attached to the wings. These made it easy to attach a forward facing machine gun, so many of the early fighter aircraft, or “pursuit” as they were known then, used this layout. It wasn’t until the Germans invented the interrupter gear that the first front engined fighter aircraft were developed with machine guns firing through the propeller. Because of their more streamlined layout they proved far faster and more manoeuvrable than the pusher types. There was a continual leapfrogging of technical improvements as the opposing forces developed new engines and airframes, but always with the dilemma of whether to increase production through standardisation, or whether to push harder at technical innovation with all the disruption to production that it caused. The Germans always seemed to be slightly ahead on innovation, but France and Britain vastly out produced them. A similar pattern to WWII. By the end of the war the German Fokker D.VII was the outstanding fighter aircraft of the war and the all metal Junkers ground attack planes were revolutionary, but as their production capacity collapsed under shortages of material and with the workforce suffering from malnutrition thanks to food shortages, the excellent aircraft design counted for very little. The British trio of Sopwith Camel, SE.5a, and Bristol F.2 which ended the war were all effective designs, but with the Camel and SE.5a, often powered by French built engines, and Bristol F.2 airframes often left waiting for their Rolls Royce handbuilt powerplants. It seems the French were the masters of production in WWI with a very effective aircraft industry concentrated around Paris. Their engine production in particular out produced Britain and Germany combined.

By the end of the war, capturing air superiority above the battlefield was seen as essential. The sizes of the opposing formations steadily increased, from the individual knightly jousts of 1915 to the 50 plus German “circuses” of 1917 and 18. Air battles sometimes features hundreds of planes. Ground attack, bombing, and strafing also became a core role, although a hugely dangerous one. All through the war reconnaissance and artillery spotting continued, but had to be protected by ever larger fighter screens. Many of the air-war techniques of WWII were previewed in WWI. The one arena where the technology simply wasn’t ready, was strategic bombing. The Germans were, again, the pioneers with their huge Gotha and “R” planes making quite a nuisance of themselves over London, but they never caused anything like war changing damage. The British created the RAF, mainly in order to support a strategic bomber force, which never amounted to much. The French took the sane approach and limited their bombing to a tactical force based around the excellent Breguet single engine bombers. WWI was won and lost by the armies in the trenches, with air power playing a supporting rather than the decisive role it would play in WWII.

I can’t say this was a particularly enjoyable read. Morrow has an academic, but clean, writing style. Much of it reads like a text book. All - yes all - the figures have to be included, which means that we are told what the production target was for German aircraft in May 1917, and whether the target was met. There were interesting points to be made, but much of it was laboured. He very much reinforces Philips Payton O’Brian’s arguments, that modern industrial wars are won by in factories as much as they are by armies in the field. I think that rather than all the mind numbing detail in the text, he would have been much better off shunting it to an accompanying table. Some graphs would also have helped him to make his points, but they are completely absent. I’m a bit geeky about economics, and even geekier about aircraft design, so it was worth my while to work through the book, I certainly learnt a lot about the hows and whys of air warfare during the period, but it’s not one I’d recommend to anyone who didn’t share my weird interests.