Top 6 Innovations for Aviation in World War 1

innovation and technological advances have always closely followed human struggle as different nations and people struggle to find better ways to defeat the other while keeping the own casualties as low as possible in this regard world war one was no different in fact with technological advanced nations chopping it out on the battlefield the advancement in technology made for some stunning discoveries the most prominent of these remember it nowadays but probably those made in medicine today we are going to have a look at six innovations and advances in aviation before we dive straight in it should be mentioned that the war acted as a catalyst to many of these advancement catapulting them into the mainstream many of them had already existed in experimental forests good for the war but it's really about the great war that made them attractive to the contending nation mine's number one first innovation we're going to look at is the synchronization gear the wireless guy didn't really kick off until the Battle of Verdun in 1916 well aviation was used in supporting roles before that and occasionally even in air superiority mission it really was this battle at the moves over that took things to the next level during the battle the balance of power shifted multiple times initially the german fokker eindecker had a distinct advantage of the allied air force and that was the synchronization gear also known as an interrupter based on a Swiss design before the war such engineer and inventor Anthony Fokker created a mechanism that allowed a machine gun to fire through the propeller without damaging it by interrupting the gun in the moments when the propeller passes muzzle the Allies did not have such a system forcing them to mount their machine guns with limited ammo grounds on the top wing of the aircraft although the French quickly sent the superior Newports own report 11 into the fight the advantage of the synchronisation gear stayed with the Germans for considerable time of course later on in the war the Allies would catch up and also feel planes with a synchronized machine gun special mentions be given at this point to French aviator Roland Garros in 1914 and 15 he experimented by placing steel plates on his propellers to allow him to fire through the helix with bullets bouncing off harmlessly if they struck the propeller all these propellers had to be replaced multiple times he did in fact succeeded shooting down three German aircraft became the first time to do so while firing through the propeller that's why number two so let us talk about radio that early on in the war there was no direct way for planes to communicate with the ground this led to a system of flares and signs being used messages were also sometimes handwritten and that dropped on friendly forces in small containers with reconnaissance becoming ever more important however especially when you came to assisting the artillery to bombard us with targeted to oblivion some direct way of communication was necessary that sometimes would be equipped with transmitters that allowed him to cyant coded messages in Morse codes note however they did not in fact have with Ebert - the communication was one way on later on radio transmitters and receivers which in common on plane that were able to carry them along planes to directly influence the that long round while not yet really sophisticated the introduction of early radio transmitter and receivers did helped aerial reconnaissance but the onset of the use of radio and warfare had other consequences - for example German Zeppelin's were suspected by the British to have used British radio waves to triangulate their course towards London in order to flown City Nevada number three now let us talk about parachute the idea of a parachuting persistence and secretary really and became publicly known by the twentieth century but now we've played fighting for dominance serious hold was given to the idea of a safety device it would allow pilots and observers and alludes quickly evacuate their station if push comes to shove in doing so the soldier could later fly again and his experience could be saved obviously the idea did not attract unilateral support with various arguments being giving against it one of these was the thought that a pilot with a parachute would not fight as hard as one without since he always had a way out one other problem however and this is more on a practical side but the planes didn't really account for the face as such essentially fighter pilots could really fit them inside the cockpit initially parachutes were issues to observe as sitting high up in balloon and eventually the German Air Force would also issue parachutes to their pilots but the early versions days did not always work and the pilots would have to wait a little bit longer until they were issued with their own new Marcio number four as the war progressed aircraft performance became critical so let's talk about line of the actual aircraft there was a lot of experimentation with aircraft designs during the war mono buy and try planes of service with each having some advantages over the other design the biplane designs stayed around too long as the mainstream up until mid nineteen thirties yet it was this early period that allowed engineers to learn a lot about how build a high performance it durable aircraft small things like how to align the wings with each other how to strengthen the struts between the wing for being more fun consistent in the attempt to gain some advantage over the enemy for example have you ever noticed how pythons sometimes have lower wings that are not as long as the top one leader called risky plane and they were common next to the traditional biplane design they had wings of the same thing one of the results of a typical plane was that the drag was refused generally allowed for more speeds with the same performance my father's number five be surprised to see about growing 2012 over 4-1 in fact in 1916 the first unmanned flying drones were billed to the United States especially the Hewitt's very automatic airplane can be considered somewhat of a precursor to the water cruise missile although that would be a little stretch although flying by autopilot the drone lacked the accuracy required to make it viable versus a moving target even Zeppelin's one potential target were unlikely to be hit tanks were made to get the drones to obey commands by radio this proved to be unsuccessful ultimately the drone did not see service in World War one and some issues persisted for years attempts to iron out these problems failed and the concept was mothballed in the 1920s and it is interesting to see how quickly the idea of an unmanned drone for military purposes follow the overall use airplanes in the military the drones suffer the same fate as a rocket that the French experimented on to shoot down balloons delayed until technology made them viable namaz ex number 6 but let's get back into the cockpit early on the new war pilots had no specialized learn alongside in fact they were forced to aim down sight in a bomber good old mark one eyeball was the only real aid of trying to get the explosive from workers to the target but while initially decides were not that important after all fly diversify the combat only 3d took off in 1916 and planes were initially limited to use in bombing raid lacking the bomb load for a real bombarded mission this quickly changed some of the early gunfight in fact uncannily resemble those that we know from world war ii the bomb scientists who were becoming more and more sophisticated 1912 a British pilot won a prize after he landed 12 out of 15 hit on a target from 800 meters of altitude with volunteers no build sites on swarming took off site became commonplace on bombers allowing the crew to improv speed and altitude with leg aside even allowing you to factor in wind and the differential between indicators of true heirs those were some of the major advancements in aviation during World War one and the future I will probably go into some of these in more detail of course more existence and if you can think of any of them why not put them in the comment section down below as always relevant sources are linked in the description if you want to support my channel consider sharing this video and if you want to learn more about World War 1 aviation check out this video I made our Oswald Volker a man who essentially crafted the manual on dogfighting or check out this video on the fokker eindecker for more information on this early experiment fighter plane as always have a great day good hunting and see you on the sky

Channel: Military Aviation History

Views: 114,996

Keywords: Aviation, ww1history, great war, airplane, fokker, history, ww1, education, innovation, gunsight, radio, bombsight

Id: rt9Ove7w5mM

Length: 8min 16sec (496 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 30 2017

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[u/Reginald_Wooster]

I love Bismarck's videos :)