About the extent to which the belligerent governments developed their air forces after the outbreak of war there was during the continuance of that conflict great reticence maintained by all of them. At the outset there was little employment of the flyers except on scouting reconnaissance work, or in directing artillery fire. The raids of Zeppelins upon England, of seaplanes on Kiel and Cuxhaven, of airplanes on Friedrichshaven, Essen, and Venice came later. It has been noted by military authorities that, while Germany was provided at first with the largest aviation force of all the belligerents, she either underestimated its value at the outset, or did not know how to employ it, for she blundered into and through Belgium using her traditional Uhlans for scouts, to the virtual exclusion of airmen. The effectiveness of the Belgian fight for delay is ascribed largely to the intelligent and effective use its strategists made of the few aircraft they possessed.
Wellington was wont to say that the thing he yearned for most in battle was to "see the other side of that hill."
Napoleon wrote:
Nothing is more contradictory, nothing more bewildering than the multitude of reports of spies, or of officers sent out to reconnoitre. Some locate army corps where they have seen only detachments; others see only detachments where they ought to have seen army corps.
[Illustration: © U. & U.
The Lafayette Escadrille--First Americans to Fly in France. ( Lufbery on left, Thaw on right.)]
So the two great protagonists of the opening years of the nineteenth century deplored their military blindness. In the opening years of the twentieth it was healed. All that Wellington strove to see, all that the cavalry failed to find for Napoleon is to-day brought to headquarters by airmen, neatly set forth in maps, supported by photographs of the enemy's positions taken from the sky.
Before describing the exploits of the airmen in actual campaign let us consider some account of how they were trained for their arduous and novel duties.
To the non-professional an amazing thing about the employment of aircraft in war has been the rapidity with which pilots are trained. The average layman would think that to learn the art of manoeuvring an airplane with such swiftness as to evade the attacks of an enemy, and to detect precisely the proper moment and method of attacking him in turn, would require long and arduous practice in the air. But as we have seen in earlier chapters, inventors like the Wrights, Bleriot, and Farman learned to fly with but a few hours spent in the air, with flights lasting less than ten minutes each. So too the army aviators spent but little time aloft, though their course of instruction covered in all a period of about four months.
Some account of the method of instruction as reported by several out of the hundred or more American boys who went to fly for France may be interesting.
As a rule the aviators were from twenty to twenty-five years of age. "Below twenty boys are too rash; above twenty-five they are too prudent," said a sententious French aviator. A slight knowledge of motors such as would be obtained from familiarity with automobiles was a marked advantage at the start, for the first task of the novice was to make himself familiar with every type of airplane engine. The army pilot in all the armies was the aristocrat of the service. Mechanics kept his motor in shape, and helpers housed, cleaned, and brought forth his machine for action. But while all but the actual piloting and fighting was spared him, there was always the possibility of his making an untimely landing back of the enemy's lines with an engine that would not work. To prepare for such an emergency he was taught all the intricacies of motor construction, so that he might speedily correct any minor fault.
