World War 2 The First Fighters

A machine was produced that can he considered as the world’s first true fighting aeroplane. This was the Vickers F.B.5. nicknamed the Gun- bus’, which had been designed from the outset for aerial combat on the principle that if it was worth getting one’s own air reconnaissance, it was also worth preventing the other side getting theirs. The Vickers F.B.5 was a conventional two-seat pusher biplane, in which the pilot sat in the rear seat and the gunner observer in the front seat, from which he commanded an excellent field of fire and observation. Armament was a single 0.303 in Lewis gun.

The chief fault of the F.B.5 (Fighting .Biplane) was that it was a pusher, with all that basic type’s failings in terms of performance (speed 113 kmlh [70 mph] and ceiling 9,000 ft). The type began to arrive in France in February 1915. The next step in the evolution of the fighter aeroplane was crucial but also, paradoxically, quite false. Early in 1914, Raymond Saulnier of the Morane-Saulnier company had seen where the true answer to air combat lay: in the production of a gun that fired along the line of sight and line of flight of pilot and aeroplane. But the propeller of any tractor type would be in the way, so how was he to H overcome this problem? Clearly it was necessary to halt the stream of bullets from the machine-gun whenever a propeller blade was in the line of fire; this could be done, Saulnier saw, by synchronizing the action of the machine-gun with the movement of the propeller.

Saulnier designed an interrupter gear that would achieve this, but the uncertain quality of French machine-gun ammunition wassuch that rounds might ‘hang fire’ and then go off when the next blade was in the line of fire. To thi mitigate the effects of such stray rounds on the sy wooden propeller blade, Saulnier fitted wedge shaped steel defiectors to the rear of each blade along the line of fire. The problem of the ammunition appeared impossible, however, and Saulnier abandoned his experiments. p In the spring of 1915, French pre-war stunt pilot ~ and aviation pioneer Roland Garros was serving a with the French Air Force. Disgruntled by his lack e of success in shooting down German reconnaissance machines, Garros persuaded Saulnier to let f him use the Type L parasol monoplane fitted with  the defectors only, the interrupter gear having r been removed. In less than three weeks Garros had disposed of five German reconnaissance machines. But then on 10 April his luck changed, and he was forced down behind the German lines and cap- tured, together with his machine.

The Germans at once realized the significance of the deflectors and decided to develop an efficient system for their own aircraft. A young Dutch designer working in Germany, Anthony Fokker, was called in and told to produce a proper interrup- ter gear. A few days later the result was ready for testing, and proved entirely successful. Fokker persuaded the German authorities to allow him to test the new interrupter in one of his own aircraft, an M5K monoplane, and, when the air tests proved equally successful, to order from him fighter aircraft using this device. The result was the Fokker E.I monoplane, the world’s first true single-seat fighter. In all ways an indifferent machine, indeed a dangerous one, the E.I nearly always prevailed by virtue of its superior armament  a synchronized 7.92 mm Parabellum machine- gun.  

In the hands of pilots such as Oswald Boelcke and Max Immelmann, the Fokker proved itself master of the skies over the Western Front, so much so that the period from autumn 1915 to spring 1916 is now known in aviation history as the time of the ‘Fokker scourge’. Lacking an interrupter gear of their own, the French and British had to find other, short-term solutions while development went on. The first answer was the French Nieuport 11 or ‘Bébé’. This was a compact, high-performance machine armed with a Lewis gun on the upper wing which fired over the propeller. Considerably faster, more man- oeuvrable and stronger than the Fokker, the Nieuport 11 began the eclipse of the German type. The Nieuport was soon joined in this task by Britain’s answer, the de Havilland D.H.2. This was introduced in the spring of 1916 and was issued to No 24 Squadron, which thus became the first British squadron to be equipped throughout with single-seat fighters. 

The D.H.2 was a small pusher biplane with the Lewis gun mounted in the nose. With the large-scale arrival of D.H.2s in France the Fokker was totally outclassed and the Allies enjoyed a period of complete air supremacy. The other major fighting aeroplane of the day was the Royal Aircraft Factory’s F.E.2b, a big and sturdy two-seat pusher biplane that was used for escort, bombing and reconnaissance missions.