Wings Assignment #2

7.  The cult of the heroic airman was born out of the sheer horror of warfare during WWI.  Millions of young men were being sent to be gunned down by machine guns and suffocated by mustard gas in the trenches.  The living conditions were so terrible, many men died not from battle but from the "filth, misery, and terror of the trenches" (pg. 156).  E.M. Roberts, an infantryman in the Great War explains why they worshiped and envied the aviators:  "Here was I in mud up to my knees...[while those] other fellows were sailing around in clean air" (pg. 156).  The pilots of WWI were using the most advanced technology of the time, often doing what no one had done before in the line of duty.  Despite not being in the trenches, pilots had astonishingly high casualty rates, with some estimates of British losses being as high as 68% (pg. 165).  This combination of freedom, adventure and danger turned the airmen of WWI into virtual gods among men, creating the cult of the heroic airman.  This image would continue on not only in the minds of the soldiers on the ground, but would also spread to the general populace.  Pilots became the heroes of comic books, even snoopy became a great Ace who fought the Red Baron (pg. 161).

8.  The war had an enormous impact on flight technology because now there was truly a reason to invest government money in airplane technology and the science of flight.  Before the war, the use of airplanes for warfare was a vague idea.  Many governments, mainly France, focused on flight from an exhibition standpoint:  who could the farthest, the fastest and the highest.  But after the beginning of WWI it became clear that the airplane had a definite place in war.  They could be used for reconnaissance, bombing, delivery of supplies and when armed with machine guns could become weapons themselves.  Because they were so vital to the war, innovation and improvement was encouraged.  This lead to many leaps in airplane technology such as the Fokker synchronizer, allowing for front-mounted machine guns, and the invention of duraluminum, a light weight metal alloy that armored the airplane for the first time (pg. 155, 169).  These were the baby steps needed to turn the wooden biplanes and monoplanes of WWI into the sleek fighters of WWII.

9.  Military aviation after WWI was almost non-existent.  Because there was no longer a need for mass production of airplanes the market for them crashed globally.  Most factories closed completely.  France subsidized their airplane manufacturers to prevent all of them from shutting down, and also supported the growth of commercial airlines (pg. 210).  Germany funded the production of airships and airplanes until the Treaty of Versailles ended "virtually all of the promising air commerce ventures initiated in 1919" (pg. 212).  In the U.S. the postal service were the only ones using airplanes and the government eventually decided to step in with some military funding (pg. 232).  Other governments kept small forces on hand to keep their various colonies in check (pg. 224).