The Birth of Military Aviation

To end the brutality of World War I combat, military strategists looked to the skies for victory.

World War I airplanes that can still fly are a rarity. In the United States, in fact, only a handful of institutions have such aircraft. A visit to one of them, such as New York’s Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, reveals an apparent contradiction. The sights, sounds, and smells of these wartime airplanes—lozenge patterns, blip switches, and castor oil—have been absent from aviation for more than a century. When compared to, say, the roar of a fast-moving Lockheed Martin F-22, World War I airplanes seem as quaint as a renaissance fair. Yet, looking closer, these seemingly fragile wood-and-fabric constructions represent both the horrors of modern industrialized warfare and the foundations of the aviation industry we still depend on today in peace and war.

The National Air and Space Museum’s World War I: The Birth of Military Aviation gallery, scheduled to open next year, will highlight both the central role of the war in defining the nature of military aviation and the remarkable experiences of World War I aviators as they served and sacrificed in an alien combat environment. An array of notable artifacts, visuals, and experiences will demonstrate that World War I was the laboratory that transformed airplanes from vehicles of limited capability into reliable weapons of war, which then became the foundation for a lucrative new manufacturing industry.

Although a few airplanes had been used in combat before 1914, the unprecedented slaughter, known as the Great War, not only originated distinct classes of combat airplanes—fighters, bombers, and reconnaissance craft—it also established the profession of military aviator. These new warriors embodied the hope that aerial combat would prevent the horrors of trench warfare from reoccurring. While one does not need to look further than the current war in Ukraine to know these hopes remain largely unrealized, the use of air power in almost every conflict since 1918 has been underpinned by the service and sacrifice of military pilots. This exhibition will tell the stories of some of these intrepid aviators and their remarkable aircraft.

The new gallery is the third iteration of a World War I exhibition since the National Air and Space Museum opened its building on the National Mall in 1976. The previous iteration opened in 1991. Since then, improvements in exhibition design, multimedia displays, and interactives have provided new opportunities for the Museum to showcase this critical, but all too frequently overlooked moment in our aviation heritage.

While World War II still figures prominently in American historical identity, World War I is largely forgotten. (Just compare the relative selection of books on each conflict in your local bookstore.) Aerial combat during World War I is even less understood, with video games and other expressions of popular culture presenting a distorted view of wartime aviation as predominantly first-person-shooter-style combat between aces, overshadowing the Great War’s tremendous range of experiences.

Dogfighting was a path to martial fame when celebrating aces became a way for nations to recognize military virtue away from the carnage of the trenches. But the airplane’s most critical role was its ability to support the vast machinery of industrialized warfare, principally through reconnaissance. With trench warfare eliminating the ability of cavalry to perform this traditional role, airplanes not only stepped up as a substitute, but also introduced two critical technologies to the battlefield: aerial photography and wireless telegraphy.

The vast array of high-caliber and rapid-fire artillery that defined the modern battlefield needed guidance from above. Airplanes and observation balloons equipped with long focal length and oblique cameras filled this role by providing photographic mapping of enemy strongpoints. Aircraft and balloons also served as radio platforms that could direct artillery fire onto a target. When the fighter airplane later emerged, it did so out of the necessity of denying the enemy access to these capabilities and to protect friendly reconnaissance flights.

Reconnaissance missions were as important at sea as on land. There, long overwater distances gave privilege to airships and multi-engine flying boats. Maritime patrol aircraft married long-range reconnaissance roles with the ability to strike targets. For the Allied powers, this often meant hunting the menacing U-boats from the air with special weapons like the Davis Gun, a recoilless smoothbore cannon that could pierce a U-boat hull without tearing apart the fragile aircraft that fired it. Torpedo airplanes and aircraft carriers also emerged from the war (see “America’s First Aircraft Carrier” in the Winter 2022 issue).

The fighters and bombers that entered the combat arena alongside reconnaissance airplanes underwent their own technological transformations as military aviation developed its own distinct culture. Gun synchronization that enabled firing through the propeller arc led to a plethora of new aircraft designs. The limitations of Zeppelins and other airships for bombing led to similar national investments in longer-range aircraft with ever higher payloads. Flying at high altitudes—often at night and in poor visibility—meant coping with physiological challenges that an earlier generation of aviators had largely been able to avoid. Fortunately, oxygen systems and heated flightsuits made high-altitude missions survivable (if not bearable).

To showcase these remarkable technologies and the rise of military aviation professionals, the Museum will draw on its remarkable collection of artifacts. Equally important, the exhibition will highlight the people responsible for the development of these new technologies by displaying the artifacts connected to them. In many cases, the names will be familiar to aficionados of military aviation history: Eddie Rickenbacker, Manfred von Richthofen, Georges Guynemer, Eugene Bullard, Billy Mitchell, and Raoul Lufbery. Others, like Charles Kettering, who helped make the Liberty engine and the de Havilland DH-4 Liberty airplane a winning combination for the U.S. Air Service, are less known.

Airplanes such as the DH-4, a two-seat biplane, are the most visibly prominent artifacts in the gallery. The only surviving Sopwith-built Camel helms the center of the exhibit space. Exquisitely restored by the late Javier Arango, an expert on World War I aviation, the Camel tells the story of the Allies’ most successful fighter type, which downed more enemy airplanes than any other Allied aircraft. Overhead, the SPAD XIII Smith IV—flown by American ace Arthur Raymond Brooks, who single-handedly took on an entire German squadron—chases a Fokker D.VII.

There are two gallery entrances, each with an airplane displayed outside of it: the Voisin VIII night bomber and Albatros D.Va, both of which might be familiar to those that recall the previous gallery. The sightlines in the old exhibit space, however, meant that the Voisin was largely visible from below only. Now—viewed from the length of the Museum’s second floor mezzanine—the Voisin can be seen in all its glory. 

Visitors can get a sense of what it was like to be a World War I aviator through a variety of hands-on and immersive experiences, such as identifying camouflaged enemy positions in reconnaissance photos, finding the optimal sighting distances for an observation balloon, and learning how not to shoot your own propeller. Another interactive walks museum-goers through the evolution of reconnaissance aircraft through three real-world episodes: Mons (1914), Verdun (1916), and Saint-Mihiel (1918). A simulation of a trench environment, including periscopes, enables visitors to see and hear how aircraft supported troops along the front. Visitors will also have access to a Sopwith Camel cockpit environment, where they can try out a control stick and listen to audio recreations of the Camel’s blip switch and firing-lever functioning. 

The most immersive media offering is a large format, high-definition theater projection at the front of the gallery through which visitors can simulate the experience of riding along on some of the historic wartime aircraft operated by Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome. Other videos will explain the war’s role as an aviation laboratory by showcasing important firsts that are often overlooked: the first submarine sunk by aircraft, the first aerial resupply mission, and the first carrier raid, among others. Another video illustrates the range of specialized aircraft developed during the war. And two presentation screens show how the development of naval aviation unfolded and how the war helped establish a broad industrial base that would prove essential for the launch of commercial aviation postwar. 

World War I aviation factories in the U.S. had fewer female workers than in World War II. (In the former, women made up 20 percent of the aviation workforce). Still, the war was important in leading to a more equal society. Pioneering pilot Ruth Law, for example, went to France to volunteer for combat duty. Turned away, she instead supported the U.S. Air Service by performing demonstration flights in uniform to encourage enlistment.

Gender was not the only barrier for would-be military aviators. African American soldier Eugene Bullard gained fame fighting in the trenches for France and later as a fighter pilot. But his success in France was not rewarded with an invitation to fly for the U.S. Air Service when his nation joined the war. Bullard and Law’s stories are told alongside other pilots who volunteered to fly for France before the U.S. entered the war. It is the experiences of these brave and selfless aviators that humanize a conflict best known for its inhumanity. 

Roger Connor is a curator in the National Air and Space Museum’s aeronautics department. He has logged more than 4,000 hours as a fixed-wing commercial pilot.

World War I: The Birth of Military Aviation is generously supported by

Aramont Charitable Foundation

Kettering Family Philanthropies

Mark Dunkerley and Marilia Duffles

This article is from the Fall 2024 issue of Air & Space Quarterly, the National Air and Space Museum's signature magazine that explores topics in aviation and space, from the earliest moments of flight to today. Explore the full issue.

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