Aéronautique Militaire

The Aéronautique Militaire is the predecessor of the French Air Force ( " Armée de l'air " ). It is considered to be the oldest professional air force in the world.

Beginnings up to the First World War

France's military aviation dates back to 1793 when an airship company was first formed. The balloon "L'Entreprenant" was used at the Battle of Fleurus in June 1794. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, the French army again used free balloons .

1886

Formation of four airship companies, subordinate to the four army's pioneer regiments and equipped with dragon balloons (Cerf-Volants).

1900

Combination of the four airship companies to form the 25th Engineer Battalion in Versailles under the command of the later general and aviation inspector Hirschauer . Planned increase in the number of companies in the event of mobilization to eight: four field airship companies and four fortress airship companies in the fortresses of Verdun , Toul , Épinal and Belfort .

1909

On July 12, 1909, the French War Department procured the first of five aircraft known as "Aérostats", a Wright biplane. From December 1909, the War Ministry sent officers and non-commissioned officers of all branches of the army, but above all engineers and artillerymen, as flight students (élèves-pilotes) to Reims , where the Grande Semaine d'Aviation de la Champagne had taken place in August 1909, and to Bron.

1910

In March 1910, the Établissement Militaire d'Aviation (EMA) was formed to carry out troop tests with airplanes. The Service Aéronautique followed a month later, under which the EMA and the field airship units were combined.

On October 22, 1910, the Aéronautique Militaire was finally formed. Its first in command was General Roques . At this point in time, the first French Air Force already owned 30 different aircraft and another 60 had been ordered. At first civil and military pilots were trained uniformly, but as early as 1910 the General Staff introduced a military flight license. Lieutenant Charles de Tricornot de Rose acquired the military flight badge N ° 1 at the Blériot flight school in Pau in south-west France, where the Wright brothers had set up the world's first flight school just a year earlier.

1911

In 1911 the public subscription for the purchase of new aircraft brought in 4 million francs; In the course of the invitation to tender, the first competition for military aircraft took place, in which the basic requirements were: two-seat design, range 300 km, payload 300 kg, speed 60 km / h. The monoplane from Nieuport and Déperdussin as well as the double-decker from Breguet qualified , of which 10, 4 and 6 were then ordered.

After extensive troop exercises, which also included radio cooperation with the artillery, the Aéronautique Militaire was formally incorporated into the armed forces on March 29, 1912.

1912

On August 28, 1912, the air force was distributed to the three locations Versailles , Lyon and Reims and divided into five squadrons. Civil and military airfields were in Saint-Cyr , Villacoublay , Juvisy-sur-Orge, Issy-les-Moulineaux , Le Bourget and Buc; they had field barracks, hangars, steam tugs, trucks and workshop vehicles and could therefore also be relocated.

1913/14

In March 1913, the first naval aviation department was formed with the Juan-les-Pins station. The number of aircraft had grown to around 160 in the meantime.

On February 21, 1914 the air force was separated from the airship force; both were subordinated directly to the War Ministry.

First World War

1914

At the outbreak of World War I, France thus had a world-leading and well-developed aviation industry, high-quality aircraft with which it also supplied its allies, primarily Russia, and, thanks to the efforts of its inspector General Hirschauer, had far more sophisticated operational principles than the armies other nations.

In August 1914, the French army had 165 aircraft, 10 airships and 10 tethered balloons. The planes were divided into 25 squadrons ( "Escadrilles" ), of which 21 were equipped with biplanes and four with monoplane. The 138 front-facing machines included models from Blériot , Breguet , Nieuport and from Henri and Maurice Farman . Six air reconnaissance centers had been set up on the border with Germany, and their reports were sent directly to the Deuxième Bureau ( enemy situation ) of the General Staff. In addition, procedures were developed for the sighting in of the artillery, guided by the aircraft observer, whereby communication with the ground station was initially carried out optically by flying turns or signal cartridges, but for the first time on October 25, 1914 also with radio telegraphy.

On October 8, 1914, the Commander-in-Chief General Barès requested the expansion to 65 squadrons. He also managed to concentrate the individual types in a tactically oriented manner: Moranes were to be used as combat aircraft, Voisins as bombers, Farmans as reconnaissance aircraft and caudrons as artillery observation aircraft. The French squadrons were then equipped according to order and uniformly according to type. An Escadrille equipped with Caudron planes received z. B. the abbreviation C , one with Nieuports an N , one with Morane-Saulniers an MS and one with Spads SPA .

After the reorganization of the French air force by Colonel Dorand, the aircraft were also classified as follows, regardless of their manufacturer: A = reconnaissance aircraft, B = bomber, Bn = night bomber, C = fighter, E = training aircraft, T = transport aircraft,

to which the number of crew members was appended. This resulted in the designation for the single-seat fighter aircraft Nieuport 17 C-1, for the two-seat reconnaissance aircraft Breguet 14 A-2 and the single-seat bomber of the same type Breguet 14 B-1.

The air battles, mostly only with hand weapons, remained largely unsuccessful, but French airmen tried successfully to use machine guns against enemy aircraft as early as August 1914, and on October 5, 1914, Sergeant Joseph Franz and his mechanic Caporal Louis Quénault succeeded for the first time in a German aviation division of the field aviation division 18 (pilot Wilhelm Schlichting, observer Fritz von Zangen). Roland Garros achieved the breakthrough as a fighter pilot , who had his Morane-Saulnier L equipped with a rigid machine-gun that fired through the propeller circle, with the rotating propeller being protected from the machine-gun projectiles with deflectors.

After two squadrons of the particularly successful and MG-armed Voisin two-seater had been combined for bomber duties on September 29, 1914 , the Ière Groupe de Bombardement was set up under Louis de Goÿs de Mézeyrac on November 13 . It was available for tactical but also far-reaching strategic bombing missions against the Reich territory.

1915

Garros had to land on the enemy side on April 18, 1915 and was taken prisoner of war . In the meantime, other types of aircraft were developed that had a MG that fired rigidly forward and could thus be used as fighter aircraft . The Nieuport 11 “Bébé” was particularly successful , with the machine gun mounted on the upper wing, firing over the propeller circle, and which proved to be superior to the hunting monoplane that appeared on the German side . Successful fighter pilots, referred to by the press as “ flying aces ”, began their careers: René Fonck , the most successful Allied aviator with 75 kills, followed by Georges Guynemer (54 victories, killed in 1917) and Charles Nungesser (43 kills).

1916

In 1916, the French squadrons concentrated mainly in the Verdun area . In view of the air forces bundled into combat squadrons and the new type of Fokker monoplane , the German forces gained air superiority and thereby largely switched off French aerial reconnaissance. Faced with this danger, the French commander, General Pétain, ordered the pilot, Commandant de Rose: “De Rose, I am blind, clear the sky!” De Rose then captured fighter pilots from numerous associations, including the best pilots such as Jean Navarre and Georges Guynemer , together to form massive interception formations, which now systematically fought back air superiority via Verdun.

The Escadrille N.124 “Lafayette” , a flight squadron of American volunteers under Captain Georges Thénault , soon joined these aviation associations . It operated first in Luxeuil, then from Bar-le-Duc. It had already won 57 aerial victories when the US Army Air Service intervened with its own units in the fighting in February 1918. The most successful pilot of this season was the French-American Raoul Lufbery , who fell on May 19, 1918 with 16 victories.

The chef de service d'aeronautique , who had previously only been assigned to the armies in an advisory capacity, was systematically given direct authority over the aviators as commandant d'aeronautique , who led the combat units assigned to the army with hunting, bombing and long-range reconnaissance tasks. The working units assigned to the corps for close air support, reconnaissance and artillery observation with a strength of three to four squadrons were led by a commandant de corps de l'armèe .

1917

In April 1917, the Aéronautique Militaire had 2,870 fighter planes in 60 fighter and 20 bomber squadrons, plus 400 reconnaissance planes. In October 1917 the plan was to increase the number of squadrons to over 300.

1918

In May 1918, 600 fighter planes and bombers were combined into a large unit, the Aérienne Division. Two months later, long-range reconnaissance squadrons were set up, based on the concept of the American Zinn serving as an observer, who had come to the French air force via the Foreign Legion .

At the time of the armistice, the Aéronautique Militaire was the strongest air force on the Western Front with 90,000 men, 350 squadrons and 3,222 aircraft. It had destroyed 2,049 enemy planes and 357 tethered balloons. They lost 3,500 dead and 3,000 wounded and missing. 2,000 soldiers were killed in accidents.

Conversion into the Armée de l'air

With the law of July 2, 1934, when it was converted into the Armée de l'air, it became an independent armed forces.

References

literature

• Olaf Groehler : History of the Air War. 1910 to 1980. 3rd edition. Military publishing house of the GDR, Berlin 1981.
• Heinz Nowarra : The Development of Airplanes 1914–1918. Lehmanns, Munich 1959.
• Arch Whitehouse: Aviator Aces. 1914-1918. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1970.

Web links

• the French aviation associations in World War I (French)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Arch Whitehouse: Aviator Aces. 1914-1918. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1970.
2. ^ Heinz Nowarra: The Development of Aircraft 1914-1918. Lehmanns, Munich 1959.
3. ^ Diary entries from Lt. Friedrich Heising, pilot in Fliegerabteilung 10, later leader of Kampfstaffel 23 and Jasta 20. Heising wrote that he was on September 16. between 3 and 4 p.m. together with his observer Lt. Sieler was first pressed by an enemy monoplane via Suippes in the Argonne, then attacked by a biplane with machine gun. Heising received a bullet through the hand, but was able to bring his machine back to his department despite heavy ground defense, where he then counted 25 bullets in his aircraft.
4. ↑ 14/18 (November 1965) . Europeana. Retrieved January 2, 2013.
5. ↑ Loi n ° 1934-07-02 du 2 juillet 1934 fixant l'organisation générale de l'armée de l'air (French)