Romanian Air Corps

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Cockade of the Romanian aircraft 1916/17

The Romanian Air Corps ( Corpul de Aviație Român ) was founded in 1913. It took part in the Second Balkan War and the First World War and went down in 1917 with the military defeat of Romania.

Pre-war period

In 1909, aviation enthusiast Prince George Valentin Bibescu invited the famous French aviation pioneer Louis Blériot to Bucharest . Blériot made three sightseeing flights on October 18, 1909, starting from the Băneasa racecourse, which delighted the Romanian public. An airfield was built in Chitila near Bucharest , which was officially approved on November 20, 1909.

Compared to other countries, the Ministry of War (Ministerul de Război) began to develop military interest in aviation at an early stage, and established appropriate contacts with civil and private bodies. On June 17, 1910, the army arsenal was the first military aircraft to buy the " A. Vlaicu No. 1 " aircraft developed by the Romanian aviation pioneer and aircraft designer Aurel Vlaicu . Vlaicu had attended the Royal Bavarian Polytechnic University in Munich and took part in the Romanian army maneuvers as a pilot on September 27, 1910. This made the Romanian army, after the French, the second in the world to carry out military maneuvers with aircraft.

Among the prominent Romanians who were enthusiastic about aircraft, Prince George Valentin Bibescu, a reserve artillery officer with close contacts to the army command, stood out. Bailescu ran together with the aircraft designer Henri Marie Coandă and inventor of the first jet aircraft ( Coandă model 1910 ) the establishment of a national aviation league (" Liga Nationala Aeriana ") with the aim of training pilots for the air force and procuring aircraft for the army. Bibiescu, after graduating from flying school in Pau on January 6, 1910, where he had obtained the Aéro-Club de France's flight license No. 20 , brought two farmweeders and a seaplane - a Voisinzweidecker with floating devices - to Bucharest from France , which opened in 1911 a flight school in Cotroceni and made a name for himself as a pioneer of Romanian aviation.

The training of the military pilots took place in the military aerodrome of Kitila and in the military pilot school of Prince Georges Bibesco in his castle Cotroceni near Bucharest . Mainly officers of genius came to the training: The sub-lieutenants of the engineering troop Ștefan Protopopescu and Gheorghe Negrescu received the first pilot's licenses from the flight school in Chitila in July 1911 and thus became the first Romanian military pilots next to the second lieutenants Mircea Zorileanu and Nicene military pilots, who had trained at the Cotroceni flight school. Negrescu and Protopopescu then led the construction of the aeronautical engineering workshop in Chitila, where a Farman III model 1909 aircraft was built under license, then attended the University of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering in Paris from 1913 to 1914 and became the first aeronautical engineers in the Romanian Army. At the same time, the second lieutenants and aviators Radu Irimescu and Simion Chișcăneanu visited the Polytechnic School in Berlin-Charlottenburg , where they were trained as mechanics .

After the two flight schools in Chitila and Cotroceni and a third one in Băneasa-Bucharest opened in 1912, the War Ministry founded the Cotroceni Military Aviation School near Bucharest in 1912.

Five aircraft controlled by military pilots took part in the autumn maneuvers of 1911. During the military maneuvers in 1911 and 1912 from Bucharest, exercises with ranges of 150 to 180 km u. a. carried out according to Turnu Severin , Constanța , Iași and Roman . Prince Ferdinand , who led the exercises, presented six aircraft and several pilots to the interested maneuver observers and military attachés. Prince Bibiescu, who took part in the maneuvers in the Roman - Paşcani area as a military pilot and was honored for successfully carrying out a reconnaissance flight from Paşcani to Hălăuceşti , caused a particular stir .

By 1913 a total of 21 military pilots had been trained by the Chitila Military Aviation School and the civil aviation schools; In addition, there were another 15 pilots who had returned from training in France. The Romanian aviation department now had 10 aircraft; In addition to “ A. Vlaicu No. 1 ”, it was about Farman Type III , Nieuports , Morane-Saulniers and Blériots, built under license in Chitila .

In 1913 the Aviation Corps ( Corpul Aeronauților ) was set up. This aviation corps consisted of an observation balloon Department for captive balloons and a Fliegerabteilung with pilots, aircraft mechanics and observers, however, remained genius troop assumed. From now on, military pilots had to complete at least 120 hours of flight training. The Romanian air force was upgraded to 34 military aircraft, 16 of which were of the Bristol-Coandă type, designed by the Romanian engineer Henri Marie Coandă , who had headed the Romanian branch of the British aircraft company Bristol as engineer and technical director since 1912 .

Balkan War 1913

When Romania entered the Second Balkan War against Bulgaria in 1913 , 19 aircraft were used to monitor the Romanian-Bulgarian border. Lieutenant d. Res. Bibescu recruited from pilots of the " Liga Naționala Aeriană " a 2nd division, which consisted of two squadrons with two aircraft each. Bibiescu and the officers Nicolae Capşa, Ioan H. Arion, Mircea Zorileanu and Constantin Fotescu carried out their reconnaissance flights over a distance of 200 km and at an altitude of 2,200–2,500 m. Captain Constantin Fotescu flew the first reconnaissance mission over the Danube and Nicu Capșa crossed the Balkan Mountains , circled over Sofia and dropped leaflets over the hostile capital.

Between the wars 1914–1916

At the beginning of the First World War Romania declared its neutrality; The pro-German king faced political forces who advocated an alliance with the Entente powers and who propagated the “liberation” of the Romanian provinces occupied by Austria-Hungary and who were ultimately able to assert themselves politically. The Romanian air forces were further upgraded in the course of war preparations and expanded in 1915 to form the Romanian Air Corps (" Corpul de Aviație Român "), which was no longer subordinate to the pioneer troops , but from then on became an independent military division of the Army under command under the direction of the military schools in the War Ministry formed by Lieutenant Colonel Gavanescu of the Great General Staff. The aviation corps had two aviation companies stationed in Cotroceni. The pilot training of the military aviators took place first at the civil flight school in Băneasa .

First World War 1916-18

When Romania entered the First World War on August 27, 1916, the Corpul de Aviație Român had a strength of 44 aircraft, 97 pilots and 84 aircraft observers. Each of the four Romanian armies was assigned an aerial unit for reconnaissance and bomber missions. The extent of the Romanian front line was about 1,000 km from the Carpathians in the north to Dobruja in the south; the air missions therefore concentrated on the front northwest of Transylvania and in the south against Bulgaria. On September 16, 1916, the pilot Lieutenant Panait Colet and his observer Sergeant Ioan Gruia and their Farman F.40 achieved the first aerial victory over a German aircraft over Slobozia in southern Romania.

From August to December 1916 the Romanian air force carried out numerous reconnaissance and bomber missions; Romanian troops claimed the downing of 28 German and Austro-Hungarian aircraft, 23 of them by Romanian ground troops and five by airmen. However, the Romanian army was crushed by the battle-tested German, Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian and Turkish troops, had to give up Transylvania and Wallachia and was pushed back to the province of Moldova .

The Great Headquarters of the Romanian Armed Forces had already received support from a French military mission in October 1916, which helped to build up the Romanian air force and was supposed to set up further air departments with mixed types of aircraft with war-experienced Allied airmen and Romanian volunteers. At the beginning of 1917, the Romanian Air Corps was placed under the command of the French Lieutenant Colonel de Vergnette-Delamotte, who was assisted by the Romanian air officer Major Constantin Fotescu. Delamotte reorganized the air force and brought it to a strength of six air divisions. From January to the spring of 1917, the airmen, now led directly from the headquarters of the Romanian armed forces, systematically photographed the 180–200 km wide front between Nămoloasa ( Galați ), Mărăşeşti , Mărăti and formed after the withdrawal with French military assistance Oituz .

In mid-1917, the Air Corps was finally brought to three squadrons with 150 aircraft, which initially consisted of twelve, then of 14 squadrons ( Escadrile ). Until the defeat of Russia at the end of 1917, the air corps took part in all important battles of the Romanian army. But with the collapse of Russia and the turmoil of the civil war that followed, the Romanian army was overrun by the troops of the Central Powers.

By the end of the war, Romanian pilots claimed 83 victories, the most successful fighter pilot was Lieutenant Dumitru Bădulescu with 8 victories. Another 50 enemy aircraft were shot down by ground troops.

From 1916 to 1919 Romanian aviators made 11,000 flight hours, survived 750 dogfights and dropped 100,000 kg of bombs. Eleven pilots and observers received the military order of Michael the Brave III. Class. Eight planes were killed by anti-ground fire or in aerial combat.

In the years 1916–1917, the Romanian Air Corps received 322 aircraft of various types from France and the United Kingdom :

Fighter aircraft:

Reconnaissance planes and bombers:

literature

  • The First Warplanes , BPC Publishing Ltd. (UK), 1972

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ This first public flight demonstration in Romania revealed that Romanian oil was particularly suitable for the production of aviation fuel, whereupon the export of Romanian oil gained great importance.
  2. ↑ Founding document No. 2931/1909 at the district court in Ilfov
  3. ↑ Bibiescu carried out Romania's first international aviation competition in September 1910 on the route from Bucharest via Giurgiu to Ruse (Bulgaria). With its 50 horsepower Bleriot monoplane crossed Bibiescu on August 5, 1911 on a flight from Bucharest to Turnu Magurele the first pilot with the aircraft, the Danube . He organized on November 13, 1912 with the league the flight of the two pilots Nicu Capsa and Poly Vacas from Bucharest to Brăila with a flight time of one hour and 40 minutes. On the following two days, Bibiescu held flight demonstrations in Brăila and Galați with both aircraft.
  4. ↑ Aviation, IX. Year, 1917, issue 2 of January 24, 1916, p. 64f: From Romanian aviation.
  5. ↑ Royal Decree No. 1953 of April 1912
  6. ↑ Royal Decree No. 3199 of April 30, 1913
  7. ↑ Prince George Valentin Bibescu returned to civilian life as a reserve officer after the Balkan War , but retained his close ties to the military authorities. So he organized the procurement of French and British armaments for the Romanian army until 1916 and, reactivated when Romania entered the war, took over the management of the air stations in Brașov and Mircea Vodă, until he was assigned as a technical expert and liaison officer to the Allied Commission, which took part in the train The Great Retreat in 1916 systematically destroyed the Romanian industrial and oil production facilities. Then he came to the Great Headquarters of the Romanian Army, where from April to June 1917 he was tasked with building accommodation for the Romanian Army in the Moldavia Province, until he finally went to the front as an artillery officer. Bibescu fought his way back to his homeland through Transylvania with Romanian troops after the collapse of Russia and the Central Powers in 1919 and also played a prominent role in Romanian aviation in the post-war period.
  8. ↑ War Ministry Decree No. 305 of August 1915
  9. ↑ Flugsport, Volume VIII, 1916, Issue 1 from January 15, 1916, p. 26: The new organization of the Romanian Mitliärflugwesens.
  10. ↑ As of July 1917