Fokker decided that the wedges were much too risky, and improved the design by connecting the trigger of an MG 08 Maxim machine gun to the timing of the engine. The wreckage was brought to Anthony Fokker, a Dutch designer who built aircraft for the Germans.
He achieved three kills, but was forced down due to engine failure down behind enemy lines, and captured before he could destroy his plane by burning it. French aviator Roland Garros solved this problem by mounting steel deflector wedges to the propeller of a Morane Saulnier monoplane. The biggest problem was mounting a machine gun onto an aircraft so that it could be fired forward, through the propeller, and aimed by pointing the nose of the aircraft directly at the enemy. Once machine guns were mounted to the airplane, either on a flexible mounting or higher on the wings of early biplanes, the era of air combat began. In October 1914, an airplane was shot down by a handgun from another plane for the first time over Reims, France. In August 1914, Staff-Captain Pyotr Nesterov, from Russia, became the first pilot to ram his plane into an enemy spotter aircraft. Tomić managed to escape, and within several weeks, all Serbian and Austro-Hungarian planes were fitted with machine-guns. The Austro-Hungarian pilot then fired at Tomić with his revolver. The Austro-Hungarian pilot initially waved, and Tomić reciprocated. The first aerial dogfight of the war occurred during the Battle of Cer (August 15–24, 1914), when Serbian aviator Miodrag Tomić encountered an Austro-Hungarian plane while performing a reconnaissance mission over Austro-Hungarian positions. Pilots quickly began firing hand-held guns at enemy planes, such as pistols and carbines. Intrepid pilots decided to interfere with enemy reconnaissance by improvised means, including throwing bricks, grenades and sometimes rope, which they hoped would entangle the enemy plane's propeller.
Due to weight restrictions, only small weapons could be carried on board. Įnemy pilots at first simply exchanged waves, or shook their fists at each other. The new aeroplane proved their worth by spotting the hidden German advance on Paris in the second month of the war. Aircraft were initially used as mobile observation vehicles, and early pilots gave little thought to aerial combat. World War I ĭogfighting became widespread in World War I. According to his own statements in an interview two decades later, both men had orders to kill, but neither pilot wanted to harm the other, so they exchanged multiple volleys of pistol fire, intentionally missing before exhausting their supply of ammunition. The first supposed instance of plane on plane combat and the first instance of one plane intercepting another during an aerial conflict apparently occurred during the Mexican Revolution on November 30, 1913, between two American soldiers of fortune fighting for opposing sides, Dean Ivan Lamb and Phil Rader. A regular dog-fight ensued for half a minute.' History Mexican Revolution Ten of the enemy dived to attack our men. On March 21, 1918, several British newspapers published an article by Frederic Cutlack, where the word was used in the modern sense: 'A patrol of seven Australian machines on Saturday met abot twenty of this circus at 12,000 feet. One of the first written references to the modern-day usage of the word was in an account of the death of Baron von Richthofen in The Graphic in May 1918: 'The Baron joined the mêlée, which, scattering into groups, developed into what our men call a dog fight'. The term gained popularity during World War II, although its origin in air combat can be traced to the latter years of World War I. The term dogfight has been used for centuries to describe a melee: a fierce, fast-paced close quarters battle between two or more opponents.
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