Throughout history victory has been decided by what's going on down here on the surface of the Earth?
Britain for example the 19th century came to dominate the globe by controlling the world's oceans but from the first world war onwards
Warfare took to the skies and now controlling the air is a key part of military
strategy and all that began with those brave pioneer aviators of the first world war
In 1909 Louis Blériot set off on a flight that would make history
His Aim was to win a prize of a £1,000 for the first plane to cross the English channel
it wasn't the most elegant of flights, that ended in a rather rough landing
but he'd made it the plane. He flew was a Blériot XI like this one here
It's amazing it got that far looks so flimsy even more remarkably this one still flies
not exactly top gun
When the war started five years later planes like this was still in production and a few visionaries thought these might have a military application
with that the first major Air war had begun
At first planes like this were reconnaissance vehicles. They were having a look at what was going on behind enemy lines and reporting back
But gradually started actually taking an active role on the battlefield
pilots were issued with these nasty looking things Flechettes spikes that if you drop out the side might hit enemy troops or even bombs
planes when our an important weapon of war
You gotta be kidding. There's no way I go up in this thing this might have been the future
But it's pretty primitive in fact
I feel like I'm sitting in a wicker garden Chair surrounded by a sea of Canvas to steer it
You just move this column and it's connected by very flimsy looking set of wires the wings themselves
Not little flappy bits like Modern aircraft the whole wings move they twist
It's a system called wing warping the engine is underpowered and prone to overheating it could only fly at
47 mph could only go about 3,000 feet no more and as for the instrument panel
You get one dial your oil pressure. That's it
But his plans went into service in world war one the pressure was on to improve the technology
Sooner was an arms race that pushed aircraft development at an astonishing rate
The pace of innovation in those years is like nothing seen before of this just a few years into the war that planes like that
isn't that cool?
What makes this aircraft so distinctive those three sets of wings now
They're designed to give that aircraft necessarily lift, but make the wings narrower
So the pilot can see more of what's going on on the ground it also made the plane very very maneuverable
There's an old story that the first ever test pilot amazed on lookers by doing three consecutive loop-de-loops
that plane can fly
117 mph. That's two and a half times as fast as the Blériot and it can fly
Seven times higher so there's the pace of innovation that some planes that were cutting-edge could be obsolete just a few months later
But innovation wasn't just changing how these claims flew it was changing how they fought
It said that the very start of the war when enemy planes passed each other. They'd give a friendly wave
That didn't last and the age of air-to-Air combat was born at first
it was just the pilots taking pot shots with a pistol but
but the next generation of aircraft would have guns as part of their design it soon became clear the most
it soon effective way for the weapons of point was in the direction the aircraft is traveling big problem there
Though of course is end up shooting your own propeller off. Which is a bit of a disaster the first solution
They tried was to mount a machine gun on top of the wing on top of the propeller
trouble that was the pilot basically had to stand up in his seat release his strap stand up here and
Replace the magazine when it ran out of bullets
completely unworkable really this
Se5 had a system whereby the gun could slide back down to be reloaded and then slide up into its firing position
still very cumbersome though
the Germans soon came up with an even better solution. It was quickly copied by the Brits to show you how it works
I'm Gonna need to slow this down
they connected the machine gun to the crankshaft of the propeller with a series of
Cam plates and that meant the machine gun only fired when these propellers blades weren't in the way
It was a very precise bit of engineering get it wrong. You blow your own propeller off
the amazing thing about the first world war is that by the end of it pretty much every significant part of
Aerial warfare was already in Development planes are being used for reconnaissance for communications for dropping supplies
dropping bombs and
for air-to-Air combat