The Brutal History of The First Warplanes

Dan Snow's History Hit

This episode explores the evolution of aerial warfare during World War I, from fragile reconnaissance planes to deadly fighter aircraft. It

Key takeaways

• Aviation advanced at an astonishing pace within just four years of World War I, transforming from experimental flights to decisive military technology.
• Early aircraft were seen as unreliable and ridiculed by military leaders who favored traditional cavalry reconnaissance.

Main topics

• The origins of heavier-than-air flight
• Military skepticism toward early aviation

Notable quotes

Within four years, the skies above Europe had become a swarming battlefield of reconnaissance planes, fighter aircraft, bombers, zeppelins, all sorts of things locked in dogfights thousands of feet above the trenches.

Conclusion

The First World War marked a turning point in military history, where air power evolved

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History It and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyit.com slash subscribe. Speaker 4 (0:32) I'm Dan Jones. I'm Dan Snow. And this is Dan... Squared. In a special series for This Is History, I, Dan Jones, interview people who use the past to make sense of our present. And this week, history hits Dan Snow takes me places. Speaker 3 (0:48) There Speaker 4 (0:48) are two kinds of historians Speaker 3 (0:50) in the world. There are those who go away on holiday... and Lana Sun Lounger and then there are those who immediately Speaker 4 (0:54) scale the cliff behind the hotel to go and look at the castle. Find this episode on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (1:05) Hello, Greg Jenner here. I'm the host of You're Dead to Me, the BBC comedy show that takes history seriously. Every episode, I pair up a top historian with a fantastic comedian, and we have a lovely, funny, fascinating chat about a different subject from world history. And in this new series, we're beginning with an epic voyage through the story of Homer, the Iliad, and the Odyssey. And that's with Kyle Smith-Bino joining us. And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of eugenics with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parrott. So if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 3 (1:43) Thank you. Bye. Speaker 3 (1:48) The aircraft was so primitive that most military leaders barely took them seriously. When the First World War began, aircraft were fragile, flimsy machines built from wood and wire and string and canvas, ridiculed largely by an officer class that insisted on going to war on horseback. Very few people took them seriously. But let me tell you, within four years, the skies above Europe had become a swarming battlefield of reconnaissance planes, fighter aircraft, bombers, zeppelins, all sorts of things locked in dogfights thousands of feet above the trenches. In this episode, folks, we are going to look at the absolutely extraordinary story of aerial warfare in the Great War. Casualty rates were catastrophic. Many pilots survived only a couple of weeks. And some of the greatest aces, even they ultimately died by breaking the rules that they taught others to follow. This is the story of how the Great War turned the skies into a battlefield. I'm very lucky to be joined there by a good friend of the podcast, the author, historian, the journalist Joshua Levine. Enjoy. Speaker 3 (3:08) Josh Lillian, great to see you, man. It's lovely to be here, Dan. This is a story that I just, it's so fascinating because it happens at such a remarkable time. Aviation, World War I. How old is heavier than air flight? I mean, we're talking... End of 1903. Yeah, 10, 11 years. We're Speaker 6 (3:22) talking 10 years. And if you think about, I mean, things that happened to me 10 years ago. Yeah. It's a flash of light. So it's extraordinary that the advances that were made in such a quick time and, you know, starting with this tiny little flight at... Kitty Hawk, and then moving forward on all the different continents as well. So everybody wanted to have a piece of it. Speaker 2 (3:47) Everyone Speaker 6 (3:47) wanted to be in on it. So, you know, you had Blériot crossing the Channel. You can imagine how furious the British were. What a revolutionary moment. Speaker 3 (3:56) The first person to fly across China, heavier than their flight, is a Frenchman. So Speaker 6 (4:00) one of the papers, I think it was the Daily Mail, actually offered a cash prize to the first person to cross the Channel. And you can imagine how delighted they were. But Speaker 3 (4:11) it Speaker 6 (4:11) was a Frenchman who did it. And I've got an account from an English pilot at the time who just basically says, oh, he was so lucky. It was because a shower of rain cooled his engine off. Otherwise, he would never have made it. And he was talking in the 1960s. So, you know, this bitterness, this anger that a Frenchman made it first. Because, you know, this was the big discussion. You know, Britain is no longer. An island. Yeah. You know, it's like it's dogger all over again. And there was this fear that we could so easily now be invaded now that, you know, people can, the continentals can get straight across. And so the first person to fly in Britain, though, was an American, a man called Samuel Cody, who, and this is what's so great about early flying. I mean, it was a bunch of shysters, really. I'm exaggerating slightly, but adventurers. And so Samuel Cody came over to this country with a Wild West show, pretending to be the cousin of Buffalo Bill. He wasn't. And he used to do his act as a Wild West actor. He'd shoot an egg off his wife's head. And while he was here, he became interested in airships. And then from there, he moved on to heavier than air flight. And he had his own plane called the Cathedral. And because it was so enormous and it was so festooned with wires and, you know, called a flying birdcage because you could put a canary safely inside it and couldn't get out. And that was the first plane that flew in Britain. And then shortly afterwards, he died in a flying accident. So this was the kind of, you know, the seat of your pants stuff that it was. Speaker 3 (5:46) And was there snobbery? What did the military think of this new invention? Were they quite quick? To jump on it? Or was there a lot of conservatism? No, Speaker 6 (5:55) because Speaker 3 (5:55) they were the military, so they weren't quick to jump on it, really. I Speaker 6 (5:58) mean, there was a sort of snobbery as well. I mean, I think airships were considered more gentlemanly. Speaker 3 (6:02) Okay. Speaker 6 (6:03) You know, I found these lovely stories about, you know, people when the military took those up. and sort of going over to their country estate and having tea and then coming back. It was Speaker 2 (6:14) a nice, serene way to, as we're looking at now, you Speaker 6 (6:17) know, they're kind of coming back now, the idea of sort of eco-friendly travel. The heavier-than-air aeroplanes were a bit more grubby. You know, you needed mechanics to really, you know, to work at the engines. And they weren't really, they weren't people like us. And so I think it took a bit longer for the value of them to be appreciated. Also, they didn't know what they were going to do. You know, they were, here they were. They could fly. They could take to the sky very slowly. They weren't reliable. The engines were very unreliable. So there was that to begin with. But also. They're great, but what are they going to do? Speaker 3 (6:55) The payload just about support the weight of a human, but no bombs or anything. No. So what could they do? And Speaker 6 (7:02) also bear in mind that, as we just said, the army is very conservative. So you've got the cavalry who basically has the monopoly on reconnaissance. So they don't want to give that up. You've got, you know, so whatever it does, it's likely to take the role of somebody who's going to guard that role very, very carefully. Speaker 3 (7:22) The Italians, so there's stuff going on in 1911, 1912. The Royal Naval Air Service experimenting, the Royal Flying Corps. There are some aircraft around on the outbreak of World War. And what role were they envisaged? Helping to spot over the horizon, sort of useful pair of eyes. Yes, Speaker 6 (7:40) I mean, it was going to be reconnaissance. That was really the only thing. I mean, like you said, the Italians in 1911, they dropped the first bomb. So almost just want a hand grenade out the side. So it had been done. You know, nobody thought particularly to do it again. But so you had, yes, at the beginning of the war, as you say, you had the Royal Flying Corps, you had the Royal Naval Air Service. And the Royal Naval Air Service, Churchill had a big hand in it. as he seems to have had a big hand in anything that Speaker 3 (8:08) happened. Speaker 6 (8:08) According to him. Speaker 3 (8:09) Actually, Speaker 6 (8:10) this one is true. I did a book on Northern Ireland, and he's right in there as well. He really did. I mean, he was a big champion of flying. Okay, interesting. And during the Second World War, he often referred back to it. He had his plane that took him all over the place, and he often used to sit up front with the pilot and tell him stories about the Royal Naval Air Service. Anyway, so you had these two branches. The Flying Corps... was much more sort of sticking. They had their own factory that was making aircraft according to its own designation, whereas you had the Royal Naval Air Service, which was much more willing to try things and much more willing to envisage a place for bombing, envisage a place for other things that airplanes could do. The Flying Corps, you know, very straight down the middle. If it's anything, it's reconnaissance. So what happened at the beginning of the war? You had all of these airplanes, 60-odd planes, which flew over to France right at the very start. So they first of all had to come down from Scotland, and some of them had accidents on the way down from Scotland. I've got a great picture of one of them landing on the way. And you have just these... bemused locals. Just landing in Speaker 3 (9:22) fields. Landing in a field in Speaker 6 (9:23) front of a haystack. And you've got the pilot. It's such a brilliant picture. You've got the pilot lying against a haystack right next to his plane. So two of the most, you know, inflammable things you can imagine. Just enjoying a leisurely cigarette. All these locals are just staring at whatever this monster is that's just appeared. So anyway, they all congregate at Dover. They're told to get to a certain height so that if the engines fail, you know, probably will, they can glide because they're going to be left to their own devices if they land in the channel. No air sea rescue, nothing. No air sea rescue. And probably no interest from the French either. And so they just glide down. They make it there, more or less in one piece. Someone was killed on the way from Scotland, two men. But they make it. And then, okay, so what do they do? And again, it's a fascinating thing because they're kind of making it up. This is one of the great themes of this. You've got these people doing it, certainly in the early days, really all the way through, who are not military types at all initially. They're daredevils. And a lot of these are the people who join the Flying Corps. So, you know, one of the men who comes over at this point is he's... a sympathiser with the Irish rebels. So he actually, the month before he flies over, he's gone to Germany to pick up arms to bring back to Ireland. And these are the weapons that are used in the 1916 Rising. And then he goes back to join the Royal Flying Corps. These are not your usual people who are serving. So anyway, they get over to... to France, and their first job is reconnaissance. And it's still a mobile war. You know, people sometimes forget that. So their job is to spy on the Germans and to see what the Germans are up to. And the first reconnaissance is carried out by these two men who get, both of them, completely lost. And you see, you know, their logbooks are fascinating because... You know, they both admit it. One of them lands in Cotrai. I'm not sure how to pronounce that. I think it's Cotrai, which actually has a large Irish population because of the linen production. And he says he was about to be taken prisoner when he was recognized as an Englishman. He was swearing. He was recognized by an Irishman. So then he was taken for lunch with the mayor. And the other one gets hopelessly lost. And he talks about, I traveled, I flew above a big town, which turned out to be Brussels. I mean, you know, it's fantastically hopeless. Speaker 2 (11:57) But Speaker 6 (11:58) they get their act together very quickly, and they start to spot important things. Although the generals don't. realize this. The generals have no faith in them, not interested. So there's this one man, Rabliati, who's one of the early flyers, who goes up. And at the time, what they're doing is they're observing what's happening down below. And they're making a sketch of it, you know, on an iPad. Pretty basic. But, you know, they say what they see. So he gets back down. He tells Henderson, who's the head of the Flying Corps at this point, what he's seen, Henderson rushes him to go and see the top brass. So he's put in front of Sir John French. And John says, so, young man, what have you seen? And he describes exactly what he's seen, which he knows is correct because he's seen it. But that's not the information that French has. So French just loses interest and starts asking him, so what's it? like up there. Can you see a long way? It's very cold. And he said, I was so frustrated because I was trying to get him back down to Earth, but he wouldn't listen. Anyway, it turned out to be true, what he was saying. And so bit by bit, actually bit by bit, over a series of days, they started to be, the airplanes and the pilots and observers started to be taken more seriously. And so you've got a point where, you know, just before the war stabilizes into trenches, where the Flying Corps actually observe what is happening before the Battle of the Marne. Speaker 3 (13:26) Remind me, I've forgotten the details, but arguably decisive because the Germans obviously tweak their plan, don't they? They come down south of Paris and that sort of gives the Allies that opportunity to counter. So really, arguably very, very important. Very Speaker 6 (13:41) crucially important. And by that time they're listening. And then, you know, a few days later, you can find, I mean, National Archives, they have these observers' reports,