The Sopwith Pup first entered service with the Royal Naval Air Service in 1916, and was one of Britain's earliest successful fighters.

(Photo courtesy of Lee Howard; exhibit from Fleet Air Arm museum, Yeovilton)

To understand the evolution of air-to-air combat in the Second World War, it is necessary to go right back to the very beginning of military aviation; the start of the First World War.

The first ponderous military aircraft to take to the skies were used largely for reconnaissance; aircraft of two opposing sides would often fly past each other with nothing more than a courteous wave on their way to their respective targets. After the successes of airborne reconnaissance in 1914, it was only a logical step to use aircraft to drop bombs on enemy positions. Now, with enemy aircraft causing actual damage and inflicting casualties, a few far thinking aviators began to devise tactics and techniques to hinder enemy aircraft.

In these primitive days of air warfare, the first attempts to harass enemy aircraft consisted of crude efforts to foul each other’s propellers with rope or throw darts at enemy aircraft; this progressed on to shooting at an opposing aircraft with pistols, and then rifles. By early 1915, the idea of fitting a machine gun to an aircraft finally emerged.

French pilot Roland Garros is largely acknowledged to have achieved the first real successes in air-to-air combat. Garros was instrumental in the evolution of the fighter aircraft; he had metal plates fitted to the propeller of his Morane-Saulnier Type L so that a machine gun could be fixed to the engine cowling in front of him. This way, he could point the entire aircraft at his enemy and fire his machine gun through the propeller disc, with the metal plates deflecting any bullets which did not pass between the blades. Using this technique, Garros shot down several German aircraft in April 1915 – four or five depending on which source is quoted. However, Garros was captured after he was forced to land behind German lines, possibly as a result of mechanical complications resulting from the shock loading of shooting his own propeller.

Conversely, technology had advanced along a different route within Germany; Dutch aircraft designer Anthony Fokker had devised a synchronizer gear; a device which mechanically linked the aircraft’s propeller shaft to the machine gun via a cam – this stopped the machine gun from firing as soon as a propeller blade passed in front of it. This device was fitted to the Fokker Eindecker series – the world’s first true fighter aircraft – and Germany began a period of domination in the skies over the Western Front. British and French aircraft were also fitted with machine guns as a matter of course by 1915; without the benefits of a synchronizer gear, Allied fighters (or ‘scouts’ as they were known in the First World War) either mounted the propeller behind the cockpit in a ‘pusher’ arrangement to keep the nose clear, or mounted the gun on the upper wing to shoot above the propeller arc. However, by 1916 the British had devised their own synchronizer gear.

1916 to 1918 saw fighter aircraft advance at a phenomenal rate; the under powered, fragile aircraft which had entered the war were now replaced by fully aerobatic biplanes and triplanes fitted with one or two forward firing machine guns and capable of speeds in excess of 100 mph. As technology advanced, so did tactics: rather than flying alone, aircraft began to operate in larger numbers. The fundaments of formation flying began to materialize due to the need for pilots to be able to make out the hand signals of their Flight Commander, as radios were still too heavy to be fitted to the vast majority of aircraft at this point.

One of the first pilots to attempt to formalize tactics into a clear list of rules was pioneering German ace Oswald Boelcke. His ‘Dicta Boelcke’ was quickly adopted by the German scout pilot fraternity, but also formed the basis of similar rules and guidance their adversaries:

• Try to secure the upper hand before attacking. If possible, keep the sun behind you.
• Always carry through an attack when you have started it.
• Fire only at close range and only when your opponent is properly in your sights.
• Always keep your eye on your opponent, and never let yourself be deceived by ruses.
• In any form of attack it is essential to assail your opponent from behind.
• If your opponent dives on you, do not try to evade his onslaught, but fly to meet it.
• When over the enemy’s lines never forget your own line of retreat.
• Attack on principal in groups of four or six. When the fight breaks up into a series of single combats, take care that several do not go for one opponent.

By the closing stages of the war, the skies of the Western Front were often filled with swirling dogfights of dozens of machines as British, French, German and American pilots flung high powered fighter aircraft around their adversaries in an attempt to destroy them – tactics such as attacking out of the sun and operating in pairs were married with skills such as deflection shooting and maximum rate evasive turns to form the nucleus of air-to-air combat tactics which in some cases are still in use to this day.

However, by the Armistice in November 1918, the world was weary with warfare. Destruction on such a scale had never been witnessed before and a huge defense cuts were made in every nation. Throughout the 1920s, military aircraft were mainly used in far-flung colonial disputes against ground targets, and the science of air-to-air combat was rapidly forgotten. The age of dogfighting was considered a thing of the past, and within the air forces of the victorious allied nations, the fighter fell out of favour against the bomber. It would take the outbreak of Civil War in Spain in 1936 to kick start fighter tactics into a new era.

About the author: Mark Barber, War Thunder Historical Consultant Mark Barber is a pilot in the British Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm. His first book was published by Osprey Publishing in 2008; subsequently, he has written several more titles for Osprey and has also published articles for several magazines, including the UK's top selling aviation magazine 'FlyPast'. His main areas of interest are British Naval Aviation in the First and Second World Wars and RAF Fighter Command in the Second World War. He currently works with Gaijin as a Historical Consultant, helping to run the Historical Section of the War Thunder forums and heading up the Ace of the Month series.

Discuss the news on the  Official War Thunder Forum