Wings - the TV series.

[Former Member]

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[David Davis]

Posted by Tom Sharp 2 on 30/12/2018 20:23:17:

It was even worse on the German side.

You had to be at least a Count to be accepted as a pilot over there.

Actually in the German two seater aircraft, the pilot was often an NCO, a sort of aerial chauffeur, outranked by the officer observer!

On one occasion when Manfred von Richtofen was forced to land in the German artillery positions, the battery commander asked him, "Where's you pilot?" He was quite dismayed when von Richtofen replied, "I fly alone!"

[Former Member]

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[Alex Ferguson 2]

Admittedly this is an aircraft based forum but I put forward two things that influenced WWI's result and this doesn't include aircraft.

Technicians and their input to the tank. What was the technical expertise and status of technicians in Germany?

The tank. The only way WWI would be won was by finding a way to get through the trenches. The only way was using machinery, armoured and moving at a reasonable speed though the speed was not a major item.

The Germans did build tanks but didn't learn anything and it wasn't until WWII that they had learned what they could do and how to apply them.

It took the atomic bomb before aircraft actually "won" a war.

And technicians? We're the ones who make things work. In a war a technician's survival rate is probably amongst the highest.

Technicians - originally black-smiths, then mechanics and all those others who "fiddle" with things and even make RC models.

[David Davis]

Certainly the tank was an important factor in winning the Great War. During the war, the British built 5000 tanks, the French 3000, including the first to feature a turret so that the gun could fire in any position irrespective of the orientation of the hull of the tank, and the Germans produced 28. Not 28,000, 28 tanks. Most of the tanks that the Germans used were captured British or French tanks with black crosses painted on the side.

However, in my opinion, although the tank was important, it was very unreliable and a greater contribution to the Allies' success was the perfection of the creeping barrage and the improvement in the effectiveness of the infantry platoon by dividing it into specialist sections: Lewis gunners, bombers, rifle bombers and rifle-bayonette men.

Long range artillery fire was also important especially counter-battery fire. This was often directed by two very young men in an aircraft which have had a mixed reputation in subsequent years and within our circles, they have not been frequently modelled. When most people think of the war in the air in 1914-1918, they think of swirling dog-fights between gaily painted fighters and whilst this took place, the more important role of aviation in the Great War was in the more mundane work of reconnaissance, artillery spotting and photography. Consider September 1918 as an an example. At this stage of the war the Germans had the best fighter aircraft in the Fokker DVII. The RAF lost many fighter aircraft engaging the DVIIs over the German rear areas, but the work of the artillery observation aircraft continued more or less undisturbed while on the ground, the German Army retreated on an almost daily basis.

In WW2 Allied aircraft dominated the battlefields on both the Eastern and Western Fronts making the lot of the average German soldier an extremely difficult one, to put it mildly.

[Former Member]

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