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The early years of war saw canvas-and-wood aircraft used primarily to function as mobile Zeppelins or observation balloons. Enemy pilots at first waved to each other, then progressed to inaccurately throwing bricks and other objects (grenades and sometimes rope, which they hoped would tangle their enemy's propellor), which eventually progressed to guns. Once the guns were mounted, the era of air combat began.
Like most other technologies during wartime, the aircraft underwent many improvements (though it might be argued that the most drastic changes occurred during the so-called "Golden Age of Flight" in the between-wars period of the 20s and 30s). Early in the war, when aircraft were used mostly for observation, the design was not much different from the original Wright flyer (as the Maurice Farman "Longhorn" was).
Aircraft of this early period included the Maurice Farman "Shorthorn" and "Longhorn", D.F.W. BI, Rumpler Taube, B.E. 2a, A.E.G. BII, Bleriot XI, and the Penguin.
With limited power, aircraft engines could only afford a certain amount of weight and, though made of mostly canvas and wood, could only afford to be monoplanes (one winged). Another major limitation is the early mounting of machine guns to the aircraft became awkward, due to the position of the propeller (in some aircraft the propeller was actually behind the pilot, which solved this problem but created a fairly unstable aircraft). The gun must logically fire forward, but the only solution to this problem at the time was to mount the gun above the propeller. In monoplanes this resulted in a few more wires that had to be strung from the wings to the gun in order to keep the gun steady.
Yet mounting the gun like this became a problem when the gun needed reloading or had jammed - the pilot must reach up to the gun to service it.
By this time in the war the aircraft had become more than a mobile observatory - it was now a weapon. Dogfights erupted in the skies between the powers - planes went down in flames and heroes were born. The need grew for a better plane, as well as better gun armament. And this was not limited to the air! On the ground, methods were being used that were introduced before the war to deter enemy planes from observation and bombing. Artillery rounds were shot into the air and clouds of smoke and shrapnel, called flak, provided enemy aircraft with an obstacle course to fly around.
Anti-aircraft artillery were used around key strategic targets - airdromes (air bases) and observation balloons mainly. As observation balloons became frequent targets of the enemy, the sites were heavily armed with anti-aircraft artillery. Nevertheless, a canvas bag full of hot air doesn't have much of an armor itself, and especially with pilots arming their planes with incendiary bullets, it didn't take much time to shoot one down.
And now new innovation was needed. The aircraft had advanced from the fragile Wright-like designs of the early war years to the more stable and better-designed biplanes including the D.H.-2 (1915-Britain) and the Caudron G-III (1915-France). The former was a forward-firing aircraft with a propellor positioned behind the pilot, allowing the gun to be accessible to the pilot for in-flight repair and reloading. The drawback was that the plane was unstable and not very manueverable, which was equally a challenge.
Yet these planes were no match to the Fokker E-III (1915-Germany), a plane with a propellor in front and a gun mounted directly behind it. The gun was actually made to physically be linked through gears to the propellor in order to fire through the propellor blade intervals, an ingenious solution provided by Anthony Fokker, the man behind the plane. In 1915 the Fokker E-III was top-of-the-line in design, manueverability, and gun placement. The result was devastating for the Allied powers, and a solution was needed fast.
The Fokker E-III's foil came in the form of the Nieuport 17 (1916-France), a biplane with a propellor in front and, as needed, a gun placed directly behind the propellor. No doubt the Allies by this time had managed to shoot down at least one E-II, as tough a task as it was, and had dissected its inner-workings.
Bombers were introduced to replace the more vulnerable Zeppelin.
The most famous and successful bombers of the war were the Gotha Gs, which conducted bombing raids on London. Though it has been agreed that the most damage done by them was to British morale, which took a devastating turn at the thought that the bombers could so easily penetrate defenses.
See also: World War I
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