Knights of the Sky

     On the beach of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright brothers built the first airplane. Or to be more specific, they built the first airplane that would remain airborne for a significant amount of time. Their first flight lasted only 12 seconds, but it was a far cry from the first record of 0 seconds. Their "aeroplane" had propellers in the back to propel it through the air.  The U.S. government asked for them to build an army model. They agreed to build it, but abruptly the government changed their mind. Why would there be a use for an airplane? As the war raged on, they realized why. It could be used for reconnaissance, bombing powder depots, and shooting down opposing airplanes. They decided that there was a use and they in to turn, put it to good use. That resulted in the formation of  the U.S. Air Force.

     There were several planes invented in WWI. The French Sopwith Camel (Above to the left), the German Albatross D.V. (Above to the right), and the Red Falcons. These all were made for war. All with a similar design, the planes were either biplanes or triplanes and they all had machine guns at the front. And similarly they also experienced many different problems. If they had a machine gun firing behind a set of propellers, the machine gun would hit the rotating blades. It was quite a struggle to figure out. Two methods were used. The first was very dangerous. You would put steel wedges on the propeller so that any bullet that hit it would ricochet off. Why this was dangerous was because it could hit the pilot or the plane itself.
      The second one was very smart. The Germans copied the design from a downed French airplane. They called it the Fokker Scourge. If the blade came around, a rod would push up the gun out of the way.
     There were many fights in the air. These fights were known as dogfights. Many people lost their lives as a result.
     The people that flew the planes were called aces. In order to be an ace, you had to shoot down a certain amount of planes. Here are some aces:

     Name:                                    Record:
     Manfred Von Richthofen       80                        German
     Rene Fonck                               75                         French
     Edward Mannock                    73                         British
     William Bishop                        72                         Canadian

 
As you can see, Manfred Richthofen had the highest score of all. He was an evil and horrible pilot, and he was feared by all. In order to taunt his enemies and to make sure everybody knew who he was, he had his plane painted bright red. He was known by all as the Red Baron. He was known for chasing his victims to the ground to make sure that they went down.  One time as he was doing that, he also started to go down. He crashed in no man's land. Fortunately or unfortunately, what ever you want to think, he was found by the Australians with a single bullet in his chest. That was the end of the Red Baron, The terror of the skies.