Long the "Princes of the Battlefield", military aircraft received their baptism of fire in World War 1, a war that saw a continuous evolution of the species into lethal fighting machines. Monoplanes soon gave way to biplanes and these were followed further by triplanes as aircraft engineers quickly adapted to the changing needs of the battlefield.
These pioneer airmen - essentially airborne descendants of the mounted knight - duelled it out in the skies over Europe. Early fighter pilots were armed with nothing more than a personal sidearm or rifle of choice and could be called upon to drop hand-held munitions over enemy trenches. Gun-less reconnaissance platforms were eventually forged into machine gun-laden fighters. Multi-engine platforms now bristled with multiple defensive machine gun positions all their own as well as staggering bomb arrangements. While the machine on the ground changed ground warfare, the synchronized machine gun (that is, a machine gun set to fire through a spinning propeller system) of the air changed aerial warfare.
The inter-war years saw the Golden Age of flight. Little restrictions stood in the way of evolving the aircraft from their wood-and-fabric shells into all-metal hotrods with enclosed canopies. Speed was the call of the day and many-an-aircraft-engineer made his (and her) name in the skies.
By World War 2, the world had changed enough to warrant new methods for waging the same old war. Enclosed cockpits were and pressurization was being introduced for high-altitude flight. The light .303 caliber machine guns gave way to heavier .50 caliber types or even replaced by potent cannon armament as large as 51mm. By the end of the conflict, heavy bombers were regularly laying waste to entire cities, night-fighting by radar was a proven form of night time combat and rocket-propelled propulsion was unseated by advances made in jet technology. Fortunately for the upcoming generations, the war ended before it could escalated into a new, bloodier age.
The Cold War ushered in an all-new set of rules. With itchy fingers on the their respective triggers, the US and Soviet Union squared off across the globe. While never directly engaging in an all-out war (some might argue this statement), the psychological aspects were all there. Tense times bred new and deadlier forms of manslaughter by air components. It was believed that the missile would negate the need for cannon armament in aircraft and it was seen that a day would come when the missile would even unseat the fighter altogether. History, however, showed otherwise.
By the end of the 21st Century, the aircraft was nothing like those heralded mounts piloted by forefathers. Becoming a modern "Ace" grew ever harder. Stealth technology, supercruise capability, global positioning systems (GPS) and fly-by-wire went on to turn those "flying coffins" of World War 1 into self-sustained, multi-purpose platforms that seemingly dominated any modern battlefield.
Far from hitting their ceiling, the aircraft continues to evolve today into the ultimate fighting machine with capabilities yet unheard - quite the far cry from when the first heavier-than-air flight occurred just over a century a go. With the advancements made in armed UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), one has to wonder if the age of the pilot and his respected mount are coming to a close. |
