First aerial victory

[baldeagle]

I tried a search but couldn't find anything on the forum, what was the first air to air victory? How about the first aerial victory for each of the combatant nations?




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[Willi Von Klugerman]

It was a gunner from a Voison Type L that brought down an Aviatik B.I on October 5,1914.

[Willi Von Klugerman]

The victory I've mentioned would be the first victory for France.The other first victory for a nation that I know of would be by Lt.Stephen Thompson in a Breguet 14 when he brought down an Albatros on February 1918,the first true victory by the USA.As for the other nations,Im not sure of.

[Pips]

As Willie mentioned the first aerial victory of any combatant was scored by the Avaition Militaire on 5 October, 1914. Sergeant Joseph Frantz and his observer, Sapper Louis Quenault, in a Voisin of Escdrille V24, brought down a Aviatik two-seater of Fleiger Abteilung 18, over Jonchery-sur-Vesle, near Rheims, using a rifle.

(from Over The Front, by N. Franks and F.Bailey)

[Jos]

Hello Baldeagle,

Try this thread:

http://www.theaerodrome.com/forum/pe...r-victory.html


Jos

[Roser]

Mid september 1914 a belgian Maurice Farman pilot the Russian de Petrowsky and gunner the Belgian Benselin shot down a FFA 18 plane above Brussels. Twe eye-wittnesses proves these fact. thus it wxas a belgian plane who shot the first price.

[The PIPE]

Dear Baldeagle:

The PIPE Here again...and while the US economy is hopefully heading for "something better" (been out of work since Sep. of '08)...

...I noticed this thread, and figured, that the first two years of combat military aviation in WW I were really THE "pioneer years", there HAD to be various criteria in determining "the first aerial victory" in WW I.

Various methods of striking back at "enemy" aircraft had been considered, from using explosive laden darts...think of those "lawn darts" from the 1970s, then add something like a pound of explosive, that blew up on impact, and you have the "Ranken Dart", actually proposed for the early models of the Bristol Scout...to the expected rifles/carbines that were used to down an enemy aircraft with a well-aimed squeeze of the trigger.

Possibly, for some of us, a more important criteria, especially considering where aerial warfare went from 1914, through the next three decades of military aviation afterwards, MIGHT be the first aerial victory with a forward-firing, synchronized machine gun.

Researcher Alex Imrie, back in the 1980s and 90s (I think), had been doing some serious examination of the events over Luneville, France, on the first day of July 1915, when evidence from both Allied and Central Powers sides of the embryonic airwar developing over the northern reaches of the Western Front provided very strong evidence...including a letter written by the victor of the engagement in question to a friend, whose text, relating the events of the engagement, appeared in the very last issue (Summer 1985) of the C&C USA journal...that a bespectacled young German Leutnant, Kurt Wintgens, had scored the very first aerial victory with a synchronized machine gun-armed aircraft of any type, his Fokker M.5K/MG aircraft that bore the military serial E.5/15, and was the last produced production prototype (of five examples) of the Fokker Eindecker series of early-war German fighter aircraft.

Windsock Datafile No. 91, which focused on the first two production versions (E.I and E.II) of the Eindecker, repeated this date (July 1, 1915), the name of Kurt Wintgens, and the type of "losing" aircraft (French Morane-Saulnier L, parasol two seat monoplane) as I had noticed in that now-quarter-century-old C&C USA article (which MIGHT have been authored by Mr. Imrie himself?), and that account has stuck in my mind ever since. Multiple photos of the German aircraft involved are shown in the Datafile, and even one shot of Kurt's E.5/15 exists in the Squadron/Signal "Fokker Eindecker in Action", in front of a hangar, with its tail elevated to a "level" fuselage angle, possibly getting its compass "swung" for accuracy, or perhaps for firing tests with its Parabellum MG 14 machine gun.

Kurt's successful forcing-down of the Morane L occurred a month before Max Immelmann had his first aerial victory with another example of the M.5K/MG test aircraft, and at "the opposite end of the month" from early British ace Lanoe Hawker's encounters on July 25 of the same year, with three aerial victories over German aircraft on that day, somewhat further northwest along the Front from where Wintgens had found success, that earned Lanoe the first VC for a British flier-and Lanoe's Lewis wasn't even synchronized, nor could it ever be.

Of course, the rifle fire that downed aircraft in 1914, even earlier than Kurt's "pioneering" engagement using E.5/15 and its synchronized Parabellum WERE amazing in themselves...though, when it's considered where military aviation went from there for the next three decades of the 20th century, Kurt Wintgens had the very first "true" fighter aircraft victory in aviation history, that sparked fighter combat for that three decade-long period of time, and had fellow German pilot Oswald Boelcke do the initial "codification" of fighter combat tactics, the year after E.5/15's first successful engagement, that is still so important in the 21st century....

...as even the most modern jet powered fighter aircraft generally still HAVE a forward-firing gun of some type on them...it's Leutnant Wintgens' combat of over ninety years ago, and Oswald Boelcke's tactics, that pioneered aerial gunnery for fighter pilots, even to this day.

Yours Sincerely,

The PIPE!