Another topic here got me thinking.
I am a serious WW1 aero-geek but mainly its with the planes, the men, and the squadrons. I sometimes feel I lack of a "big picture" view of the entire air war.

With the R.F.C. vs Germany the Germans always posted the bulk of their airpower (squadrons) against the British because they percieved them to be the bigger threat. This question is framed as "accomplishment of objectives" for the two forces and not as a kill ratio.

If you look at the air war as numbers of planes shot down the Germans would probably be declared the winner as (I am assuming) they downed more Britsh planes on a monthly basis than they lost - generally speaking.

But it would seem to me that if we look at the air war as "objectives completed" (what the air forces were supposed to be doing) that the British always got the job done - admittedly suffering huge losses at times - yet accomplishing eventually what they wanted; what the force mission was.

If the morning recon or bombing patrol was intercepted and mauled then they would try again in the afternoon or next day. Suffering huges losses yet alway accomplishing the mission and, ultimately, doing what they wanted and needed to in the air from 1915 to 1918 and wearing the Germans down at the same time.

Any "big picture" historians disagree with this thought?

The Germans were never able to really stop the Entente air forces on the Western Front from performing their duties. There's much talk about the heavy casualties suffered by the RFC in Bloody April, but in the end, even that was a defeat for the German air force. The RFC kept going, no matter the casualties.

The British and French air forces had a clear numerical superiority. By the war's end, the French had the biggest air force in the world. Germany simply couldn't produce as many aircraft as the Entente powers, with the effects of the blockade becoming worse the longer the war went on.

In many ways, it's not all that different from what happened in WW2. The Luftwaffe pilots did incredible things, but that wasn't enough when Germany was facing so many powerful enemies.

Good points.

It's true that we think of the Germans and all their Jastas and aces. But the reality was that the British were the first to wage a true air campaign. British losses were so high because they carried the war into enemy territory. The Germans were able to make the British pay a steep price, but never to prevent the RFC/RAF from carrying on. Even as the British were taking horrible losses at the Somme, the RFC was operating over the lines, with heavy losses but with success.

The Germans realized this in their studies of air power completed after the war. That is why Luftwaffe doctrine was so different, and so offensively oriented.

If you believe the( air)war was British forces vs German forces, yes, it is not a correct overall picture.
By the way, consider the label "British frontline" as a generic, non historical term.
Now, for the heavy losses inflicted by the Jastas to the Entente forces and particularly to the RFC in Flanders in april 1917,the reason is the RFC had to bring every support and reco plane over German held territory to support the operations on the ground.

Duke, there was no such simple measurement like "who is the winner by victories".
The German Jastas were outnumbered from the beginning on by the Entente units,
and they never had any real air superiority.
They could only do their best in fending off the incoming reconaissance aircraft
and their escorts. The enemy was coming to them, so they hardly ever had to cross
the lines much. But even then their numbers were so small, that many Staffeln
had to move quite often, to receive the enemy where their operations happened.
In the other areas there were huge holes in the aerial defense.

Fighting over own territory gave the Germans the advantage, that they lost far
less men through forced landings. A British or French pilot would become a PoW,
if he had to land in German-held territory.
Also, the British escorts had a harder roll to play cause they had to stay with
the two-seaters, while their German opponents could attack them and withdraw
like they needed.

Outnumbered already from the beginning on, the situation went even worse for
the Germans with the progression of the war. The Entente could simply throw
so many more planes and pilots into battle.
When the Michael offensive failed to gain the upper hand and decide the war,
the whole matter was lost for Germany. It was only a question of time.

[quote=kaa If you believe the( air)war was British forces vs German forces, yes, it is not a correct overall picture.
By the way, consider the label "British frontline" as a generic, non historical term.
Now, for the heavy losses inflicted by the Jastas to the Entente forces and particularly to the RFC in Flanders in april 1917,the reason is the RFC had to bring every support and reco plane over German held territory to support the operations on the ground.
[/quote]

I wasn't speaking poorly of the French Forces, or other Allied forces involved, kaa I just know very little of "Armee de la Air" (sure I spelled that wrong) vs the Germans.

Trenchard saw the air war as the same as the ground war. BE on the offensive..take the ground and control the battlefield. Except it was in the Sky. He didn't want the Germans to have any rest and to be put on the defensive at all times. He saw the control of the skies as paramount for the defeat of the Germans.

I wasn't speaking poorly of the French Forces, or other Allied forces involved, kaa I just know very little of "Armee de la Air" (sure I spelled that wrong) vs the Germans. [/quote]

Dunkel!I surely did not want to be rough or ironic, sorry ! it was maybe too straight as a sentence (and my English lacks some subtilities and that's an understatement!) I was just meaning what I've written, that to have a correct overall picture of WW1, one must take in consideration the French involvement on their own soil and it's true that is not well documented by English speaking authors.

O.T The French ground forces during WW1 where superb soldiers. Sadly the WW2 performance has tarnished the view of the French soldier to be useless and cowards which is so far removed from the truth as they have a proud fighting tradition pre WW2.

French leadership on WWII was obviously . . . lacking. But the French soldiers fought better than they are generally given credit for. German casualties per 100,000 troops engaged during the six weeks of the French campaign were about the same as they were during the first six weeks of the Russian campaign.

Either the French soldiers were putting up a better fight, or the Russians soldiers early on were putting up a poor fight.

The difference was that the French campaign was over in six weeks; the fighting in the east just kept going.

BTW, German casualties rates were highest in 1939 fighting the Poles.

I read several hints in German WW1 pilot reports, that they regarded
the French flyers as "laurig" (lurky), but the British as "spirited".

They could not know back then, what we can read from the historians
today: that the French flyers simply had quite different orders.

Going off topic, but the British army in 1940 didn't do any better against the Wehrmacht in the battle of France. Without the Channel, the Panzers would have rolled into London in no time. It was simply a question of really poor strategy and leadership by the Allied commanders. The German attack through the Ardennes caught the Allies completely by surprise and they were never able to recover from that disaster. The Allies were expecting a repeat of the Great War, but the Germans had other plans and tactics.

However, the ordinary Allied soldiers in France fought well in 1940 - the casualties they suffered are enough to confirm that. If everybody had simply surrendered like you often hear ignorant people claim, it wouldn't have been such a terribly bloody campaign.

Going back to topic. It's understandable that the English-speaking people know mostly about the actions of the British army in WW1. If you wish to learn more about the other forces, you need to study their languages and read their books. Unfortunately it seems that many historians (not only English-speaking ones!) that write about WW1 don't speak too many languages, so often they are using only sources written in their own language. Obviously that can create a rather one-sided view of the events.

One of the most important and often forgotten aspect of French efforts in the Great War is their massive aircraft industry. If the United States was the arsenal of democracy in WW2, France was the arsenal of all the Entente air forces in WW1. They made a huge amount of aircraft and engines (or others built them under license) that were used by all the other Entente nations. The Entente air forces would have been quite different without this production and research and development work by the French.

Engines were the critical element in the air war. The Allies (thanks largely as you say to the French) had plenty. The Germans never had enough. It was one thing to expand aircraft frame production. It was another to expand engine production.

Possibly the best judgement that I've ever read about the war from the German POV. Like WWII, WWI was all about resources and the allies had more.

This year, we should all start trying to educate our communities about this war. I live in Lancashire in north west England; Accrington and its Pals are just a stone's throw away.

We can show people just how mad and brave these airmen were, and just how horrible it was for the infantry as the allied generals learned all the brand new tricks of trade at the cost of thousands of men.

Of course, once they got it right, they defeated the axis forces, but it meant many a French or British village with a very (un)healthy roll call on the local cenotaph. As a local councillor, I'm proud to step out every year to acknowledge the people who died; I'm not happy with the apparent glorification (as I see it) of the war as a noble one for peace and democracy, when we all know it was anything but.

War, especially in modern times, is always about resources and traditionally in a "classic war" the one with the most usually wins. Don't begin a war if you don't have the men, material, and the will to see it through.

And since we are kind of OT I will have to disagree with your last thoughts but they are your own and you are welcome to them.

Sorry Olham...other posts made me realize that I kind of missed yours.

Yes, all of your points are valid and your reasoning sound - I was just dealing with the final result.

No problem - I often see much later, that I had received an answer to a post,
which seemed not to have been there, when I first checked.
Sometimes that worries me, so it does me good to see it happens to others too.

This.

Nobody seems to know/remember/or mention that the Germans kicked the British right off the continent. At the water's edge the British said "see you" to France, left them to fend for themselves, spun the defeat as a "victory" ("The Miracle of Dunkirk"), and today the French are considered "cowards" for surrendering. I fault neither the French for surrendering nor the British for evacuating. No army was going to beat the Wermacht in May 1940. It took the combined efforts of a large portion of the entire world almost six years to defeat them.

To answer the first post: Regarding the air war between the British and Germans, my consideration is the Germans often had tactical superiority and the British always had strategic superiority.

And I am sure that is reflected in the kill ratios no doubt.
But would you agree, to make it a little simplistic, that the RFC ultimately had their way...at a horrible price.

Since you are a professional historian I would be curious to hear your opinion or summation of it.

Yes. The British never stopped coming, despite their losses. Their ground forces needed those recce photos and nothing was going to stop that. Tactically the Germans would dominate a particular area or time frame--April 1917, or September 1918, for example--and make things very difficult, but strategically the British had more planes, more men, more materials, etc. They were never dissuaded from coming over to do their jobs, no matter how horrible a previous day's losses might have been.

The Germans won many battles, but that doesn't matter if the other guys win the war.

If throwing pink bodies into the meat grinder is a winning strategy, then, yes, the RFC did a great job. With promotions for officers at stake, they had no choice but to keep sending more.

In terms of making efficient use of available resources the Central Powers was more successful than the Entente, both militarily and financially. They killed more of their enemy than they lost, and they spent less money to do it.

Yet they failed to accomplish their mission of stopping the RFC.

There is nothing more expensive than the 2nd best air force.

But they lost. In the end, that's all that matters. The German Empire collapsed, the Austrian Empire collapsed, the Ottoman Empire collapsed. You don't get consolation prizes in wars.

There was no lack of ruthlessness in any country in that war.

Hi Duke,

You're right of course - in the end might does make right in war, and so it did in WWI.

We'll have to disagree about the aims of the war from the Allied side (and even perhaps the Axis side), but from my reading, it had absolutely feck all to do with democracy and decency and an awful lot more to do with hanging onto empires and populations, as, I would contend, the end of the war and its aftermath proved only too well.

But that's one for another time and another thread.

Also the Entente was often on the offensive so casualties higher. Certainly so in the air war, deep into enemy territory, heading home against an easterly wind and so on.

One way to boost the kill rate is to get almost 60,000 casualties charging over the top into machine guns in a day on the Somme.

Terribly bloodied and hallowed ground!! I hope we never see the likes of it again!!

WWI started with five great monarchies/empires and ended with one if you discount the American Empire (which was never called that of course). This explains why the British were so worried about the Bolsheviks in the early 20s. And then they sat on their hands and waited for WWII to happen.

And I have a few books from the late 30s which show how complacent the British aircraft industry, the RAF and the Government were about the threat from Germany and even more how they disastrously underestimated the aircraft and pilots of the Japanese. Statements like "one British pilot is better than six Japanese". Tell that to the US Navy and those in Singapore.