Why Are Planes Important In Ww1

962 Words4 Pages

When the First World War began, not everybody really knew what an airplane was. The modern airplane at the time was still in its early stages of existence and development. It has only been about a decade since the Wright brothers had built the first successful airplane. Even so, planes had quickly become major influencers for the military and were extremely important during this time and throughout the war. During the war, these planes have been really important for a large number of reasons. The use of planes, regardless of reason proved to be very vital for every country that was involved in the war. Firstly, some planes served the purpose of bringing soldiers from one location to another, such as escort planes. This was much quicker and …show more content…

Soldiers began fitting planes for attacking right after this instance, which took place around Cer Mountain in Western Serbia and for that reason was known as the Battle for Cer. This was a battle between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, and while flying over the enemy lands, a Serbian pilot was shot from another plane. At the time, all of the planes weren’t fitted for fighting. They weren’t designed like later planes with guns, and as a result, the Serbian pilot was being shot with a pistol. The Serbian pilot, Miodrag Tomić had been able to escape but had no way to defend himself from the attacking plane aside for a pistol of his own, in which neither sides were able to do much quick damage anyway. This was the first major time that airplanes were used in terms of fighting and had basically set the standards for the way that planes were to be built afterwards. Shortly after this event took place, both sides realized that it would be too dangerous to just let the planes fly defenseless and fitted all of their aircrafts with machine guns. This instance had lead to many more where planes would be used throughout the war for the purpose of