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Rh tactics, and that aerial battleships will be evolved capable not only of fighting but of carrying the war into the enemy's country and crippling his power of resistance in the early stages of the struggle. It is in recognition of this principle that the French Military Air Service has been divided into formations the functions of which are purely ancillary to the army, and into formations whose functions it is first to establish air suprem- acy and secondly, when its attainment makes it possible, to develop the essentially offensive form of aerial war, the long- distance bombing raid. Accordingly, in addition to cooperat- ing formations, the French maintain what is analogous to the British Independent Air Force, a force composed entirely of fighters and bombers.

There is no doubt that ultimate air power must depend largely upon the place of aviation in the economic life of the community, but this does not mean that air power is focussed entirely in a flourishing civil industry. The suddenness and effectiveness that lies in aerial action must not lead to a striking force being held in constant readiness to act whenever war appears immi- nent. The manner of employment of this force, and the efficiency it displays, may have a vital bearing upon the subsequent course of the war, and no country would risk doing altogether without some form of standing military air force.

There is also every indication that civil and military air- craft will tend to develop along divergent lines, and that the civil machine will never be a factor in air supremacy excepting as an auxiliary. The most important factor in the civil machine is productive economy, whereas the designer of service craft strives for destructive performance; and individual aircraft can hardly be equally efficient for both purposes. (A. W. H. E. W.)

VI. GERMAN AIR FORCES. Before the World War, the German military air service, in splitting off from its parent body, the Pio- neers, had been made administratively part of the Communication Troops. From Oct. 1912 the Flying Troops had formed a separate entity within the Communication service. Nevertheless, when it took the field in Aug. 1914, and for some months thereafter, they were still nominally under the inspector-general of Communication Troops, an arrangement which worked badly in practice besides tending to prevent the growth of esprit de corps in the flying service. It was not till Aug. 25 1915 that it was freed from this control.

But already on March II 1915 all German formations serving at the front had been placed under a " Chef des Feldflugwesens," and a month later this officer (Col. Thomsen) was made the official superior of all other army services as well, his functions including control of all motor transport included in the air establishment.

About the same time a staff officer for aviation was appointed to the H.Q. of each army, but it was not until Nov. 1916 that this officer was renamed " Kommandeur " and placed in executive com- mand of the air forces within his province.

Somewhat earlier than this, on Oct. 8 1916, Gen. von Hoeppnerhad been appointed " Kommandierender General " of the military air forces, with Thomsen as his chief of the staff. As in the German army system a " Kommandierender " (i.e. Commander of an Army Corps and its Region) enjoyed wide powers, both under the laws and under the regulations, and as the office of chief-of-staff likewise carried with it known and definite powers, the status of the air force was for the first time thereby assured. Moreover, the commanding general, not being under any army or group of armies H.Q., had direct access to G.H.Q. From this point, the organic development of the air force went on straightforwardly. But it is interesting to note that even in the German system, with all its sense of order and organization, conservatism sufficed to delay the consummation till nearly two and a half years after the outbreak of war. 1

In spite of army proposals however, no single command was ever created in German military and naval air forces, which remained wholly separate to the end. One retarding influence was the par- ticularism of the various German states. The Wurttemberg Government, for instance, gave formal orders to its own aviation depot unit not to supply flying officers to any but Wurttemberg units.

The working organization in the field as finally developed was as follows: The commanding general had his own H.Q., and reported direct to the chief of the general staff of the army. His immediate air service subordinates were the " Kofls (Kommandeur der Lufts- triebkraften)," one to each army, with as above mentioned, occa- sional groupings of the forces of several armies under one " Kofi." Under his orders, flights of aircraft were commanded by group

1 Shortly after the creation of the " Commanding General," some grouping of air forces within the group of armies was effected by making the " Air Force Commanders " of one of its armies re- sponsible for coordination of effort, and to a certain extent for dis- tributing forces as well.

commanders (instituted 1917) who gave instructions to the flight commanders and through whom their liaisons with the military command, and especially the artillery, passed.

At each corps H.Q. a staff officer looked after both operations and liaison.

In the earlier years of aviation, the confidence of the German authorities and public in the lighter-than-air ship retarded the growth of aviation. But in 1912 the dangers of further neglecting the aeroplane were realized, and an active propaganda resulted in a national subscription for the manufacture of aeroplanes and the training of pilots. In the autumn of the same year an army flying school was provisionally established and this became permanent in the spring of 1913. At the moment of mobilization 254 pilots and 271 observers were available.

The following summary of the development of German aviation units during the war, while necessarily brief, will serve to' show how the needs revealed by war experience were successively met by changes of organization.

In the beginning, German aviation units like others were for general service, the same machines (two-seater fighters) serving all purposes, reconnaissance, spotting, bombing and fighting.

In the middle of 1915 came the first specialization of functions the separating out of air-fighting elements. These units (two-seater fighters) were originally known as " battle squadrons " and had the r&le of barring the German froat line against Allied aircraft as well as such bombing as was then done. But the necessities of aerial combat very soon produced a further subdivision on this side, " Fokker " flights (of single-seaters, equivalent to British " scouts ") undertak- ing the offensive air battle and the residue the protection barrage and the bombing. Presently they too subdivided into protective flights and bombing flights (the latter being grouped later in squadrons).

When the fighting elements separated off from the reconnaissance elements, the latter (organized in flights only and allotted as re- quired to groups) were limited to their proper functions, and a further specialization presently came about by which artillery flights were separated from reconnaissance flights. In these artillery flights the personnel was largely, if not entirely, drawn from the artillery, but their special character did not prevent them from being used occasionally for photographic work. Many, though not all, artillery flights were equipped with wireless telegraphy apparatus.

The high-fighting " Fokker abteilung," always increasing in num- bers as it became more and more evident that the British policy of offensive protection was the true one, developed into the " pursuit flight " (Jagdstaffel). Occasionally, a number of these pursuit flights were grouped into a semi-permanent squadron under a leader of note, e.g. Richthofen ; a squadron of this kind was colloquially and very aptly called a " circus," both on account of the acrobatic powers of its members and the fact that it moved up and down the front as its services were required to obtain local control of the air. 2 The old " Kampfgeschwader," charged with protective barrage and with bombing, was also subdivided into two parts the so-called pro- tective flight, whose duty was local escort for friendly, and local barrage against enemy reconnaissance machines, and the pure bomber, for whom more and more powerful machines were evolved and whose radius of action was constantly increased. 1

Lastly, the protective flight, whose defensive function was dis- credited, became a battle flight (SMachtstaffel). The practice of low-flying for direct intervention in a ground battle had been growing steadily since the battle of the Somme, and in the German and Allied offensives of 1918 it attained a maximum. In contrast to the British custom of training and trusting flights of the reconnaissance type (called contact patrols) to carry out this dangerous duty, the Germans treated it as an essentially combatant function, and used for it a branch of the aviation service which had always be- longed to the fighting as distinct from the reconnaissance side. In the last phase some of the battle flights had armoured machines.

On the combatant side therefore, German aviation was finally classified into three branches: pursuit flights (high-fighting for command of the air, with 18 machines per flight); bombing squad- rons (long-distance bombing, with about 24 machines per squadron) ; battle flights (low-fighting in connexion with ground operations, i.e. bombing and machine-gunning of troops and transport, with six to twelve machines per flight, average about eight). One other type of fighting unit was created for air defence at home. It was known as the " Kampfeinsitzerstafel " (single-seater battle flight), and re- stricted to local defence of munition areas, etc.

From statistics given in Neumann's Die deutschen Luftstreitkrafte, it appears that, apart from reserve machines, the Germans em- ployed for various purposes during the war 220 machines in 1914, 480 in 1915, about 1,100 in 1916, about 1,300 in 1917, and about 3,500

by his name and the number I as a permanent organization. Two other squadrons were formed in the summer of 1918.
 * After Richthofen's death his squadron was officially designated

the ultimate purpose of bombing England from Calais, when that port should have been occupied by the Germans. The rapidity of air evolution in the war is well shown by the fact that within a year of that date, London was bombed by an aeroplane based on Ghent.
 * The original bombing squadron was a group set aside in 1915 for