Reconnaissance Military procedure by which information is gathered about the enemy situation as well as terrain and weather conditions; it is a vital prerequisite for the decision-making processes on all levels of command. In addition to peace-time intelligence gathering, war-time reconnaissance operations were broken down according to the type of theater or battlefield into long-range, short-range and battlefield, or combat, reconnaissance. While the purpose of long-range reconnaissance was to c…

Richthofen, Manfred Baron von (May 2, 1892, Breslau – April 21, 1918, Vaux-sur-Somme near Amiens [killed in action]), German fighter pilot. Richthofen joined a Prussian Ulan regiment in 1911 after graduating from the cadet corps. He undertook patrol duties in 1914 and after the cavalry was in part transferred to the infantry in 1915, signed up to the Imperial Air Service. He was initially an observer, then a reconnaissance and bomber pilot. Between 1916 and April 1918, when he was shot down at Vaux-…

Aircraft After the Wright brothers achieved lift with the aid of a propeller driven by a combustion engine and thus in 1903 completed the first powered flight, most industrial nations saw rapid improvements taking place in the technical reliability, endurance and range of airplanes. France, as the leading European aircraft builder, possessed 100 military planes as early as 1911, while Germany had only begun training military pilots in 1910 on planes purchased from private owners. The Prussian Gen…

Immelmann, Max (September 21, 1890, Dresden – June 18, 1916, Northern France [crashed]), German airman and officer. After graduating from school and completing his training as a reserve officer in a Prussian railway regiment, Immelmann studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Dresden from 1912 to 1914. Called up for active military duty in the railway forces at the beginning of the war, he was then trained as an airplane pilot and stationed on the Western Front from 1915 onwar…

Aerial Warfare A form of waging war in and from the air with airborne or ground-based weapons against war-critical targets and the air power of the enemy, and in direct or indirect support of land or naval forces. These forms and features of a war being fought in and from the air had been contemplated and partially put into practice in the years leading up to World War I, but the key concepts were laid down by the major powers based on their aerial operations between 1914 and 1918. In the highly-developed industrial nations, with th…

Boelcke, Oswald (May 19, 1891, Giebichenstein, now part of Halle [Saale] – October 28, 1916, near Bapaume, Somme region), German fighter pilot. Initially an officer with a Prussian telegraph battalion, Boelcke became a military pilot in 1914 and was posted to a field flying unit set up for reconnaissance work on the Western Front. Beginning in 1915 he flew a single-seat fighter plane specifically designed to engage enemy aircraft, scoring a total of 40 victories. He developed standard offensive an…