World War I

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World War I (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918) was a conflict initiated by European powers which engulfed the world in war.

Accelerated the development of aviation. Germany and France had the largest air forces—about six hundred aircraft each—at the war's beginning. Britain had 82 airplanes, mostly French, and no spare parts. Italy and Russia made some contributions.

Germany's air force was much more standardized than the French, which had procured its planes individually from different companies.[1] [The German airplanes were therefore, presumably, easier to maintain and more predictable for pilots.] Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft worked closely with the German government, receiving ample funding to expand its operations and ultimately contribute 46% of all engines produced during the war.[2]

With the 1917 entry of the US into the war airplane construction expanded enormously. (See 1917 Army Aviation Bill.) The US also developed a standard aircraft engine called the Liberty motor and produced 24,000 in eighteen months.[3]

1918 news blurb in Aerial Age Weekly describes peak of aerial combat and bombing near the end of the war.

The use of airplanes in war dampened popular enthusiasm for aviation.[4]

Patents in WWI

See also Wartime patenting.

Patents in general were interrupted and fell by perhaps 40%. See Chachereau and Galvez-Behar, 2021, aka [1]. Using the aero database we can check if aero fell more than that.

On that same subject, use this article: https://books.openedition.org/igpde/4954

See also

References

  1. Freudenthal, 1940, The Aviation Business, pp. 24–25.
  2. Bellon, 1990, Mercedes in peace and war, p. 87.
  3. Guggenheim, 1930, The Seven Skies, p. 46. "Immediately upon the entry of the United States into the World War in April, 1917, the Army and Navy Joint Technical Advisory Board, basing their estimate upon an army of one million men which the War Department expected to place in the field, recommended the immediate manufacture of three thousand airplanes. After conference with the English and French missions, however, it was decided to manufacture twenty thousand airplanes instead of three thousand. England at this time was losing about as many airplanes per month as she could manufacture. France needed planes badly, and so did Italy and Belgium."
  4. Hallion, 2003, p. 337. "In the spring of 1914, the airplane was a thing of wonder and hope, and even after war broke out, it briefly enthralled those who saw it: resting in a trench outside Antwerp, the poet Rupert Brooke took note of 'a lovely glittering aeroplane’' that passed overhead. But by the fall of 1914, when an anonymous French poliu saw an artillery-spotting German Taube puttering over a road, it had become quite something else: 'There,' he bitterly exclaimed, is that wretched bird which haunts us!' In less than a year, the aeroplane had gone from a peacetime marvel, a symbol of the best of humanity, to a fearsome tool of war, a bringer of destruction and death.'"