The Airco DH.5 fighter aircrafts

I saw these Airco DH.5 fighter aircrafts in the Miniature World at Victoria, British Columbia. They were in display in front of their tent-like hangars.

The Airco DH.5 was a British First World War single-seat fighter aircraft. It was one of the first British fighter so designed as to allow a forward-firing machine gun to fire through the propeller arc more effectively than the older mechanical gears. Although developed rapidly, by the time of its operational introduction, other superior aircraft were available and its service life was short. These DH.5 served as combat planes at that time.

It is interesting to know that before this, aeroplanes were used to find out where the front-line of a battle was. Late in 1914 the lines between the Germans invading France and the Allies stretched from the North Sea to the Alps. The initial “war of movement” largely ceased, and the front became static.

Three main functions of short range reconnaissance squadrons had emerged by March 1915.

[1] The first was photographic reconnaissance – building up a complete mosaic map of the enemy trench system. The first air cameras used glass plates, but did not have sufficient resolution.

[2] Artillery “spotting” enabled the ranging of artillery on targets invisible to the gunners. Radio telephony had not been invented, so communication was a problem. By March 1915, a two-seater plane on “artillery observation” duties was equipped with a primitive radio transmitter transmitting the clicks of a Morse key, but had no receiver. The artillery battery signalled to the aircraft by laying strips of white cloth on the ground in prearranged patterns. These duties were shared with the observation balloon, tethered to the ground. Balloonists could communicate directly with their batteries by field telephone, but were obviously far less flexible in locating targets and reporting the fall of shot.

[3]“Contact patrol” work attempted to follow the course of a battle by communicating with advancing infantry while flying over the battlefield. The technology of the period did not permit radio contact, and methods of signalling were necessarily crude, and included dropping messages from the aircraft. Soldiers were naturally reluctant to reveal their positions to aircraft, as it was difficult for them to distinguish between friend and foe.