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00:01The classic fighters of World War One were tough, deadly flying machines.
00:10Both sides spread terror with giant strategic bombers.
00:17Spy flights gathered intelligence about the enemy.
00:24Great artillery guns were directed from the air.
00:30Before the war, flying was a young science.
00:33It was hard enough to keep these fragile, dangerous flying machines in the air, let alone use them as weapons.
00:42This is the story of how military aviation in less than a decade grew from a vague theory to a
00:50comprehensive system of warfare.
01:18Before the war, the French army led the world in military aviation.
01:22It had about 250 aircraft.
01:26It staged exercises to simulate the conditions of war and explore the potential of the aeroplane.
01:38Planes made tentative steps towards combat.
01:41In Mexico in 1913, two American mercenaries had the first dogfight.
01:47An Italian pilot carried out reconnaissance and dropped bombs on enemy Turks in Libya.
01:57But when the first world war began, military aviation was little more than a set of theories.
02:14When Germany declared war on Russia and France in August 1914,
02:19the major forces of both sides were traditional infantry, cavalry and heavy artillery.
02:26But in 1914, for the first time in history, heavier than air flying machines were available for warfare.
02:34They were put to use right from the start.
02:40Eyes capable of flying behind enemy lines could see where artillery shells were falling and direct gunners onto their targets.
02:55They could also see enemy troop movements.
02:58In Belgium, in the third week of the war, a French reconnaissance pilot saw streams of men in grey uniforms.
03:06They were German troops.
03:09His warning came just in time to allow the British force to retreat to safety.
03:21Two weeks later, in northern France, a Voisin biplane prepared for a routine flight.
03:27Up to that time, no aircraft had shot another down.
03:31Rifles and handguns had been ineffective.
03:35The observer, sitting in the front cockpit, was armed with a Hotchkiss machine gun.
03:46In the sky over Reims, the pilot saw a German two-seater and chased it.
03:57The observer fired his machine gun.
04:00And the German dropped in flames.
04:03The world's first victim of aerial combat.
04:07In November, three Avros of the Royal Naval Air Service conducted a successful long-distance bombing raid.
04:15They hit the Zeppelin sheds at Lake Constance in Germany.
04:19They damaged one Zeppelin and destroyed a gas works.
04:26By the end of 1914, aircraft had pioneered most of the standard missions of military aviation today.
04:33They were accepted as an essential part of 20th century warfare.
04:41As the war progressed, speeds would more than double.
04:47Aircraft range, size and deadliness would increase enormously.
04:53The needs of war accelerated development far beyond the pace of the early years of flight.
04:59But that development would not have been possible without the foundations laid by aviation's pioneers.
05:15In December 1903, the Wright brothers made the world's first successful powered flight.
05:22They continued to develop their ideas at their own pace, unaffected by experiments in flight on the other side of
05:29the Atlantic.
05:32In Paris, Gabriel Boissin was among those who doubted stories of the Wright's achievements.
05:40In 1905, Boissin was using the river Seine as a runway to help him launch a series of gliders.
05:48He was building and testing them for a syndicate dedicated to the development of French aviation.
05:57At a time when the Wright's were making controlled powered flights,
06:02Boissin was using a high powered motorboat to tow his gliders into the air.
06:16Boissin would go on to design many great aircraft of the First World War.
06:21But in 1905, he still had much to learn.
06:28In Paris, a prize of $10,000 was offered for a flight around a one kilometer course.
06:35One of the sponsors, Ernest Archdeacon, challenged the Wright's.
06:39It will assuredly not tire you very much to make a brief visit to France simply to collect this little
06:46prize.
06:47The Wright's did not visit Paris.
06:50They didn't have to.
06:52They were leading the world and intended to sell their invention to a national government that saw its potential.
07:00In the meantime, others in Paris were making attempts to fly.
07:04Among them was Brazilian born Alberto Santos Dumont.
07:09Santos Dumont was famous for balloon flights and experiments with gliders.
07:17In November 1906, he took his flying machine to the Bagatelle, this playing field near the Bois de Boulogne.
07:32He'd already tried to fly with the help of an airship to lift his machine off the ground.
07:38It was not successful.
07:41On November the 12th, the French Aviation Fraternity was there in force to witness another attempt.
07:48Without the airship.
07:54Santos Dumont had to stand up to fly the machine.
07:59He coaxed it into the air.
08:01And in 21 seconds covered a distance of more than 700 feet.
08:13It was the first time a European had taken off and flown convincingly.
08:20In Paris, Santos Dumont was hailed as the conquering hero.
08:26But Wilbur Wright did not share the general enthusiasm.
08:34We do not believe there is one chance in a hundred that anyone will have a machine of practical usefulness
08:39within five years.
08:40But just 14 months later, Henri Farman, a dashing young racing driver, would prove Wilbur wrong.
08:49In January 1908, Farman, in this machine built by the Voisin brothers, attempted a flight around a one kilometer course
08:58to win the $10,000 prize.
09:04He succeeded. The prize was his.
09:08And so was the adulation of France.
09:16It was too much for the Wrights to ignore.
09:19They had already made a flight almost 40 times as long as Farman's.
09:25In the summer of 1908, Wilbur sailed for Paris to show the French what he could do.
09:33He set up operations at a racetrack near Le Mans, southwest of Paris.
09:43On Saturday, August the 8th, a crowd gathered to witness Wilbur's first flight in Europe.
09:50It lasted one minute and 45 seconds, slightly longer than Farman's prize-winning kilometer.
09:58But it was Wilbur's control that impressed French flyers.
10:08The Wrights' influence on French aircraft design, especially their control system, was profound.
10:22But tragedy struck the Wrights.
10:25Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge was killed at Fort Myer, Virginia in September 1908.
10:31He was a passenger in the plane Orville was demonstrating to the U.S. Army.
10:36It was the first death in the history of military aviation.
10:44French aircraft design progressed.
10:47By 1909, the idea of a flight across the English Channel was feasible.
10:53The British Daily Mail offered a prize of £1,000 for the first successful cross-channel flight.
11:00Wilbur Wright was not interested.
11:03But others were.
11:07On July the 19th, French pilot Hubert Laton made an attempt in his Antoinette monoplane.
11:14He flew from the little village of Sangatte, south of Calais.
11:26Over the Channel, his engine failed.
11:29The Antoinette dropped a thousand feet into the sea.
11:33Laton sat on the floating wreckage, lit a cigarette, and waited to be rescued.
11:44Laton was not daunted.
11:45I wasn't lucky this time, but the Channel will be rescued.
11:48It will be conquered.
11:51He resolved to try again.
11:59Louis Blariot had made a fortune selling car accessories, and spent it on aeroplanes.
12:06He intended to beat Laton across the Channel, but had burned his leg badly on his plane's exhaust.
12:14Six days after Laton's attempt, conditions on the French coast were calm.
12:19The competition rules said the flight must begin after sunrise.
12:23Sunrise was due at 4.41 a.m.
12:27This monument marks Blariot's take-off point, just south of Calais.
12:34As he waited, Blariot's mind raced.
12:38What was going to happen?
12:40Would I make it to Dover?
12:41Now I thought only of my machine.
12:43The engine, the propeller, everything was going now.
12:47Everything vibrating.
12:50At the signal, the crew let go.
12:53I was up.
13:02At first the flight was very smooth.
13:05The Anzani engine of Blariot's plane ran perfectly.
13:09And he forgot about the pain from his injured leg.
13:13But as Blariot made out the English coastline, the wind strengthened, and mist obscured his view.
13:21A stroke of luck allowed him to locate the opening in the cliffs he'd chosen as his landing spot.
13:30The landing was rough, but it didn't matter.
13:35He'd made it across the channel.
13:44Blariot scored an immense triumph.
13:47The 21-mile flight from France to England took only 37 minutes.
13:52But his achievement had symbolic meaning beyond time, speed, and distance.
13:58The world was confronted with the concept that aircraft could cross national boundaries.
14:05An island like Britain no longer had a protective moat that could be defended by a mighty navy.
14:25The aircraft in which Blariot made his channel crossing was his Model 11.
14:30It was to become one of the most popular and effective designs in aviation.
14:43This Blariot, from the old Rhinebeck Museum in New York, has an Anzani engine similar to the one that powered
14:50Blariot's historic flight.
14:55The soundness of the Blariot's design and construction would keep it breaking records and flying as a military aircraft beyond
15:031915.
15:14Seeing one in flight today gives a graphic idea of the flimsiness of aircraft construction at the time, and the
15:22concentration and skill it took to stay in the air.
15:29Blariot's channel crossing was the first aviation feat to overshadow the achievements of the Wright brothers, at least in the
15:36public eye.
15:40In the meantime, the Wrights were getting new customers.
15:44Early in 1909, the Italian military bought a Wright airplane, and hired Wilbur to teach two Italian officers to fly
15:51it.
15:53This film was shot on that visit.
15:56It shows Italian political and military personnel watching one of Wilbur Wright's flights with a passenger on board.
16:06On the same visit, this film was shot.
16:08It's believed to be the first motion picture ever taken from an aircraft.
16:18Later the same year, back at Fort Myer in Virginia,
16:22Orville Wright completed the task he'd begun in 1908,
16:26satisfying the US Army Signal Corps' requirements for a military aircraft.
16:36This time the military flyer passed all its tests of speed and endurance.
16:42This actual aircraft still exists.
16:46It's on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
16:55The Wrights now led the military aviation race.
16:58But there were other contenders.
17:02Designer-builder Glenn Curtis was becoming competitive.
17:06The Wrights didn't like it.
17:08They tried lawsuits to stop Curtis building and selling his designs.
17:16This is Reims, the old cathedral city northeast of Paris.
17:21In the summer of 1909, an event held there excited both the public and the military
17:27about aviation's potential.
17:30On Betani Plain, where the Reims military air base is today,
17:34these fields were cleared.
17:36An aeropolis with grandstands, hangars, and an air racing course was built.
17:43The event was called the Grand Week of Aviation,
17:46and hundreds of thousands of people came.
17:50Royalty, nobility, and the powerful of politics and military flocked to see the greatest names in aviation
17:56compete against each other.
18:03Reims Week demonstrated the speed, maneuverability, and endurance of the airplane as no one had seen it before.
18:11It convinced many military experts that aircraft were potential weapons.
18:16Bleriot was there, and Laton, and Gabrielle Boissin, and Henri Farmon.
18:23From America, Glenn Curtis was there.
18:26But the Wright brothers were not.
18:29There were some Wright aircraft flown by other pilots.
18:33The highlight for the thousands of spectators was a showdown between Louis Bleriot and Glenn Curtis
18:39for the Gordon Bennett Trophy.
18:42Bleriot was the hot favorite, but Curtis won by just six seconds at world record speed, 46 miles an hour.
18:55Reims Week showed that aircraft were practical, maneuverable, and by the standards of the time, fast.
19:02David Lloyd George, later to become Prime Minister of Britain, summarized its significance.
19:09Flying machines are no longer toys and dreams. They are an established fact.
19:19The Wright brothers continued a legal battle with Glenn Curtis, trying to protect their control system patents.
19:29They became obsessed with litigation against Curtis and others.
19:34Their progress slowed.
19:37They were overtaken by their competitors.
19:43This Curtis D is similar to Glenn Curtis's Reims aircraft.
19:48The ailerons, used by Curtis for lateral control, are worked by the pilot's shoulders.
19:55Small surfaces between the wings oppose each other to make the aircraft bank.
20:00It was an attempt to avoid the Wright's patent on wing warping,
20:04in which banking was controlled by twisting the whole wing.
20:09It's a great cable.
20:11No, this cable's in good shape here.
20:16Like many other aircraft at the time, this one had an elevator in front of the pilot,
20:21to control climbing and diving.
20:36It was a pusher, meaning that the propeller was at the rear.
20:40The person swinging the prop to start the engine,
20:43had to climb inside a virtual wire cage,
20:46and hope he didn't trip on the way out.
20:57Glenn Curtis and the Wrights suffered from the fact that flying was not fashionable
21:01among American military officers.
21:04Politicians were not lobbied for money to support it.
21:08American military aircraft didn't evolve as quickly as their European counterparts.
21:29Some Curtis aircraft would achieve distinction in the Great War.
21:33They would include a trainer, the famous Jenny, and a successful line of flying boats.
21:38The name of Wright wouldn't figure at all.
21:47As military aviation bogged down in America, the story across the Atlantic was different.
21:56People flocked to aviation events.
21:59They subscribed large amounts of money to help its development.
22:02The public's enthusiasm was shared by the military.
22:09Aviation was seen as a new and dangerous sport,
22:13with strong appeal to the dashing and influential military officer class.
22:18Military influence persuaded governments to spend money on aviation.
22:24Established manufacturers prospered, and new ones appeared.
22:33This elegant monoplane is a French Henriot.
22:37Its layout is similar to the Blériot and the Antoinette.
22:41It has conventional tail surfaces and a single wing, all covered with stretched cloth.
22:56But its fuselage borrows from the art of the boat builder.
23:00Its wood, constructed in exactly the same way as a skiff used in rowing races.
23:15Building a strong fuselage was relatively simple.
23:19Attaching monoplane wings to the fuselage, with equal strength, was more of a problem.
23:26Wire bracing was a partial answer.
23:35The REO was a wing warper, patterned on the ideas of the Wright brothers.
23:41Each wing twisted to make the plane bank.
23:44Wings that twisted could not also have structural rigidity.
24:13In Europe, the monoplane was fashionable before the Great War.
24:17But most of the significant aircraft produced between 1914 and 1918 would be biplanes.
24:26Monoplanes suffered structural failures.
24:29It was difficult to make them really strong.
24:32Engineers found it easier to design biplanes that could withstand the forces of battle.
24:43Flying these aircraft was dangerous.
24:46Pilots were inexperienced, and control was difficult.
24:50Even before aircraft became involved in warfare, they took many lives.
24:58Few generals in the armies of Europe had any idea of the way this fragile new toy could be used
25:05in conjunction with troops and artillery on the ground.
25:09That was all still to come.
25:20This is the old Blairiot aeronautique factory in Paris.
25:24By 1910, Louis Blairiot, aviation pioneer, was fast becoming a prosperous aircraft manufacturer.
25:38The Blairiot 11 continued to be a success.
25:41It established speed records.
25:44It flew to high altitudes and over great mountains.
25:48There were close calls.
25:51It was all a grand adventure.
26:03Pilots were seen as heroes.
26:06They were people of great daring, courage, and a growing level of skill.
26:13This is Adolphe Pegu, a Blairiot test pilot known to the press as the foolhardy one.
26:26In 1913, Pegu set out to become the first pilot to parachute out of his plane.
26:32He intended to reach his planned height, deploy the parachute, and allow it to drag him out of the cockpit.
26:45It worked on the first attempt, but I received a good whack of the stabilizer on the shoulder.
26:53Pegu expected his Blairiot to crash straight into the ground once he left the cockpit.
26:57But it didn't.
26:59He watched it descend.
27:01My old crate did tricks on its own.
27:06It occurred to Pegu that he could learn to control the plane's involuntary maneuvers.
27:16He trained himself by hanging upside down.
27:20He strengthened his Blairiot to withstand extra forces.
27:23He practiced in private, before his first public show.
27:36He was not the first to perform a loop.
27:40But Pegu was the first to make a well-planned attempt to explore the extremes of aircraft maneuverability.
27:49To play with the elements of the air in any position and for any length of time.
27:54To handle all the treacheries of the atmosphere.
27:58And to put myself back on the ground gracefully, with calm and confidence.
28:03That is my supreme joy.
28:08It was also the joy of the great crowds that came to watch him.
28:12And of the many pilots who strove to imitate him and improve on his techniques.
28:19He generated a new confidence among his peers.
28:23Without knowing it at the time, he laid the foundation for maneuvers that would be soon used in battle by
28:29the first combat pilots.
28:30In a war that would transform aviation into a potent weapon.
28:40In 1913, Roland Garros, an eminent French pilot, made a non-stop 500 mile flight across the Mediterranean.
28:50To neighboring powers like Germany, the offensive potential of aviation became obvious.
28:57Antony Fokker, the brilliant young Dutch designer, had moved to Germany.
29:02He and other German aircraft builders like Albatross and LVG, borrowed freely from French designs.
29:18Germany also bought manufacturing rights for the Austrian Tauber monoplane.
29:25French experiments in arming aircraft included this unlikely machine gun placement in a Depardusse monoplane.
29:33The gunner stood in the nose, so the bullets would clear the propeller arc.
29:39Darts, called flechettes, designed to be dropped on the enemy, were said to pierce a soldier from head to toe.
29:49France held clear leadership in heavy-than-air technology.
29:53But Germany had the edge in balloons and rigid airships.
30:00Airships were extremely effective in promoting German national prestige.
30:13Record-setting international flights by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin raised a crucial question of international law.
30:22Who owns the air?
30:25And what would provide the best military platform, the airship or the aeroplane?
30:30The airship, with its stability, seemed to have the edge.
30:37In the early summer of 1914 such questions were far from the mind of the ordinary European citizen.
30:47Crown heads like King George V of England were aware of the tensions within Europe, but the prospect of war
30:54was remote.
30:59This is Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia.
31:03On June 28th, the Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was there on a state visit.
31:11Shortly after this film of the Archduke was taken outside the Sarajevo city hall, a Serbian terrorist assassinated him.
31:24The balance of European diplomacy was disturbed.
31:33Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany favoured Austrian reprisals against Serbia.
31:43The French president and the Russian Tsar were allies.
31:47Russia and France would support Serbia against Germany.
31:54As Europe enjoyed the summer weather, Austria sent an ultimatum to Serbia, demanding that the assassination be investigated.
32:02At the same time, Austria mobilised its troops.
32:12Serbia agreed to most of Austria's terms, but also mobilised its troops.
32:22And then, Austria declared war on Serbia.
32:26The whole of Europe was pulled into conflict.
32:29In Russia, six million men were called to arms.
32:37Germany prepared to declare war on Russia.
32:40There was tremendous public excitement at the prospect.
32:46France, Russia's ally, refused German requests to remain neutral.
32:51Three million French soldiers were called into action.
32:55France also greeted the prospect of war with enthusiasm.
33:00There were old scores to settle with Germany.
33:06If Germany and France went to war, Britain could not allow German ships to sail into the English Channel.
33:13Britain would side against Germany.
33:20Germany was determined to attack Russia, but it knew it must deal with France first.
33:32Germany's Schlieffen plan to attack France depended on mobility by rail and road.
33:37It involved sweeping through Belgium and down the French coast, swinging east and overrunning Paris.
33:47On August the 1st, 1914, Germany declared war on Russia, and the Schlieffen plan went into operation.
33:56Germany believed that it would take six weeks for the large, ponderous Russian military machine to grind into action.
34:02By that time, German forces would be in Paris.
34:05Germany would avoid fighting a war on two fronts.
34:20The German army swept across neutral Belgium, subduing cities with massive new artillery and making harsh reprisals against resistance.
34:40The way into France was open.
34:47In aerial warfare theory, reconnaissance and bombing were the two major roles of the aeroplane.
34:53Both sides used them from the first days of the war.
34:58But theory was not practice.
35:01In the real conditions of battle, pilots and observers found it difficult to be sure what they were seeing on
35:07the ground.
35:08Sometimes they brought back information that was wrong.
35:15Aircraft like the Maurice Farm and Longhorn were primitive, but they were useful for reconnaissance.
35:25The Maurice Farm and short horn was more sophisticated.
35:29It was flown by French and British squadrons early in the war.
35:33These aircraft are typical of the two-seaters used for reconnaissance at that time.
35:42Getting vital information to the ground quickly was difficult.
35:46One method used by both sides was sending messages by homing pigeon.
35:56Pigeons were especially useful at sea before radio communication was developed.
36:02Chief of staff of the French armies in 1914 was General Joseph Joffe, an old soldier with experience in the
36:10Sahara Desert in the 1890s.
36:12One of Joffe's foremost generals was the dashing Ferdinand Foch.
36:21Joffe and his armies recalled with bitterness the lost French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, taken by the Germans in
36:281871.
36:35With the German army pushing into northern France, the French military saw an opportunity to counterattack using a long-standing
36:42French plan to recover Alsace-Lorraine.
36:46It was called Plan 17.
36:53On August the 4th, Plan 17 went into action.
36:57French troops crossed the German border, confident they could restore Alsace and Lorraine to France and drive on to the
37:04river Rhine.
37:10As the French force was advancing, one of the first failures of air reconnaissance in the war occurred.
37:21French aircraft were stationed near the border, but their patrols failed to detect the build-up of strong German artillery
37:28and machine guns.
37:43Shaken and bewildered by heavy losses, the French retreated.
37:53In mid-August, British airmen began to arrive in France.
37:57Royal Flying Corps Squadron aircraft started from Dover and entered France wherever the strong channel winds took them.
38:07BE-2s, fresh from the Royal Aircraft Factory, were the first British aircraft in France.
38:13A BE-2 landed on French soil on August the 13th.
38:24Many more were to follow.
38:26Young British airmen found themselves living abroad for the first time.
38:30They were only a few miles from home soil in Britain.
38:33But culturally, they were in another world.
38:44Letters home from these young men would have become some of the most touching and illuminating documents of the war.
38:53Much of their sadness comes from the fact that many would be dead soon after setting pen to paper.
39:06In August, General Kitchener and 120,000 British troops arrived in France.
39:12This time, German air reconnaissance failed.
39:16The British arrival was a complete surprise to the Germans.
39:27Kitchener ordered his troops optimistically.
39:30Soldiers must be constantly on their guard against temptations both in wine and women.
39:36You must entirely resist both.
39:38And while treating all women with courtesy, you must avoid any intimacy.
39:44German troops too were on foreign soil.
39:48German stomachs used to black bread rebelled against the unfamiliar French variety.
39:55As German troops approached Paris, the French government vacated the city and left General Gallieny in charge as military governor.
40:05Air reconnaissance told Gallieny the Germans were swinging away from Paris to the east, exposing their right flank.
40:14The aerial sightings were crucial.
40:17They would save Paris and halt the German advance.
40:21Gallieny and Joffe decided to attack the German forces in the nearby valley of the Marne River.
40:32The German troops were chasing exhausted British and French forces that had retreated 150 miles from Mons.
40:40But the Germans were tired and many had been sampling the local wines on the way.
40:47In spite of the condition of the German troops, the battle did not start well for the Allies.
40:53In Paris, General Gallieny commandeered 2,000 taxi cabs to drive newly arrived Tunisian troops to the Marne battlefield.
41:16In four days of savage fighting involving over two million men, casualties were enormous.
41:25For both sides, aircraft were a factor in the slaughter.
41:29They were immediately effective, directing artillery fire from the air and reporting on troop movements.
41:37By September the 7th, the Germans were beaten.
41:41The Schlieffen plan had been destroyed.
41:45The German generals now had no hope of taking Paris and ending the war quickly.
41:52The German advance that had traveled so far, so fast, had become a retreat.
41:58Now, the opposing armies raced back towards the English Channel, trying to outflank each other.
42:10As they went, they dug lines of trenches, from which each side would attempt to preserve its own territory.
42:27This deadlocked front of trenches and barbed wire would shape the evolution of military aviation for the rest of the
42:34war.
42:47As the autumn of 1914 moved toward winter, the war on the ground began to bog down in mud.
42:55Rain came, and the temperature dropped.
42:59In the trenches, there was no escape.
43:02But for those flying planes, it was different.
43:05If a plane could take off, it could move freely above the war.
43:12This is an Avro 504.
43:15Not a legendary aircraft, but one of the war's great workhorses.
43:23It was a British design, but like many Allied aircraft, used a French rotary engine.
43:31In a rotary, the whole engine revolves around a fixed shaft, and the propeller revolves with it.
43:37The airflow, across the moving cylinders, cools the engine.
43:43Castor oil lubricant is thrown back in liberal quantities in the face of the pilot.
43:53The Avro 504 entered service at the beginning of the war in August 1914.
43:59It had the misfortune to be the first British airplane to be brought down by enemy ground fire on August
44:05the 22nd in Belgium.
44:12But there were also early successes.
44:15A 504 carried out the war's first ground-strafing run, using its Lewis machine gun against a train and German
44:22troops on October the 22nd.
44:36The 504's of the Royal Naval Air Service conducted a series of successful bombing raids into German territory in October
44:44and November.
44:50The 504 was superseded in combat, but for the rest of the war it had a distinguished career as the
44:55standard British trainer.
45:06This aircraft is the 504K, the last model in a long line of development.
45:13More than 8,000 504's were built during the war.
45:17It remains a great unsung hero.
45:25As the winter of 1914 approached, aviation activity was limited by the weather.
45:32For long periods, pilots and aircraft were grounded.
45:39Aerial combat was only a few months old.
45:41Yet in that time, pilots had experienced the birth of almost every major aspect of aerial warfare.
45:49Strategic bombing, reconnaissance, ground attack, aerial combat.
45:55They'd tried them all, with some degree of success.
46:01The winter was one of the worst for years.
46:04When regular flying became possible again, aerial warfare was poised to enter a new phase.
46:16A young aviator lay dying
46:20At the start of a bright summer's day
46:24To the mechanics assembled around him
46:28These few parting words he did say
46:31Take the cylinder out of my kidneys
46:35The connecting rod out of my brain
46:40From the small of my back
46:42Take the crankshaft
46:44And assemble the engine again
46:47Bye
46:47Bye
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