This is the story of the single-seater fighter operations over the Western Front flown by the fighter pilots of Great Britain and her Commonwealth. Along with their opposite numbers from Germany and her allies, these pilots of the Royal Flying Corps, the Royal Naval Air Service and later, the Royal Air Force, were the world's first fighter pilots. The Great War of 1914-1918 saw the advent of a new type of warfare. For the first time in history the aeroplane was to play an important and vital role in the pursuit of war. The stalemate of trench warfare on the Western Front, where trenches...

By the autumn of 1916, with the formation of the new Jagdstaffeln, the pendulum of aerial supremacy had once again swung in favor of the German Air Force. The battle of the Somme in 1916 saw the RFC suffer losses of nearly 400 aircrew between September and November, and British casualties were to reach a zenith in the 'Bloody April' of 1917 when 319 aircrew were lost, killed or taken prisoner of war. This was the situation when No 56 Squadron arrived in France at the end of April 1917. Equipped with the superb new SE 5, it was the first fighter squadron of the RFC to be able to meet the...

The Great War of 1914-1918 saw the rapid development of the airplane as a weapon of war. Initially its role was seen as that of reconnaissance, an extension of the cavalry, but as the war stagnated into static trench warfare, with each side facing each other across No Man's Land, the use of artillery, both in shelling enemy positions and counter-shelling his artillery, also became of prime importance. With the early development of radio communication between ground and air, airplanes also undertook the task of 'spotting' for the artillery, and it soon became apparent that these airplanes -...