The Great War: 100 Years Ago

In order to reduce work loads for local authorities in Great Britian, and recognizing how many men were no longer available to serve in local government due to war service, the UK passes the Elections and Registration Act.  This act suspends many local elections and provides for a means to rapidly fill vancancies of important seats.

On July 1st, 2015, German pilot Kurt Wintgens flying with FFA, shoots down a French Morane L "Parasol" near Luneville using a Fokker Eindecker.  The Morane aircraft crashes with a wounded crew and a destroyed engine.  This unheralded event represents the beginning of a period of German domination of the air over the western front.

With nearly static frontlines dominated by machine guns and artillery, traditional horse cavalry could no longer be used as scouts.  The result was that the beligerants on the western front turned to airplanes to provide strategic intelligence.  The French had recognized that denying the enemy access to this intellgence was nearly as important as gaining the intelligence themselves, so they began to experiment with various ways of shooting down enemy aircraft.  

Although Roland Garros, a French aviator, had first come up with the idea of synchronizing a machine gun through the propellor of a plane, the German company Fokker was further ahead of the French and released their own syncroniser in June.  The French invention did not lead to the German use of sync gear, but the loss of Garros's aircraft in April 1915 set the French back by several months.  As a result the Germans enjoyed an early advantage in air-to-air combat.

The era of German domination was a real difficulty for the allies, but it was soon made right by new allied equipment and training.  A footnote to the era of German dominance was a public relations and advertising campaign by the British Sopwith corporation.  Proclaiming a "Fokker Scourge" long after the danger was past, they used the threat of German air supremecy as a marketing tool for Sopwith aircraft.