Excerpt from :

......
The first tactical use of powered aerial flight in warfare involved lighter-than air

dirigibles and soon after the outbreak of World War I, Germany began hand-dropping

explosive bombs on France and England from enormous hydrogen-filled Zeppelins. By

that time, aircraft designers had spent the decade since the Wright brothers first powered

flight developing gasoline combustion engines to replace the bicycle gears that propelled
the Wright Flyer in 1903. The major combatants all used piston and radial-powered

biplanes for aerial recognizance missions, but the first offensive tactical aviation

operations consisted of spotter plane pilots shooting at each other with pistols and

dropping hand grenades from the air (Jackson, 2003; Yeager & Janos, 1986)

World War I pilots began rigging machine guns to their aircraft, but the spinning

propeller precluded placing weapons directly in the pilots line of sight and the various

solutions such as positioning the guns above the pilot on the top wing introduced so much

error in accuracy that it severely limited the effectiveness of first-generation fighter

planes. Germany solved this problem with the interrupter gear that coordinated the firing

of machine guns to the spin of the propeller to allow pilots to fire directly through the

propeller

Need this essay? If it's not quite what you're looking for there are over 50,000 more to search from, so you can find the term paper or essay that meets your needs.