<text id=00he0300><title>The Air Service in World War I: Introduction</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>The Air Service in World War I: Introduction</hdr><body>
<p>Steely-eyed aces squinting through the sights of their Vickers machine guns, shooting down Fokkers and Gothas by the score, destroying the Flying Circuses, raiding the German aerodromes...
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<p>These are the images that a generation acquired of the United States Air Service in World War I. They are, like their sources—the pulp fiction of the 1930s—fiction.
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<p>The hard facts are disillusioning. No American-trained airmen fought in the skies of France until more than one year after the entry of the United States into the war. The most experienced squadrons served only a total of seven months in the war zone. Most American air strength was not committed—or available—to battle until two months before the end of the war. The airmen flew cast-offs from the French and British air arms, outmoded airplanes whose performance ranged from indifferent to dangerous. Spare parts were lacking; they were improvised, in some extreme cases, from discarded French farm machinery. Aircraft instruments, which were primitive anyway, were in poor shape and malfunctioned so much that pilots trusted only their clocks and their wristwatches. Their claims of victories were, in all likelihood, exaggerated by two or three times. Their losses were great enough to put whole squadrons out of action for a time. The industry back home failed them; its products were inferior, and only a few American-built aircraft ever reached the front and combat.
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<p>Yet there were heroes that the war gave to a generation, real heroes who did, in fact, shoot down brightly painted Fokkers, and who flamed observation balloons and bombed German targets. From that terrible crucible of war came the principles, concepts and, unfortunately, some dogmas, that governed the development of air power in the years afterward.
