Technology a vietnam and the air power history journal and is currently writing a book that explores the relationship between pilot culture and the Technological Development of military aircraft here earned his ph. D. From Kansas State University with his dissertation the calls of the lightweight fighter 1964 to 1991 and ladies and gentlemen please help me in welcoming doctor michael handguns. applause all right. Ill try not to keep you from the reception, i did want to start off by talking about something that happened a year ago. There was an air force f15 flying overseer yeah and this is not what you expected to hear in a world war i lecture but stay with me, he shoots down an iranian drone. A uav, not quite two weeks later a second almost identical event ppened. I dont know about you but my twitter exploded. People started talking online, blogs are being written, people are arguing, and what they are arguing about is does shooting down that drone count as a kill . Is that something . And people are really intensely arguing about it, like if you shot down five drones buzz that make you a fighter ace . And many pilots are very emotional about this argument coming back and saying, shooting down a drone is easy. It seems arguable. Or maybe shooting down a drone, some of them say its just not sporty enough. This is actual arguments being put forth. Some say its different because there is not a man at the controls of the drone even though technically there is. Whats interesting to me about this, and the reason i bring it up, is because all of these arguments, the fact they are using those particular arguments, point to a culture, a culture in Fighter Pilots that has certain values, and the origin of that culture, you her the dates of some of my work being in the 1960s and 1970s, the reason i got into studying of world war i because the pilots of that era and today all look back to world war i as the origin point of their culture. When the air force times, a fine organization, the air force times reported on these drone shootings and they started off their story not talking about 515s or drones but a paragraph about the red barron and his legacy. Did those somehow fit into that legacy. The idea of world war i and the Fighter Pilots that we see there are very much in the minds of Fighter Pilots today. And so let me define what im talking about a little bit. When i talk about the Fighter Pilot mithos and the culture, there are basically five characteristics that this fighter culture has. Heres what im getting at. Individualism. They see themselves as individual fighters, and that includes being so individualistic that they are resistant to authority figures. They dont like their c. O. S, they feel okay sometimes dibeying orders if they can get away with it. Aggressiveness is part of this. They see themselves as longing for combat, they want to get into fights, it includes a sense of competitiveness with each other. Well get into that, the use of heroic and mythological imagery to describe themselves. The very term knights of the air, and this idea that were like the noble knights of old. Thats something they used to talk about thom quite often. This technology piece. The airplane is piece of Technology Inherently so there is always a technological connection when you talk about aircraft and pilots but particularly with Fighter Pilots they will advocate for certain types of technology, the types that make you a better Fighter Pilot. They dont care about things like range or bomb load. They talk about how man newfoundland maneuverable. Particular types of technology that help this culture perpetuatetsel i and finally, this is a protective culture. It is internally competitive but also internally respectful of each other and they are suspicious of people that arent part of the fighter fight Community Like myself who is coming in here and talking about it. Its important to note, when i put this forward, a lot of historians when they talk about knights of the air, they will say, ever thinks of themselves as knights of the air. Its all fake, all fiction, and to an extent thats right a lot of the pilots and dog fights they get into, and dog fights is the term for when airplanes are battling each other in the skies, they dont always live up to this kind of image. So this isnt always true. Its true often enough that pilots can point to some specific examples and say thats what i want to be like but whats more interesting to me about this culture is not whether or not its accurate to reality precisely. But its more about this is the ideal that these Fighter Pilots have. This is what they want to be. This is the creation myth. This is the story that they tell about themselves to give themselves a sense of identity. So whether or not they live up to this in reality is almost, im not going to say irrelevant, but its less relevant than the fact they want to be living up to this and they see this as an ideal to strive for and when they dont live up to this that creates some internal probable reynolds for them. This culture has survived. I can give the example of the drones. Think about this. Whats really the difference culturally, although the technology has changed, capabilities of aircraft have changed, what is the difference between an eddie ricken bocker of the First World War and tom cruise and top gun, other than the aircraft being bigger, faster, and louder, i dont know if there is much in terms of attitu and culture. They are very similar types of folks so i want to get into that. First, some background, for those of you who arent totally aware of how we got here in terms of air power and what it did in the First World War, air power is doing a lot of things. Air power is not totally new in world war i. Weve had for a long time balloons. This goes all the way back, weve had balloons that would go up. Participating in the german wars of unification. The American Civil War has balloons and these are doing primarily reconnaissance roles. They are spotting enemy positions, reporting them back. They are also helping artillery to spot and target more effectively and so as soon as you get aircraft, like airplanes, with a motor, a heavier than airmaned air power this is the first thing we try to do. Lets use them for recon and observation. And the americans, of course, invent aircraft, right . The wright brothers. And the airplane, but t American Military is a little bit slower to pick up on the possibilities of the airplane than the european powers are. In fact, the first use of an airplane as a weapons system is not in world war i. Its actually by the italians. In the 1911 italian turkish war in libya. In 1911, an italian aircraft becomes the first airplane to drop a bomb on Ground Troops, Ottoman Empire troops. Shortly after that incident, those same ottoman troops become the first Ground Troops to shoot down an airplane. Its not the same airplane, a few days later, but still a funny story. Americans do try to get in on the game shortly after this. In 1913, the americans develop the first arrow squadron. Here we are in 1913. And some of the earlier talks talked about the expedition to mexico when they go down searching for in mexico, lets bring in some airplanes, get some air power so the americans, of course, have their reputation for technological innovation, so they amass an armada totaling eight planes to go to mexico with. All eight of thats planes are grounded almost instantly. The weather just eats them alive. Some locals vandalize two of them. The others get scavaged for parts. They cant even deliver the mail much less go on any sort of combat mission so thats what the americans are doing with aircraft but in europe things are going a little bit differently. When we get into the early part of world war i each of the major belligerent powers of world war i have about 50 Airlines Give or take at the very beginning of the war but no one knows what to do with them. Like the idea of recon is there if the balloons but as robin has said, no one had a clear idea about what they wanted out of an airplane. So its going to be a time of experimentation. And this is true across the board. When it comes to training, because no one has an idea of who were going to do training for pilots at the beginning of world war i is unfocused if it even exists. Your average pilot will have about 17 hours of flight training. Some of the really good ones will have close to 50, 50 hours of training would be a lot for a world war i pilot and compare that to world war ii, pilots have about 300 hours of training. At least early on in the war. So a lot of pilots are actually dying in training accidents. Its a fairly common thing to have happened because these things are environmental. Cutting edge technology. Wood and canvass and a little wire. And that doesnt sound very technological. What makes this technologically advanced is the engines and how cutting edge they are, how light and powerful they are and also the shape of the canvass. The engineering that goes into making them more aerodynamic. Thats constantly being updated and changed and made more efficient as things go on. What about parachutes, you say . If people are dying in training exercises, parachutes, they will be okay. They are in the experimental phase still. They do figure out how to make some of them work and very late in the war, very late in 1918 a few german pilots will have parachutes with them. Before that, no one goes in the air outside of the seven flynn crews with parachutes. Part of this culture was, if youre a Fighter Pilot, anyway, why would you want a parachute . You want a way out of the fight . Are you a wimp . There was an attitude we dont want our pilots to have parachutes, because that may not make them aggressive enough. This all seems very primitive. The idea evolves very quickly, first its reconnaissance but very quickly people start to figure out what they can do with them. The even reconnaissance is important. One of the reason why the french were able to some the german advance in 1914 is because there is an observation plane very similar to this one that was able to spot german movements very early and the french could respond quickly. Thats not the only reason but an important contributor. And people on the ground recognized how important this observation role was even very early on. There is an incident where a french artillery officer is giving an interview too a british journalist, and they are talking and a german observation plane flies overhead and the french artillery officer looks at the interviewer and says there is that wretched bird thats hunting us. People recognize this is a problem. People are trying to do other things with planes. There are a few incidents early on in 1914 where a german plane flies over paris with a list of names of captured french soldiers, and drops a couple of bombs around paris. Very small ones like single shells, with a note afterwards and its a list of names and it says please notify the families of these men they are p. O. W. S, sorry about the bombs. Shortly after that, a different german plane also flew over paris and dropped a single bomb and then a note that said, see the power of our aircraft. You must surrender immediately. Early attempt at psychological operations. Didnt go quite as well as they thought. But these observation planes are very effective so quickly they start to realize we need to shoot down those observation planes. This is causing a problem for us, so we quickly translate into airtoair combat. This is an example of some rockets. Those didnt work out too well. They quickly realized guns are better than this but what this introduces us is the idea of airtoair combat. Now weve got planes specifically going up to try to shoot down an enemy observer plane. They will try to shoot right back so now youve got airtoair combat. Each nation is trying to make new Technological Developments to take out the other persons plane and they do Something Else and there is this cat and mouse game. Planes start flying in larger formations for defense, especially the flying v formation is especially useful, right . So the germans introduce a fighter plane, the folker iron decker. As we would think of it today, the first fighter plane and they used the word pursuit. Ill keep using fighter because i work for the air force. They make us do that. But the folker iron decker, its got a gun built in. You see its a mono plane. Very maneuverable and this plane could shoot down french and german planes very effectively. The western allies Start Talking about the folker scourge thats just cleaning out the skies so they have to do something to try to push back against this. It during this time in 1915 as that goes into 1916 and 1917 you see an increasing number of airtoair battles. The idea of the individual pilot, the aces that are shooting each other down, they start to become famous. They start to become known for this. One of the most famous in germany, of course, oswald fokker, and his students, the red barron, those are some of the more famous on the german side and well talk more about them in a second but try to defeat this folker iron decker surge the french develop a new plane, the newport. This is small one, the baby. Its very effective at shooting them down so the germans count we are a new type of plane, the albatross, and this second one from the front, the red barons plane right there, this particular one, so to defeat the albatross, now its shooting us down, so the western allies come back with kimmel. So now weve got lots of levels of technology being advanced very quickly designed to shoot each other down. By the time you get into 1918, its very clear, a few things. Even though in 1918, air power is playing a particularly large role, by this point the germans are experimenting in their spring offensives with some new ground techniques that are pretty effective. The sammy hill offensive of the americans is probably the largest air attack up to that point in history, up to 1,500 planes and its fairly effect testify but whats clear also is air power has not changed the nature of war in any significant way. Before the war had started, there are all these theorists talking about, well, if we can get airplanes working war will never be the same. It will all be completely different and all this revealed is that just like you fought on the ground before, now you just have more space to fight in. Youre fighting into the air and its turning into attrition in the air just like on the ground and it hasnt fundamentally changed anything but what it has done is created these individual famous aces. Now, an ace is means you shoot down five planes or more, which is a convention it didnt start exactly that way. First it was four, depending on who you asked it might have been a different number. I seems to have started within the squadrons themselves and then later newspapers start picking it up. An newspapers start publishing, heres some coverage on the death of in the british troops, but some newspapers publish scorecards so you can keep track at home, how many people has red barron killed today. And these people become very famous. So if you shoot down five or more planes youre an ace but you could also get ace status by not being a Fighter Pilot although this was debated even at the time, could a ground gunner who shot down five planes become an ace. In some cases they did and in some cases they didnt. The red barron is the top scorer with 80 airtoair kills which is why they called them ace of aces because just ace wasnt good enough. The american pilots start showing up as the American Air Service in 1918. Of course, they are flying european planes because the americans are really late to this party. Over a hundred americans will achieve ace status during this war. The most successful of which is eddie ricken backer. We joke around you always need a place in the air force to put your crazy, aggressive people because you need them sometimes but you also dont want too many of them around so the 94th was that place. The top scoring unit, the top scoring squadron in the American Air Service, Eddie Rickenbacker leads the charge for them. So the airplane is still new. Still developing but by the end of the war weve not only seen air power develop kind of the similar types of mission sets that we still use today, to large degree but youve seen this culture start to develop. As it evolves into weapons systems. And why is that . Why is it what is it about these aces that make them so famous and attractive to the public . In a large way its in response to whats happening on the ground. This is the victorian era. People wanted these old school mythological heroes and it wasnt even 15 years earlier that for americans at least you had Teddy Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill, the lone warrior even though he has tons of people with him, ill charge up the hill and take this hill in an expression of masculinity and heroism and now you go into world war i and world war i is not bad. At least the popular perception of whats happening is youve got millions of men in the front lines getting ripped apart by machine fire and artillery barrages and their bodies destroyed and decayed by gas. Dying in mud pits. All just so they can gain a few inches of muddy ground that isnt worth anything . Thats not the heroism. Thats not the mythological hero that i thought i was wanting for compared to Something Like a San Juan Hill of Teddy Roosevelt that the public particularly of this generation longed for but these pilots seemed to fit into that old ideal. At least in some way. At least on the surface so the public starts latching on to them and so do pilots themselves. They start calling themselves the knights of the air. I want to read you this passage from john murrow. Hes a historian of the First World War. He sums up the attract