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The idea of warfare conducted from the air
was first made a reality by balloons during the French revolution
in 1794, when French army observers stationed in a Balloon
directed ground fire against Austrian forces. Other uses
included but were not limited to the use of balloons to
observe Confederate movements during the American Civil
War and the use of balloons to direct U.S. artillery fire
at the Battle of San Juan during the Spanish American War.
 The
problem with balloons was that they were hard to steer.
In 1859 Henri Giffard made a cigar shaped balloon powered
by a steam engine to make it "dirigible" or steerable. Eventually
these dirigible balloons also called zeppelins were fitted
with gasoline engines and equipped with weapons. As the
threat of war in Europe grew, authorities began to look
seriously at military aviation in order to counter the potential
German use of zeppelins for military purposes should there
be a war. The future of air warfare; however, lay with propeller-driven
aircraft and not zeppelins.
Wilbur and Orville Wright built the first
U.S. military airplane in 1909. However it was a while before
the airplane caught on. The first use of powered aircraft
was by the Italian army against the Turks near Tripoli,
during the Italo-Turkish War to observe movements of the
Turkish forces. Britain soon followed by founding the Royal
Flying Corps in 1912. When hostilities broke out in 1914,
the Allies and the Germans had about 200 aircraft each on
the western front. The first planes were primarily scouts
and reconnaissance types, slow and vulnerable to antiaircraft
fire.
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