War

This category explores aircraft’s revolutionary role in warfare, from their primitive beginnings as scouts to powerful strategic weapons that decided campaigns. It examines aviation’s impact on tactics, strategy, and the outcome of significant conflicts. Topics include the rise of aces and air combat, the advent of bombers and fighters as critical components, the importance of securing air superiority, and the rapid technical leaps in aviation driven by wartime needs. By profiling how primitive planes in WWI evolved to complex air fleets dominating the skies by WWII, this category reveals how aviation added a radical new dimension to the battlefield in just a few short decades. It transformed war on land and sea, changing the course of history. The category traces aviation’s essential role in defending nations and expanding empires, from machine guns mounted on frail planes to globe-spanning strategic bombers.
With a focus on military aviation through the end of WWII, this covers the doctrines, technologies, battles, and figures that proved the dominance of air power in modern warfare. As aviation matured from a risky experiment to a military necessity, its impact on the outcome of wars was made clear to all, ushering in new threats and global vulnerabilities.