On August 17th, 1917, General Jan Christian Smuts, of the...

On August 17th, 1917, General Jan Christian Smuts, of the Royal Flying Corps, explained the importance of airplanes that they would not just play a role as an auxiliary force within the military, but would create a new form of warfare in the skies: â€Å"There is absolutely no limit to the scale of its future independent war use. And the day may not be far off when aerial operations with their devastation of enemy lands and destruction of industries and populous centres on a vast scale may become one of the principal operations of war, to which the older forms of military and naval operations may become secondary and subordinate.† It was upon this recommendation in a report written to the Air Ministry and the Air Staff to combine the two†¦show more content†¦By 1911, the old Balloon Section was separated into two Companies by the War Office, No 1 (Airship) and No 2 (Aeroplane), which caused the direct militarization of Britain’s first â€Å"air force,† and eventually became the Royal Flying Corps on March 13th, 1912. General David Henderson, â€Å"Father of the RAF† and the man who led its formation of the RAF, changed the way that aviation was viewed from a military perspective, by expanding the roles of aircraft to fighter interception, reconnaissance, and tactical support. Even with these changes, the general thought of utilizing airplanes in an aggressive manner was not rationalized alongside the current state of aviation technology. The airplanes function as a scout was utilized expertly during World War I as trench warfare made it extremely difficult to obtain information on foot or horseback. This aerial reconnaissance played a major role to battlefield commanders and artillery teams, where â€Å"on the ground† information was used to plan troop movement strategies or to adjust artillery fire. These advantages eventually led to the realization that denying your enemy that same information was just as crucial as obtaining it, which led to the first of many aerial battles. The first main function of these â€Å"fighter† aircrafts were to shoot down enemy reconnaissance planes, but it was not until a Dutch inventor, Anthony Fokker, created a synchronization gear that allowed a machine gun to fire in-between the rotating